Leaving Ardoran

Rain and mist till late afternoon. Leaving Ardoran at midday, regretfully, as such a lovely, friendly place, and Colin and Helen at the boatyard such nice people. We’ll also miss the world’s best seafood stall, by the ferry terminal in Oban, so tempting I could not pass it without having mussels for breakfast several times when we were last here. The scallops cooked in wine, eaten from a disposable plastic dish, were just about the best and biggest ever, and as for the oysters and the massively filled crab sandwiches…. must go back.

Motorsailed in damp weather and light wind (SW2) down the spectacular south coast of Mull. Huge cliffs, valleys, waterfall. Piloted with chartplotter through rock maze near Sound of Iona.

We’re taking the view that the chartplotter and its charts are reliable even quite close inshore round here as long as we assume a plus and minus 200 m margin of error – 100 m either way for the GPS maximum likely error and 100 m for chart errors. If anything requires more precision, we must go back to old methods the first time, and then check the track function to see whether the chartplotter would be acceptable to use next time at the same place. (See the technical pages on this site, on the top toolbar). We have checked regularly whenever we have been at a known charted object on this part of the coast and haven’t yet found an error of as much as 50 metres, but that is not the same as a systematic check, so we are sticking to the cautious approach.

Anchored near Iona ferry slip at 1900. Ashore by dinghy for fish and chips at the restaurant and a walk round the graveyard – John Smith, the Scots Kings, in the same place. Smith’s wonderful epitaph, carved in granite, is from Alexander Pope: “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” If only he had stayed around….

Back to the boat for a noisy night at anchor as the chain ground itself around. This is not the most comfortable of places.

Passage notes: 35 miles, 5 hours, SW 2-3, drizzle, visibility moderate