We left Mallaig early the next morning in what can only be described as a very uncomfortable sea. We corkscrewed all the way till we rounded Ardnamurchan point. Then……………… what happened next can only be described as amazing.

About eight or ten porpoises joined us for the next twenty minutes, playing in the bow wave, darting back and forth, popping out of the water in line with the deck height and generally just having a great time. I sat at the bow of the boat trying to catch them on the camera, but they were so quick it was difficult picking out where they were going to pop up next. I did manage to get some of it on video which turned out not too bad but the photo’s really don’t do it justice. The last time we saw dolphins / porpoises this close was when the engine failed leaving Portree, but this time I managed to get up a bit closer and could almost put my hand out and touch them.

   

We carried on after the dolphins regretfully left us and made our way down the Sound of Mull  to Kerrera,  an Island off of Oban.

Today, Tuesday a 47 foot gin palace arrived with the skipper wearing a bugs bunny hat and scarf. This should have been a warning. He had three attempts at parking and during the shenanigans hit four yachts, one of them us. Luckily Gordon had foreseen his ineptitude and managed to get a fender between us and him at the last minute, Unfortunately the fender did not protect his glasses which he knocked off his napper and stood on – he is now kited out with his Roy Orbison prescription sunglasses.

Then Gordon & the harbour master had to help him park the cruiser cause he was p@@shed. To protect the guilty I won’t mention his name but he does hire out equipment big time in Glasgow

You might think that was the end of it for today…………..not so…………another motor cruiser next to us decides to leave and scuffs along our beam having earlier denigrated the earlier “Bunny’s” attempts.

Ehh Whats Up Doc?

 

At this time Mallaig does not have facilities in the marina, you have to walk round to the Fisherman’s Mission with all your gear to have a shower etc.

We however tend to do it alfresco using the pontoon hose to the amusement of other pontoon users.

 

Once settled in Mallaig we again called out the local engineer, Ian Mcphee. Turned out this guy already new about our problems from Neil in Skye who had been picking his brains for a likely issue.

He tested the thermostat and ran a temperature gauge over the engine and said he was happy with the temperatures and that he would replace the temperature sender on the engine which could be faulty . This seemed to do the trick ! I remember him now saying he wasn’t overly happy with the sound but it should get us back to the Clyde.

While we were in Mallaig we went on the “Harry Potter Train” to Fort William and the normal one back to Mallaig In retrospect we should have got the normal one both ways . It had better view ability and was a lot cheaper. However it was fun

 

 

 

 

Views from the HP train and the cost of a pee at Fort William Station.

I took the toilet attendant and the ticket master to task over charging 20p a pee and planned a letter to Fat Salmond in the Scottish Parliament , given the price of the ticket. lol!

 

 

The entrance & start of the Caledonian Canal

   

The views on the return journey                      

Today was the day to try the beast. She started first time – ish! and just her usual bit of smoke.

 

High Hopes

Unfortunately the overheating alarm sounded again as before

So to cut a longish engineering story short, Gordon removed thermostat, giving us two hours before the overheating alarm would cut in, and we set off from Portree heading towards Mallaig.

 

Leaving Portree

We reached Mallaig after an eight hour sail in a F6 and surfed in on a wing and a prayer hoping the engine wouldn’t fail at a critical point.

 

Do you think Louise has got a good enough grip here ? lol.

We chilled,

 

 

Portree at sunset

 

Louise’s anti Midgie net !

Took a bus tour of the Island, well part of it, up to Staffin and Uig.

    

Went walking out to Sgeir Mhor ……… the point where Bonnie Prince Charlie fled from the redcoats to Raasay with Flora. Then further on up to get a view of the Old Man of Storr. It was a bit cloudy but you could still see it a bit in the distance.

     

Finally some walks around Portree town itself quieter now since the highland games had passed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite ,or perhaps because of the issue with the engine we got to know Portree and some of its in habitants quite well. Its a lovely place. Gordon travelled about here in the 80’s on his motorbike, but you cant beat arriving by sea!

If your going to be stuck, there are far worse places , we’ll be back.

Friday came and the new fuel pump was fitted, it was decided just to do the one that had the faulty spring and take our chances with the others just now. Sorted, or so we thought…..We got up at seven the next morning to go and Gordon checked the oil which he had filled up to the max mark on the dip stick the day before, however, it was now milky white mayonnaise again ! and three quarters of the way up the dipstick. So, there we were again, having to call Neil out yet again.

It transpired that the water pump bearings had also gone and sea water was mixing with the oil so parts were ordered and the pump rebuilt and yes again it was two days before they could be here and fitted , imminent births allowing?

This brought us to Tuesday 21 August we have been here two weeks now.

(Editors note – I am now fluent in Gaelic and getting the eye from the old woman in the fish shop at the head of the pier ….. and ….. although these pictures aren’t actually from that day  they do probably sum up the overall situation, lol)

  

 

We decided to stay till Friday when the wind changes from Southerly to North Easterly, this way we will have wind and tide with us and it should be a smoother journey, also, there is less chance we will need to use the engine. We don’t want to take the chance of having to use the engine a lot, at least until we are comfortable with the repairs that have been done are wholly successful.

Neil arrived on the boat about 4pm and put everything together again. The cylinder head had been cleaned and the new gasket fitted.

 

We sat with fingers crossed as Gordon turned the ignition…………………nothing. Well, nothing is not quite right, it turned over in neutral, as it had done before and died as you tried to put it into drive, as it had done before.

Back to the drawing board. Neil was there till about 10pm and just before he left he found that one of the springs in one of the fuel pumps was broken, rather than go into all the technical stuff about this let’s just say that he thinks this may be the problem.

(Editors note – just like the pantomime audience….”Oh no it isn’t”)

One of the other pumps also had a bit of a sticky mechanism so he thinks we should replace all three. You think this is bad news……you ain’t heard nothing yet. Each of the pumps costs £260 but Neil managed to get a discount which brings them down to £230 each, the gasket cost about £80 and all that is before we take Neil’s time into it. It will be two days to get the parts so nothing will happen till Friday, that is, if Neil’s partner doesn’t go into labour before then, she is due her baby on 20 August. Fingers crossed again.

We took Neil ashore and managed to get the last fish suppers which we ate in the cockpit smelling of diesel, no power,no water!

Next day we decided to try and get a shower, we were minging after trying to clean up the debris from the night before. There was about three inches of diesel and oil in the bilge, dirty rags, canisters of oil and diesel, reams of paper towel covered in diesel and generally just a pigsty to clean up. Gordon looked like he had committed mass murder, he had so many cuts and grazes on him and if they could, his clothes would have jumped in the sea themselves they were so minging.

 

We had had showers in the Youth Hostel the other day and I recalled the guy there saying something about after 4pm, however, we thought we would give it a try and go earlier. Yep, I was right, 4pm no showers at the hostel then.

Off we went to the swimming baths which are attached to the school about a mile up the hill, we knew you could also get showers there. Got there about 2.30 and the school receptionist said “after 3.30”. It was a lovely day so we sat outside in the sun for an hour then went in at 3.30. This time we were told by the swimming pool receptionist not till after 4.00 pm when the schools were finished using them. Honestly, do you ever feel the world is conspiring against you, all we wanted was a wash. Dogs were following us and tramps avoiding us by now!

We organised for an engineer, Neil Morrison to come out from Uig on the North of the island. He came ,dismantled the engine, and left in the dinghy with Gordon and the cylinder head in my big IKEA bag.

(Editors note -I wasn’t actually in the IKEA bag, the head was).

A replacement was ordered . However, it’s now the weekend, nothing will be done till next week sometime,  and Neil’s wife was on the cusp of giving birth to their first baby any time now!

Gordon cleaned up all the disassembled parts and flushed the engine through with diesel in preparation of reassembly.

 

 

There was nothing else to be done but get on with daily life on board Camira, that meant going to the laundrette to stop the dirty clothes fermenting in the laundry bag in the bilge and haircuts. Oh, Gordon has now fixed the outboard which should make our many trips ashore a bit easier.

  

We had to make arrangements to get the batteries charged as they had been run flat when Gordon and Tommy were trying to get the engine started that first day.

I made a call to the harbour master and asked if he knew if the RNLI guys had a charger and he thought they did so offered to come and pick us up off the boat with the batteries. Oh, I forgot to mention that we also ran out of gas last night as well, so when Colin the harbour master came to get us we took the gas canister ashore as well to try and get a refill. After depositing the batteries with the RNLI, we found out from Colin that it was a couple of miles walk to get gas at “Jan’s Vans”, I think this is their equivalent to B&Q. I think Colin took pity on us as we walked off canister in hand and so decided to offer us a lift. Everyone in Portree is very obliging.

Next morning, Thursday 9 August, We headed off. We were planning to go to Plockton, it’s seemingly a lovely wee place and Gordon had been there in the 80’s on his motor bike during Scotland’s illustrious world cup campaign. So off we went at about 8am, feeling pretty shattered after our sleepless night but off we went anyway. We were sailing down, heading for the Raasay narrows when two things happened: a pod of about fifty dolphins swam alongside and all around the boat, jumping as high as our foredeck and swimming in our bow wave, it was amazing! Gordon didn’t get to see much of this as the wind died and shortly thereafter so did our engine……. with a whoosh & a bang! With no wind and no power we were now drifting towards a lateral marker with a rock behind it…great, just what we needed. (Ed Note Louise still enthralled with Dolphins at this point even though she might be swimming with them soon!)

 

There was nothing else to do but call up Stornoway coastguard and ask for some assistance from any local vessels. A yacht that was in the vicinity came to our aide and towed us back to Portree, so thank you very much to the skipper and crew of K Vector III.  She was a yacht on a skippered charter and 2 visitors from Germany who thoroughly enjoyed the whole episode. We e-mailed our thanks that night to the charter Skippers  company .

Gordon did all the usual checks and replaced filters, bled system but to no avail. We were on a mooring buoy that couldn’t have been further from the shore, so into the dinghy we went to get some help. Would you believe it, the outboard for the dinghy decided to pack in on us as well so rowing it was, lol. 

Anyway, we got ashore and talked to a few people, and a lovely man called Tommy form the RNLI came out to the boat to help Gordon, he wasn’t even on duty, I think he had just passed by on some other business. They both worked away at it for a couple of hours and were unsuccessful, however they determined that it was most likely the cylinder head gasket had blown and salt water had got into the oil somehow. Not a small job!

Tommy very kindly gave us one of his moorings to stay on FOC, closer to the pier head, right next to the RNLI lifeboat, as it looked like we were going to be here for some time.

Tommy is a fisherman in his day job and has two moorings for his boats. Gordon commented that he thought our boat weighed about 5 tons and would this be ok for the mooring? Tommy’s said with a bit of a grin on his face, he thought it would be ok, his boats are 32 ton!

We were towed there the next morning by George from the RNLI.

 

Wednesday 8 August, off we went for a wee sail up to Portree on the Isle of Skye, just in time for their Highland games.

 

Approaching Portree with bloodied heather

   

Portree Harbour moorings and surrounds

  

This is around the time lots of things seemed to go wrong…

Kick off was at the games. All these big muscle bound men were in the arena thing ready for the throwing of the hammer. All was going well until one of the Polish competitors let the hammer slip just a fraction of a second too soon. WELL, there was this huge gasp from the audience as the hammer made it’s way over to the judges tent where there was this wee lady sitting writing up her notes completely oblivious that she was about to get clattered by this 26lb hammer. First Aid, ambulances etc. were all called and she was whisked away. We heard later that she was ok, it was mainly the stock that hit her, so thankfully not as bad as it looked.

     

That night, there was this boat moored up just along from us called Conmara, from Stornaway who liked to keep his radio (as in Radio 4 and the like) on all night at full volume. In all fairness I didn’t hear it but it kept Gordon awake till 3.30am.

Next night the same thing happened, however we were both kept awake this time. Now, what happened next is not usual boat etiquette, Gordon tried shouting over to get the man’s attention…… didn’t work, he then got his flash light and tried shining it in the widows of his boat….. didn’t work, there was nothing left to do but get a couple of kilos of Jersey Royals out and start firing them at the boat. You would have thought this would get the owners attention, however Gordon’s aim was abysmal, only one bull’s-eye out of the whole bag! We now refer to that night as the ”Tainted Tattie Attack”