Highland Spring

Anxious to get sailing we departed Ontario in late March, snow still in our backyard, bound for Edinburgh and then Oban in Scotland’s west highland, our wee boat Loon’s Lace had spent the winter of 22/23 there.

Edinburgh is fascinating, lovely to walk, filled with history, and it was even sunny for a day! We rented a flat at the top of 65 stone stairs, overlooking the old Bank of Scotland, and carried our too much luggage up. Three days to wander and enjoy The National Gallery of Scotland, The National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish National Portrait gallery, with lots of restaurants and pleasant park walks in between.

A few hours north west from Edinburgh by train is Oban, the west highlands capital. Caledonia MacBrayne ferries, Oban whiskey, seafood, book stores, outdoor equipment, supermarkets and hardware, the perfect place to get our boat ready. We had a wee cottage rented for two weeks while we made the boat liveable, the early spring weather of the Highlands hovered below 10C with pretty much daily rain and wind storms, it was still snowing at home!

The boat was just 15 minutes away across Oban Bay at Kerrera Marina. From our rented cottage on Breadalbane street we organized our spring boat projects and walked the few blocks each morning to catch the water taxi, ChiChi the drivers wee doggie snuggling with Jayne. Painting, waxing, cleaning and reassembling the interior must be done, we’d pried ceiling panels, the floor and salon table out last fall, fixing leaks and cleaning water tanks etc. This year a major refit of the boats sail drive seals was needed but luckily the mechanics at Kerrera would help with that.

Days of back and forth saw much progress under sunny skies, in rain gales and one morning a dusting of fresh snow on the hills of Mull. Jayne judiciously worked to restore our lovely Najad’s twin red water line stripes, with red car wax while I polished the white top sides and helped Julian remove and reinstall the Volvo drive, I’d removed the propeller in the fall and had to paint and reinstall it too. The outboard had been left for service in the fall and it was nice to find it ready and waiting in the Kerrera shop along with our sails which had been cleaned and serviced over the winter by Owen Sails, they have a convenient sail drop box right at the marina. Between boat works we had time to enjoy our Kerrera Island’s paradise, few if any cars, farms, dogs, sheep, coos and an ancient castle 4 miles walk south.

Sadly our home built Solar arch had let go of three 100 watt panels, over the winters storms, and they needed to be replaced, we hunted for new ones to fit, hunched over our laptop in the evenings, watching CBC news by YouTube and following other sailing channels as they dealt with life aboard and abroad.

Jayne caught a nasty chill waxing the boat during a gale, and developed an even nastier cough, after 2 solid weeks of early mornings, long days, and tired trips home across the bay, she sadly missed the launch, but happily Loon was back in the water, looking very nice and shiny new with updated waterproof seals around the sail drive unit too.

Today we’re just in Oban for the day, Jayne has seen the doctor, probably a viral cough that may take another few weeks to cure, she’s got a prescription to help, and Scotland’s excellent national health service, as temporary residents did not charge us anything!

The 1415 water taxi will take us home to Kerrera in just a few minutes, after an excellent lunch at The Lorne in Oban. Back to boat work tomorrow, our new Solar panels should arrive soon, I’ve almost finished installing the new windless motor, Jayne has been modifying the Watchkeeper dodger shelter, it protects our pilothouse from the highland rain & wind, I’ve been up the mast to check the rig and install a new flag halyard…soon we’ll be sailing to the Outer Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland & Norway…