Last weekend Mike...
Phil, Andrew,...
...Colin and I met at
Portencross on the Ayrshire coast. Regular readers of this blog will have realized that most of my recent trips have been local. I am sorry for the lack of variety but my knee problems mean I don't like a long car journey, especially after a day in the kayak. However ,I hope to show that you can enjoy great paddling even though you have visited an area many times.
The forecast looked great and I was delighted to see that the wind was due to veer from WSW to NW. We kayak sailors could take advantage of this, by launching to the south of the Cumbraes and circumnavigate clockwise with the hope of sailing all the way.
HW at
Millport was at 0730 so normally paddlers would have started further north at Largs and paddled south to take advantage of the ebb tide down the inside of the Cumbraes, followed by the flood tide up their outside.
Colin and Andrew were supposed to be sitting their 3* assessment but Bruce their coach had suffered a bereavement. So we decided to give them a good workout...
keeping up with the sails. Mike (a Quest paddler since 2002) had borrowed the Cetus MV. That's always a (financially) dangerous thing to do...
Soon we were approaching
Gull Point at...
...the south end of Little Cumbrae. In the distance, the hills of Bute rose above our first intended stop at
Glencallum Bay.
It was a close thing but the kayak sailors managed to close reach...
...round Gull Point on a single tack from Portencross. It looked like my navigational plan would work.
