It must be sunny somewhere? …from a Scottish perspective

17th June 2022

this is our journey so far

When we heard the news this morning, we could hardly believe that elsewhere in the UK, not only there, but in most of Europe, the US and many other parts of the world, people were experiencing record temperatures for June.

The northern parts of the British Isles in contrast have had the worst weather for at least a decade. The weather fronts keep marching in from the North Atlantic, Greenland and Iceland one after the other bringing strong winds and rain over Northern parts of Europe. We are still wearing our thermals.

We have arrived in Scotland!

On the Scottish Meet WhatsApp group (which we are still part of) today, there was a very appropriate invitation for a get-together:

‘…the forecast says it will be dry this evening, although still windy. So the party is ON! […] Wear wellies as the grass is long and still wet. Apply repellent.’ We can just picture that!

As far as Easy Rider is concerned, the electrician did come when he said he would (just 3 hours later than expected), but he did do a brilliant job in the end. Full of gratitude we gave him our Corsica and North Sardinia pilot book (our only copy on board) as a big thank you. It was clear that we would finally be able to ‘escape’ from Dun Laoghaire with the second tide. He was so touched by our gesture and very impressed that we were the actual authors of the book that he asked for an autograph. So all is well that ends well.

We left at 22:00 having calculated the tide so that when we arrived in Loch Ryan on the Mull of Galloway (120M), we would have escaped the worst of an adverse tide.

Most of the passage was very uneventful with very little wind. When the moon rose, it was almost full, huge and red with a reddish glow all around it. With the moon and also because  we are almost at mid-summer, it didn’t get very dark at all.

We were expecting strong wind from the south. It had been predicted and broadcast through the VHF radio. It was around 17:00 when the southerly wind finally increased. It became F6 (7) in a very short while. When Easy Rider became hard to handle, we reefed the sails. Around the same time the tide turned. The sea against the tide became very uncomfortable, but luckily we were almost reaching our destination. We finally arrived  and anchored near Stranraer (Loch Ryan) in a corner of the ‘loch’ protected from the south at around 22:00, 24h after we departed from Dublin.

just anchored in 'The Wig', Loch Ryan

Today the clouds were touching the ground, it drizzled all morning and the wind changed direction to the north-west. It became so choppy where we were anchored that we had to find a new place which would be protected from the north-west called ‘The Wig’. It is lovely here and the sun showed up very briefly as we anchored. 

We will have to stay another two days before the strong north westerly winds abate and we can leave…

(We have a number of good books to read).

settling in for a calm night at anchor