Ti Gitu left Gigha and
rounded the Mull of Kintyre with the wind on the nose which followed us round
and it poured with rain all day. Not pleasant!! We stayed four nights in Campbeltown letting the runaway hurricane pass, which pleased us no end.
Campbeltown has
one long pontoon and does sometimes become very crowded which means rafting, but
not on this visit. A pleasant look around the town and big shop at the local Tesco and then off to loch Ryan
which has Stranraer at its head.
We had a good sail and went
to anchor in the lock. We have anchored here before but on this occasion with a
rising wind we tried 5 times but the anchor just would not hold.
At low tide we could see that the whole of the bottom is very stony which explained the anchoring problems.
Not wanting a
sleepless night we decided to make for the marina in Stranraer.
This facility is fairly new
with a purpose built breakwater which we found does not work very well and at
high tide with a NW wind it was very uncomfortable on the pontoons. Eventually
I took the old climbing rope given to me by a friend and put out warps and
springs of this.
This climbing rope is only
12mm thick and is designed to be stretchy so I left the proper mooring ropes in
place but slightly loose and doubled them with the climbing rope, which I
tightened as much as possible.
This stopped nearly all the
snatching as we surged around and made things tolerable – just!!
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