16. We’re in Scotland!

On Friday 14th the weather finally changed.  The wind dropped and backed to the south west, allowing us to move on from Portrush to Port Ellen on Islay.
Portrush actually turned out to be a good place to be stuck.  5 nights seemed to go quite quickly as there were a variety of things to do.  Our trip to the Giant’s Causeway was mentioned in our last blog, our neighbours in Graseal, rafted alongside us, took a train to Coleraine to go to the cinema, we walked along the peninsula from Portrush to watch the seas crashing onto the cliffs, proving why we were not going anywhere!  We spent some time in the sociable Portrush Yacht club, making good use of their WiFi.  We visited the Portrush RNLI shop and compared notes with John Martin, chairman of the Portrush lifeboat fundraisers, swapping ideas for ways of fundraising.  We even found a new hot water bottle in an amazing Aladdin’s cave of a hardware store to replace our leaky one.  No more cold toes!  All the while we were helped by Ian, Kenny, Gerry and Aaron, the harbour staff.
By Thursday evening, although the wind was still strong, it was showing signs of easing off so we booked an 0930 slot in the morning for refuelling.  We awoke to wind from the south with little or no swell, the dredging barges were active for the first time in 4 days.

 Another yacht had come in in the night and moored on the fuel pontoon so they had a bit of a rude awakening as we went alongside them and dragged the fuel hose across their deck.  Being Irish they weren’t at all bothered!
We set off under engine and hoisted the mainsail outside the harbour but although the wind was in the right direction there wasn’t enough of it to keep our speed up.  

We had a strong NW going tide across our track which meant that our heading was towards the Mull of Kintyre to make a course over the ground towards Port Ellen.  

We motored for nearly 4 hours until the wind died altogether then backed to the SE and gradually built until we had 20 knots approaching Port Ellen, all in bright sunshine, although it still felt cold.  

Entering Kilnaughton Bay the seas were still quite large so getting the mainsail down was hard work.  

Motoring into Port Ellen the sea went flat but there was still a strong and gusty SE wind.  At first there didn’t seem to be any spare spaces but we found one and found our way in.  Fortunately people had been watching us and saw that coming in was going to be tricky so there were plenty of helpers around to take our lines, much to our relief!  The sun continued to shine for long enough to get the covers on and the boat tidied up before the rain started, sending everyone who had been enjoying the sunshine scurrying for cover.

Port Ellen is run by a charity and is manned by volunteers.  The pontoons were installed in 2007 and extended in 2015.  There is a marina office close to the pontoons with good, clean showers, laundry and WiFi and power on the pontoons. All except the laundry is included in the berthing fee.  Shops and restaurants are close by so this makes an ideal stopping off place and base for seeing some of the island.
As we are now in no rush, we have 3 weeks to get to Oban to pick up Robyn, and the forecast was light winds and rain, we opted to stay another day.  We did a little shopping and visited Islay Fruit Wines, a home based business run by ex headmistress, Helen and husband Kenny.  

After tasting all their offerings (dangerous!) we came away with 2 small bottles of bramble and 2 small bottles of rhubarb wine, very pleasant and in plastic, screw top bottles.  Ideal for the boat.  Although there was light drizzle we decided to walk the 3 mile distillery path to Ardbeg, passing Laphroaig and Lagavulin on the way, for lunch and a distillery tour.  The rain increased en route so we were quite wet when we arrived at Ardbeg.  Lunch was excellent and the tour and tasting fun.  

We decided to catch a bus back in case the rain started again so had a bit of a rush to finish the tasting and buy a bottle before the bus was due.  Just made it thankfully as it was the last bus back!  It’s now raining again and very light winds so we will consult the weather forecast in the morning and decide whether to stay on or move on further north.