Saturday, March 31, 2012

Returning to sea after a refit.

By the time we got to the Great Cumbrae, the two newcomers to our little group, Andrew and Colin, were pretty tired, trying to keep up with the kayak sailors, it was time for a break. They are shortly to sit their BCU 3* with Bruce so we thought it would be good to give them some experience of open crossings. They had now completed 2 crossings of 7.5 and 7.2 km so they were feeling rather pleased.

We made landfall on the...

 ...delightful red sands of Fintry Bay...

...where we took second luncheon and whiled away a pleasant part of the day...

 ...watching the geese migrating to their summer breeding grounds near the Arctic Circle and watched...

the ships pass in the channel we had just crossed. This is HMS Atherstone (M38), a Royal Navy mine hunter. She was launched in 1986 and has just returned to sea after a major refit. It was now time for us to return to sea after our luncheon refit. We launched ourselves with a nip of 10 year old Jura.