4th July onwards

4th Jul 2007

Shuna, United Kingdom - Will someone tell me what that big black fin's attached to!

Hey, some signal at last!
Well we're out of the Crinan canal and in the Western Isles. We spent 3 days in the Crinan and it was absolutely average! They say it's the most scenic 10 miles of canal in the UK but it was spoilt by BW employees. Within 10 minutes of entering the canal Conny had a BW guy telling her to watch his lips before repeating a sentence that was utterly incomprehensible (but much louder than the first time). And not an hour later I had an altercation with the next lock guy over the description of a British Waterways 'watermate key' and it's uses! I'll spare the detail of him showing me several times, and in extreme slow motion, how a BW toilet opens and closes, when all I wanted was to open a swingbridge. (same old, same old! It a shame but idiots like these only serve to undermine all the work of all the good guys!)
Travelling the canal, we spent 3 days alongside Dan and Christan. Dan a 24 year old that does something with radar on submarines, and Christan, a Canadian graduate from Vancouver. We had a nice time with them in the evenings whilst being eaten by midges!
This morning we left the calm waters of the canal and headed north into Lock Craignish while waiting for a tidal window. We were chugging up to the head of the lock when we saw some huge fins, not 25 meters of the port bow (bloody hell)! We soon identified them as belonging to a basking shark but anyway these guys can grow up to 15 meters in length and weigh more than 6 tonnes. It seemed utterly un-interested in us probably because we didn't look like plankton!
At 1 pm it was time to tackle Dorus Mor. This is a narrow straight a few miles east of the notorious 'Gulf of Corryvrekan'. Although nowhere near as bad as the gulf, you can expect 8 knot tides and big overfalls here. With spring tides peaking today (they're the biggest) and the prospect of strengthening southwesterlies this was not a place we wanted to be at when flows reached their strongest! So, whilst constantly surveying the picture in front of us through the binoculars, we edged towards the narrows. I could see some overfalls some way off and lined Tiger up to meet them head on. If there's one thing I've learnt on this trip however, it's how hard it is to judge the size of seas at a distance and the overfalls I'd been looking at turned into little more than flood water on the River Trent. So, round the corner and up to Shuna, our anchorage for the night!