Tony and I rose before dawn on the shores of \West Loch Tarbert on Jura.
We had spent a comfortable night in the middle room of Cruib Lodge a recently restored bothy.
It was locely and dry and the whitewashed plastered walls gave it a sense of luxury lacking in many bothies. After breakfast we tidied everything and left the place spick and span for the next visitor.
Then it was time to load the boats and...
...we were on the water by 0830am. There was only one way to go....
...and that was back upstream to the
Cumnann Beag narrows that connect the inner loch to the outer loch. The ebb started at 0600 and we arrived at 0900 when the ebb was in full flow on one of the biggest spring tides of the year. The previous evening we had drifted through at 5 knots but it was now running at 8 knots!
On the SE of the channel the tide was running at 8 knots so we snuck up the north side of the channel managing just 0.5 knots over the ground before...
...ferrying across and...
...breaking out into a small eddy on the other side where we worked our way up before...
...breaking in to the main flow again and...
...ferrying back to the other side once more. Repeat until exhausted.
A little more hard work eddy hopping got us into
another tidal channel to the south of Eilan Dubh. Here the tide carried us more gently...
...back into outer West Loch Tarbert on the opposite side from Cruib Lodge. What a great start to a day!
