Another 60 miles today – finds us in Gigha, a small island off Kintyre. The sail today was very enjoyable – but long. We started out from our overnight anchorage in Brown’s Bay outside Larne, Northern Ireland – light winds found us motoring downwind – but then as the wind built we got the spinnaker out. Then it started to blow a bit so we switched spinnaker for Genoa. We ended up coming dead downwind ‘wing on wing’ with poled out genoa and prevented main, using all the new gizmos appended Toodle-oo! during the winter – and delightfully bringing yet more ropes into the cockpit – to Laurie’s dismay! We’re now sitting out a rain storm in our bubble, having anchored on second attempt – first attempt was fouled by my first encounter with kelp!

While consuming a bottle of plonk and some unfortunately bad cheese, we watched as two boats came in after us and moored up to the several available moorings – they took WAY longer than our anchoring and there was definitely more swearing going on too – on both boats!

We’ll stay here a day or so – it’s only a small island, then move to Islay – probably Port Ellen on the southern coast – close to the serious distilleries! Looking forward to testing some super peaty Scotch!!!