When I booked into Rhu they told me they needed me to leave by 12 August. Then Erika told me that the earliest she could arrive was the evening of the 12th, which would have meant leaving on the 13th. I also had to sort out food shopping - there's nothing much in Rhu and the Co-op in Helensburgh is a bus ride away. I needed to phone the marina to ask if a later departure would be ok and if a supermarket food delivery would be possible. Then a few days before departure I realised that the weather on Tuesday was not looking at all helpful for sailing south, but Sunday or possibly Monday looked feasible. In the end, in consultation with Erika, I decided to head south to Troon on my own on Sunday and meet her there. This had the advantage of getting 30 miles closer to Ireland, making the most of a hot and windless day, getting the boat out of Rhu before the deadline, and taking the boat to a location with a huge Morrisons 10 minutes' walk away.
So on Sunday morning I got the boat ready and headed off. It was a really gorgeous day with almost no wind, ideal to build confidence after a month away, although not much chance of actually sailing. My route took me back along the Firth of Clyde, retracing my track as far as Bute, then turning to the south of Bute to take the channel between there and Great Cumbrae. You can pass either side of Great Cumbrae but I had the tide against me and it was less strong in the wider channel to the east. Halfway down I heard a distant beeping noise, the sort of thing you hear from machinery on Felixstowe Docks or the sand mine at Lochaline. I checked around the boat but it was not on board, phew. Then I heard shouting. Right in the middle of the channel, almost half a mile away, was a dinghy with three chaps on board, not going anywhere. No other yachts were close to me and under the rules of the sea I had to offer assistance. So I headed over to ask what I could do. Two of them were out of the boat attempting to swim and push it along. They told me they had run out of petrol. Their English was fractured but they said they were Turks from Glasgow. They threw me a line, fairly competently, and asked to be towed to a beach on Great Cumbrae, which I did, keeping my speed to about 2.5 knots to avoid any upsets. It was difficult to have a detailed conversation with them but as far as I could see they had no spare fuel, no paddles, no lifejackets, not many clothes and no water. Anyway I dropped them off and they thanked me profusely. Then I called Belfast Coastguard to report the incident, just in case the dinghy was stolen or anything else was dodgy. If they were asylum seekers they were on a pretty strange route!
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| Great Cumbrae |
The rest of the passage was uneventful and I reached Troon in the late afternoon. The Met office forecast showed stronger winds close in, which I didn't believe, but actually it was totally accurate with a visible wind line on the water as we went from zero to 12 knots of wind. It was still quite calm enough for me to get the warps and fenders ready as I approached, call Troon Harbour for permission to pass through, and call the marina who very kindly sent someone down to take my lines.
Distance run: 37 miles.
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| Troon has a bath! |
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