We continued our trip down the Caledonian Canal – having good weather and taking our sweet time. There wasn’t much traffic on the canal this year and social distancing made it a pretty unsociable event – though we were able to chat with other boats while transiting the locks.

We nearly missed our opportunity for the final drop into Corpach through ‘Neptune’s Staircase’ – a series of 9 locks one after the other – we’d been expecting a 9 – 9:30am departure, but suddenly noticed other boats piling into the lock at 8:00! Fortunately, we managed to get it together and join the group for the ride down.

Quite difficult managing the staircase as I was ashore handling bow and stern lines while Laurie drove the boat – but to make it more challenging, the lady handling the lines for the boat behind us needed assistance (geometry of the lock made it impossible for her) – so I was sort of looking after 2 boats!

We made it and then motored in zero wind down Loch Linnhe, all the way to Oban. We were expecting to have to take a mooring in the marina opposite Oban on Kerrera but when I called the marina, the lady warned us that the moorings were so unused this year that the lines were likely to be severely fouled – not very appealing! Also, the free ferry to take folk to the town itself was no longer free… A second call to them illuminated that in fact we were allowed to anchor in the few designated spots, but might get moved on if they filled up with commercial vessels. Since all 4 anchorages were empty, we took an easy chance and got to stay a couple of nights in Oban at no charge! We launched the dinghy to find out that the outboard was not unsurprisingly acting up, necessitating taking the carburetor off and cleaning it thoroughly – it now runs great again!

We went ashore and managed a serious provisioning run, buying sufficient meats for 2 months and enough regular groceries for a couple of weeks…

Our plan was to head down the Irish Sea making stops at the Isle of Man and then Carnarfon (to visit friends and for more grocery provisioning) and on to the Isles of Scilly and from there on to Spain…

However, in true Toodle-oo! form, plans change… The weather forecasts all showed zero wind in the Irish sea for at least a week – but… there was good wind on the north and west sides of Ireland – so we could go around Ireland, direct to the Scillies. We decided that the allure of the south was just too much and we should head off – so we pulled the anchor and motored through the windless lochs while Laurie cooked countless meals for the freezer, until finally the wind came up as we passed Collonsay and we could sail.

This plan was always somewhat risky – in that the wind was expected to die out around the south west corner of Ireland, but if we maintained sufficient speed (6.5 – 7.0 knots), we’d be able to arrive there, just as wind veered to the east – to carry us right to the Isles of Scilly.

Initially we made good time – with the wind keeping us going at between 7 and 8.5 knots – but the going wasn’t very pleasant with a significant cross swell that saw both of us taking sea sickness pills to calm the stomachs.

Through the evening of the second day, our speed began to drop as we headed dead downwind in decreasing wind and on the morning of our third day, I was sound asleep when Laurie called for the Spinnaker – which we duly raised and made a valiant effort for the next few hours, keeping speed above 6 knots – but sadly even that died and we ended up with nothing.

Now we were in a bit of a pickle… we’d missed the wind on the south coast and would be forced to motor much of the way from Ireland to the Isles of Scilly – BUT – a new weather forecast we managed to receive, showed that following the lack of wind, we were going to have something of a storm coming at us – that would mean that if we did manage to get to the Scillies, we’d then have to move on within a day or so to Falmouth in order to seek shelter! On the other hand, having managed to find ourselves in SW Ireland, it represents a much better starting point for our crossing to Spain – being so much further west – BUT – we didn’t have sufficient fuel to reach Spain (should we need to motor). BUT… Ireland is not open to foreign yachts!

We called the Irish coast guard and asked if we might have permission to anchor off on the Dingle Peninsular (Ventry Harbour) and also if it might be possible for us to make arrangements to come into Dingle briefly to pick up fuel. They took some time to think about it, but came back with permission – on the understanding that we were not allowed to set foot on land.

We motored into Ventry on Friday evening and enjoyed a well earned cocktail amid a torrential rainstorm. A customs boat came by on Sunday to check us out – no problems here…

The weather was turning into a bit of an issue… The tail end of Tropical Storm Kyle was due to join up with another low and aim directly for our location on Wednesday evening/Thursday morning – until then there wasn’t any wind to go anywhere. We sat on the anchor amid very pretty surroundings and fretted!

On Tuesday morning, we came into Dingle by arrangement and picked up a full load of fuel from a tanker truck on the dock, then made our way back to Ventry, tucked in as close to land as we dared for as much protection we could get, and planned to make all preparations for the storm the next morning.

Another look at the weather charts had us fretting even more… They were now calling for sustained 45 knots, with gusts to 74knots! We’re now looking at Violent Storm conditions. I left a message for the Dingle Harbourmaster, asking if it would be possible, under the circumstances, for us to shelter at Dingle Marina for the duration – he’d not called back yet – so we started making preparations for what was going to be our strongest ever conditions.

Just as we started, we received a DSC radio call – it was the coast guard announcing the storm – which was to be a Force 9-10 with gusts to Force 11! Oh Jeeze!

We dropped and ‘folded’ the Genoa. We left the jib furled tightly on it’s stay and wrapped it multiple times with the genoa halyard. We removed the mainsail and managed a better folding of it. (Our sails are pretty big and heavy – these two packages dominated our cockpit.) We were going to prepare our spare anchors and rode and were planning to inflate the dinghy, launch it and then half-fill it with water and tow it from the stern – in an effort to reduce Toodle-oo!’s tendency to sail to an anchor, thereby putting significantly more stress on our ground tackle. Fortunately, before we went through those procedures, the harbourmaster called back and said that Ireland have an emergency exception and they’d allow us to come to the marina for the duration of the storm – but that we mush complete a Health Declaration before entering.

Laurie set to on the computer, downloading the Health form and then printing it with a printer that’s almost out of ink – and after multiple tries, she managed to get it printed and filled out. We emailed that to the Harbourmaster, lifted anchor and began making our way back into Dingle.

We arrived in Dingle at noon and tied up to a hammerhead pontoon and continued with our storm prep, taking off the cockpit canvas – anything we could to reduce windage. Lines were doubled and we hunkered down by watching a couple of episodes of Downton Abbey!

Meanwhile, another check of the weather forecasts indicated that the likelihood was that the extreme weather was not going to hit us – with the forecast gusts now only at around 53 – 55 knots – still lots of wind!

The wind arrived Thursday morning around 1:00am and as I type, it continues and will do so through all tomorrow and into Saturday. We’ve had some pretty decent gusts already, but are no doubt significantly sheltered from the wind – and very dramatically sheltered from the waves. A very good decision to find shelter – it would not have been very nice out at Ventry!

We’ll stay here another couple of nights probably, then head back to Ventry to await reasonable conditions for our trip across the Bay of Biscay to A Coruna, Spain.

We’ve actually been back aboard Toodle-oo! for 2 weeks now 😊 !

Our first week consisted of doing loads of chores while in our lockdown berth in Newcastle’s excellent ‘Royal Quays’ marina… Laurie completed a load of finicky varnishing – around the hatches and the companionway, while I tackled a major re-plumbing of the head – which proved to be considerably more involved than I had imagined. We also did a thorough clean up and waxed the topsides – which involved doing one side first, turning the boat around and then doing the other side. The only problem there being the turning around part – which involved nearly crashing three times! Thankfully a close neighbor came to our rescue – and then wonderfully blamed the whole escaped on the sudden wind shifts!

Our berth was adjacent to David Scott Cowper’s exploration boat, Polar Bound – who is trying, this year, to complete the North West Passage for the umpteenth time, doing a particularly challenging route apparently. It was great to spend an evening with him and partner Jane aboard Toodle-oo! and hear of all their exploits aboard Polar Bound and previously making record breaking circumnavigations aboard sailboats. David is currently preparing a boat for the 2022 Golden Globe (when he’ll be 82!) – single handed circumnavigation in a boat of similar vintage to the original race’s winner – Sir Robin Knox Johnson.

Our 2020 plans were to head north to Scotland, through the Caledonian canal then south by way of the Isles of Scilly, Spanish Rias and then on to the Algarve coast of Portugal for the winter.

We finally bade farewell to Newcastle on August 1^st and sailed in light winds up the Northumbrian coast to Newton – a strange little anchorage close by Dunstanburgh castle – which obviously saw some serious battle in it’s time! The anchorage is tucked behind a reef – which protects it from the North Sea swell – at all but high tide – when it rocks and rolls for an hour or so! It took us three attempts to set the anchor on a very rocky bottom, but we succeeded and ended up sharing the anchorage with three other boats – the close one being new friends Peter and Sue on Shuuper.

We had planned to meander up the Northumbrian coast for several days on the way up to Scotland – but in the end Newton was our only Northumbrian overnight – the other anchorages we had thought of were likely to be rather rolly, so instead, we sailed up to the Farne Islands where we anchored for just a few lunchtime hours among all the sea birds, before heading overnight to the Moray Firth. Sadly, that passage was a massive motor-fest with the expected winds not materializing one bit. We were so slow that we were unable to enter Whitehills Harbour where we’d stayed in 2014 because the tide had dropped too low – so we continued on to a lovely anchorage at Sandend – which put us in a good position to sail into Inverness the following day.

Unfortunately, while we’d timed our entry to Inverness well – with respect to tides – we got snookered by the railway bridge and so were not allowed to enter the canal on arrival, but instead had to take a berth at the nearby Inverness Marina.

 

 

The following morning we made our way into the canal – locking through with a small sailboat – Swedish Mermaid and made our way up the flight at Muirtown and finally into Loch Ness – where the wind was howling and in our face – so we ended up coming back to the wee Loch before – Loch Dochfour and anchoring there.

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday we motored down Loch Ness on a windless sunny day and arrived in Fort Augustus for a well earned pint or two!

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow we’ll continue on our canal trip and get as far as we can while the lock keepers are on reduced hours…