17th June 2016 – Day 32 – Ardrishaig basin, out through the sea lock and down to East Tarbert, Mull of Kintyre

You have to qualify which Tarbert you are referring to as there a huge number of Tarbert’s all over the west side of Scotland (this was something Pete Bundell had warned us about before even leaving home – ‘watch out’ he said ‘there are Tarberts everwhere’ – somehow this stuck with me). This one is on the west side of Loch Fyne and is where the peninsula gets really thin. 

Once a Danish king dragged his galleon (Mark says they weren’t very big, so it would have been easy) from West to East Tarbert (about 2 miles) so that he could claim the Mull of Kintyre as an island and claim it as his own – this, apparently was something the king of Scotland had decreed – he probably said something like – Danish – if you can sail your boat around a Scottish island then you can claim it as your own. If not its ours! As you can tell I am no historian.

Anyway back to our story – the day started with excitement. Time to get the boat ready for the open ocean again and batten everything down. Sailing gear needed to be found and wellies made at the ready. The sea lock keepers announced that they were about to lock a small boat into the basin and it would be awfully handy if we (us, Shy Talk and another boat who had come in the night before) could exit at the same time. This would mean the road bridge would be open for the minimum amount of time (wouldn’t want to inconvenience those car drivers for any longer than they had too).

We made our way into the lock behind ‘Shy Talk’, managing our own ropes only to be shouted at several times by the couple behind us who couldn’t control their boat (even with bow thrusters) and also couldn’t wait for us to tie up. Some people are so impatient and it makes it all the funnier when you are then confined in a very small space with them, I said ‘nothing like a bit of stress first thing in the morning’. The lock keeper gave them a dressing down when he discovered they had their ropes the wrong way round and couldn’t control their boat as the lock descended. Ha!!

Out of the lock and the race was on. We set sail and took off leaving the other boats behind us. Not surprisingly we were faster than ‘Shy Talk’ he was only 25ft long but the Jeanneau was a similar size to us and, since the shouting incident in the lock, there was no way were they going to beat us down the coast. We won of course but I’m not sure they even realised they were racing.

Outside East Tarbert, the porpoises were busy catching fish and were suddenly all around the boat, but they were obviously too busy to give us a passing glance so we motored on into the harbour and tied up. ‘Shy’Talk followed very soon after us and took the berth next to ours and sometime later the irritable couple also came waltzing down the pontoons and nodded recognising us.

East Tarbert was a great little stop over and had the all-important Co-Op, the obliquity castle, a number of eateries and, we found out later, a great fresh sea food shop. Internet was working and I had some phone signal at last. Hurray – civilisation! Mum and dad caught up with us as well.