GPS anomalies and tricky unmarked routes
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| Aleria and Vagrant sailing toward Loch Tarbert. Photo by Vicki aboard Nokomis |
All night and for days after, we imagined there were creepy
little things crawling up our necks, down our legs and burrowing into our skin. And in fact, Alex did have two ticks that
burrowed. A great remedy is to smeer
them with Vaseline and wait about 15 minutes. They suffocate and release their
jaws. Then you can pick them out with tweezers and they just let go without
leaving any parts behind that can cause infection. Of course ticks can cause
all kinds of infections anyway, including Lyme Disease. Fortunately, Alex and I were both vaccinated
when the Lyme disease vaccine was available for a short time in the States.
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| So good to be sailing again! |
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| Paps of Jura in the distance |
We had a lovely breakfast, the rain stopped, and we followed
the fleet out of Pig Bay. There was
a nice breeze building. We hoisted sails alongside Vagrant and Nokomis.
Within seconds, Aleria started to
pull away. Within minutes we were gone. Vicky took some awesome pictures as Aleria galloped across the waters. We
had never experienced quite how fast she is with her waterline and sail plan in these kinds of conditions. It was blowing a nice 15 knots.
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| The first anchorage in Loch Tarbert |
Some people sailed along the coast of Jura, others were
heading across for a stop at Oronsay for lunch. We decided to head offshore
toward Oronsay to keep the wind, then tacked once to avoid the Race overflow as
we could see the standing waves out there.
The second time we tacked we came right into the entrance of Loch
Tarbert. We were the second boat there,
just behind
Little Else who had
motored under the cliffs. As it turned out, we think everyone motored except us. The Paps of
Jura had shielded the wind along the coast as we suspected it would, while we
had 20 knots most of the way.
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| GPS anomaly on the left |
As we picked our way using the sailing directions, depth
sounder and chart to guide us, our GPS started stiching a zig zag on the
chartplotter. Right at the worst time we had found a spot with an anomaly. The same thing had happened in Maine once in
thick fog. At least now we know this can happen and don’t panic.
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| Somewhere through there is the Loch |
There are three sections to Loch Tarbert. The outer loch is
easy to navigate and has a lovely anchorage in front of a fishing lodge with
spectacular views of the Paps. The
middle loch has enough water but a very narrow rocky passage to get into it.
And it has an inner loch that only the most experienced shallow draft vessels
should attempt. We originally wanted to go into the middle loch but with the
gps anomaly, we decided to join
Pleasure
in the small anchorage between the outer and middle lochs.
Wings and
Shimshall joined
us there. It was quite snug but once again the fleet got separated as half the
boats continued on to find more swinging room in the middle loch. Two parties took place that evening. One
aboard
Pleasure, the other aboard
Vagrant, and we know which was more
raucous. We could hear them all the way across the radio!
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Onyx relaxing, which she does very well
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