Loch Ranza to Kilchattan, Isle of Bute

Runna-eun Point lighthouse at the SE corner of Bute
with the mountains of Arran in the background
[Kyle]Our forecast for the next short leg had been saying nice light winds for nearly a week. I had been looking forward to airing out the screacher and having a nice leisurely sail. When we got up, however, it was still howling and raining hard with winds in the upper 20s. The worst thing was that a swell of just the right size was wrapping itself around the corner and arriving 90 degrees to the wind, into which we were pointing. This meant that one hull was in the trough and the other was on the crest, rolling us back and forth, back and forth just enough to have us reaching for our coffee cups at the worst point to keep them from sliding off the table. This is annoying as it is, but early in the morning before all of the coffee has been consumed, it can quickly frustrate right up to the brink of insanity. We had to wait a few hours for the favorable tide. I checked the latest forecast. It now said to expect high winds all day. I tried to occupy myself with preparations in the mean time but by the end, I was wild-eyed and ranting about the bloody weather and how all I wanted was one nice day, etc.

At leaving time, the weather had actually cleared up slightly and the wind had died down a little. I was just starting to act and feel human again. We put up the mainsail with one reef in, just in case. Maryanne cast off the mooring lines, we unrolled about half the jib, and we accelerated out of the loch with the satisfying sound of a nice, fast wake hissing astern. We made a slight turn downwind which blanketed the jib behind the mainsail, making it fill and collapse erratically. I rolled it up. We were still doing a respectable 5 or 6 knots and only had 13 miles to go. As we left the loch, the wind increased slightly to the predicted 20 something and we sped up a knot or two. The Sun cracked through the clouds. I may have even allowed a slight grin to cross my face. The wind increased further into the 30s and then started nudging past 40, killing my grin and making me nervous about what little sail we had up still being too much. The wind was from almost dead astern, which was better than abeam as far as capsize risk was concerned. The bad thing was that we couldn’t reduce sail without making a dangerous turn through abeam in order to turn into it. I suspected that the wind was just being funneled at the pinch point between mountains at the north side of Arran and would die down as we got further into the Firth of Clyde, so we just rode it out, being careful to keep the wind well aft. Our speed climbed into the upper 9s and stayed there for a while. We even hit 10.2 in a 42 knot gust. I was experiencing that strange combination of emotions one gets in really bad weather. On the one hand, there was the exhilaration of being out there and still being apparently fine in conditions that are clearly ‘advanced’ or even ‘expert’. The speed was also thrilling. Our wake roared like the bottom of a waterfall. On the other hand, there was the anxiety of knowing there was little room for error. It was like the combination of thrill and fear at being on the back of a horse that’s running just a little too fast.

As we widened the distance between us and Arran, the wind did die down. I felt a combination of relief and disappointment at the ‘normal’ speeds we were now sailing. Since we didn’t have much further to go by then and since I was quickly developing a natural distrust of Scottish weather, I left the mainsail as it was. Monohulls flying full sail started to catch up to us. I started rehearsing my speech about how catamarans were intrinsically so much faster, that it wasn’t necessary to go full speed all the time like monohulls do, just in case we ran into them later. I don’t think I was buying it myself.

We rounded the southern tip of the Isle of Bute and passed into the protection of its lee. Some guy in a monohull passed us in the light winds. That was it! We unrolled the genoa but he was still making ground in us. How could that be? Oh, the shame! He didn’t even have that much sail up. Then Maryanne pointed out that cooling water was coming out of his exhaust. He was motoring, the dirty cheater.

The hills of the island were making the wind go all over the place in both speed and direction. We kept having to retrim and make big course changes to follow it and keep the sails from backwinding. It was like sailing a dinghy except with a big, heavy, less maneuverable boat. We tacked up to the head of the bay at Kilchattan and then made a quick downwind pass through the anchorage to see what’s what. We’d read that the St. Blane’s hotel had moorings for patrons and wifi. We figured we could use a meal out in their restaurant so we were looking to see if their moorings had the hotel’s name written on and to plan our approach for later. We found one we liked that was closest to the dinghy landing and then tacked back up the bay.

Then came the hard part; my plan was to pick up the mooring under sail. This is even harder than anchoring under sail because, when anchoring, anywhere where the depth is right and there’s enough swinging room will do. Usually, we’ll pick our spot and then round up to it. Where the boat stops is where the anchor goes down. It usually doesn’t matter if we’re 50 feet off or so. A mooring, on the other hand, is an exact spot. It is necessary to stop the boat within arm’s length of the mooring pendant before the wind starts pushing us back. We turned downwind and I rolled up the genoa to get it out of Maryanne’s way. As we approached the mooring, I had to leave the helm to let the mainsheet fly and then judge our inertia and the wind just right so that when we made the turn into the wind toward the mooring, Footprint would pass close enough and slowly enough by that Maryanne could get the pendant aboard and have time to get it cleated in a mad rush before we drifted too far away. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. The boat rounded up and stopped, lightly touching the mooring for about five seconds before starting to drift back. By then, Maryanne had just reached down with the boat hook and very leisurely picked up the pendant and cleated it, like we did this every day. It was great! I went up and dropped the mainsail. By the time I was done, Maryanne had already run a tangle of lines all over the bow. She told me to throw off the pendant and, presto, the tangle turned into a perfect bridle. We shared a high-five over our accomplishment of a no engine day.

We got everything sorted out and then rowed ashore for a walk along the ¼ mile town and then we went to Blane’s for a nice meal. Through the main bar window we could see Footprint perfectly framed, and glowing in the light of the sunset. We met the couple who had motorsailed past us earlier. They turned out to be very interesting. They divided their time between sailing all over Scotland in their boat in the summer and sailing the Caribbean in a catamaran they own a share of in the winter. They had been to all of the places we had in the Caribbean and many more. Between that and Scotland, we had a lot to talk about.


St Blanes Hotel, kind patrons of free moorings and WiFi