From Scalpsie Bay we paddled down the east coast of Bute with the mountains of Arran on...
...our right pulling our eyes away from...
...the coast of Bute which was mostly rocky with a raised beach above. Beyond the beach there was now dry line
of sea cliffs with occasional caves.
As we crossed Dunagoil Bay we came out of the lee of Ardscalpsie Point and the wind began to increase again.
We fairly shot down the coast past St Blane's Hill with some glorious paddle sailing which...
Photo Ian Johnston.
...was pretty hard work as we tried to catch every wave! My GPS showed we were regularly hitting 14km/hr as we caught the waves. This photo by Ian shows me in the new P&H Scorpio MV mark 2 with sail and skudder. I have this out on a long term test and I hope it will be in a forthcoming issue of Ocean Paddler magazine. I really like it. The skudder (a combined skeg rudder) is incredibly well engineered and very effective. I did notice that when I was using it downwind in rudder mode that I was falling behind Ian and Mike who had similar sails and were paddling P&H Cetus MVs. So I raised it into skeg mode then I found I had no trouble keeping up even though they were in GRP kayaks and the Scorpio is made from roto moulded polyethylene.
Rounding
Dunagoil Hill and Garroch Head was great fun as the flood tide was now against the wind.
Once in the lee of Garroch Head the wind dropped again and we leisurely paddled round to...
...
Glencallum Bay where we unpacked our kayaks for first luncheon.
