Absent, gone, about to go, reprieved, arrived and Google Photos app is worse than a Google car crash.

Absence: Well it has been a little while since I posted on my blog  Seakayakphoto.com and I have been off the water for over four months. I have not been well for some time but am fortunately now recovering. I consider myself rather fortunate as many have health problems from which there is no recovery. I do have a backlog of things I have meant to post so will shortly start with those.

During my absence some things have gone and some have been reprieved or arrived.

Gone:  Mark Rainsley's renowned SouthwestSeakayaking blog has been retired though he is still very active on Facebook. Here is an archive link to his former blog. I am sorry to see it go because Facebook is not indexed and it is difficult to find older posts. Thanks for many informative and entertaining posts Mark.

Gone: Sadly Lulu, a member of the British Isles only resident orca pod, was washed up dead on a Tiree beach.  Her fluke had become entangled in fishing gear and she drowned. I have seen this pod twice, once to the north of the Cairns of coll and once off  Rubha an Dunain on Skye. They have not reproduced for many years and the loss of an adult female does not bode well for the pod's survival.

About to Go: Picasa Web Albums. This was the free photo hosting service by Google. This hosted photos in Blogger blogs like this one. If you uploaded photos directly from Blogger they would be posted in an album that would grow to 500 photos then a new album would start. You could also upload photos directly to Picasa Web Albums and create more meaningful albums of any size. Links from photos in these albums could be posted directly into a Blogger post as in the photos on this page. The demise of Picasa Web Albums has been predicted since the launch of Google + Photos some years ago. Google are so determined to get rid of Picasa Web Albums that they have excluded it from Google searches.

Gone: The Troon Larne high speed ferry which ran during the summer season has been axed. I have used this ferry in the days that it went into belfast rather than Larne so I will miss it.

The HSC Express has been sold to a Swedish company for operation between the island of Gotland and the Swedish mainland.

However, it will make the 22km crossing between Ailsa Craig and Arran somewhat less exciting as the ferry blasted across this route four times per day at 42 knots!

Reprieved: The Ardrossan Campbeltown ferry operated as a pilot summer service from 2013 to 2015 after which it was rumoured that it would be axed.

It was served by the MV Isle of Arran which will thankfully continue the Thursday to Sunday service. Even better news is that the service will now be permanent (as these things can be).

Arrived: Late in 2015 Google Photos replaced both Picasa Web Albums and Google + Photos. It would be marvellous if the third incarnation of a Google photo storage app was a progressive improvement but it is not. For any serious photographer it takes away any control of compression and it lacks all of the indexing and tagging that Picassa Web Albums allowed. It is also so slow that it is like using an old dial up modem .Google Photos is a truly horrid app, it is worse than a Google Car crash.

Plus: One good thing is that all your personally created albums in Picasa Web Albums have already been ported over to Google Photos.

Minus: The bad news is that they have been compressed on the way over. A typical photo in my blog like the one below is 1024x683 pixels.

This one (which is stored in Picasa Web Albums) was reduced in size and saved from the original camera RAW file in Lightroom as a jpg file with 70% compression. The compressed file was 207KB in size. By the time it was transferred to Google Photos it was further reduced to 90KB. That degree of reduction might be fine if you upload an uncompressed original but when a file is compressed twice the results are not good. I am not going to post the Google Photos version as I really do not like it and it spoils my memory of this beautiful sunset.

Minus: I suspect the photos have not only been compressed but have also been "improved" ("auto enhanced" in Google speak) by altering the exposure, contrast, saturation etc. Maybe I am fussy but the compressed, improved photos  have that garish "turn up the picture" look that someone who has just discovered the sliders in Photoshop might produce.

Minus: The Blogger photo albums of 500 photos which are stored in Picasa Web Albums have not been ported over to Google photos.

Minus: The coding is bloated. This is the link for a photo in Google Photos:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9C6nAAdcyBs5YTmxSdW-mMurV8fOGALDlEcWsizn5ac8J9SPeahr9_GOEyQuO_rNq4lcyvb1Zbzp8I8-BqiO0qN_NVGKWdD577o54grkimpyo5TWXO64R8aoOwry2mjUy0xc/w1024-h683-no/

No wonder Google Photos is so slow. In comparison this is a link for the same photo in Picasa Web Albums:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1XXVgV-XJEY/VtiItTRLxtI/AAAAAAAAw5k/RVhRUSIrsog/s1024-Ic42/20160228-IMG_0989DEW100.jpg

Not only is the "old and redundant" code more compact (!!!) it also contains the original filename and note the "s1024" which allows you to set the maximum size of the downloaded photo (in this case 1024 pixels) which is very useful if you want to paste a photo into a post in a forum that restricts the size of photos.

When Google programmers resort to bloatware like this it is little wonder the Google car crashed. Indeed if the roads were filled with Google cars there would almost certainly be the mother of all traffic jams! Having said that, if Google Cars are as fast as Google Photos then the collisions will not be so much a crash, they will be more like the kiss of a down feather landing gently on the floor.

Lastly if you think it is unfair to criticise a "free" app, it is of course not free at all. Google sifts through all your stuff and targets you with advertising which you pay for in the things you buy. Despite it being several years since my knee operations and my retirement my browsing experience is still filled with adverts for knee potions and retirement investments. Even worse the day after I emailed my mother's brother to say that she had not long to live, I was targeted with adverts for funeral plans and directors. Thank you Google. No doubt I will now be bombarded with adverts for pick me ups and health tonics.

Return to Largs via the Midshipmen's Memorial, Great Cumbrae.

 The wind picked up again as we made our way up...

 ....the west coast of the Great Cumbrae.

At Tomont End at the north end of great Cumbrae we passed under the Midshipmen's Memorial. It's inscription reads:

"IN MEMORY OF MR. CHARLES D. CAYLEY AGED 17 YEARS AND MR. WILLIAM N. JEWELL AGED 19 YEARS MIDSHIPMEN OF H.M.S. SHEARWATER

TWO PROMISING YOUNG OFFICERS DROWNED BY THE UPSETTING OF THEIR BOAT NEAR THIS PLACE 17TH MAY 1844

THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED IN TOKEN OF THEIR WORTH BY CAPTAIN ROBINSON AND OFFICERS OF THE ABOVE VESSEL"

Leaving Great Cumbrae we enjoyed a favourable wind as we crossed the channel to the AQyrshire mainland. In the distance, at Hunterston, we could see the coal terminal, the nuclear power station and the giant windmills. As is often the case when there is a wind, the windmills here and on the hills above Largs were not turning.

We landed at Largs marina almost exactly 24 hours after we had left. As always it seemed like we had been away several days. An overnight expedition to Inchmarnock is always a treat, especially when you have a tail wind all the way back!

Like a bat out of hell on the Clyde.

 We left Glencallum Bay on Bute with a view of four lighthouses. The nearest was Rubh' an Eun but we could also see three lighthouses on Little Cumbrae on the other side of the channel. The one on the summit is the oldest. Lower down, the one which is immediately to the right of the sail, is the eighteenth century Stevenson light and the one further to the right is the current 20th century light.

 Rubh' an Eun is effectively the Garroch Head lighthouse which guards the entrance to...

... the inner Firth of Clyde which stretched away northwards to the Arrochar Alps on the horizon.

On the crossing we kept clear of the prawn trawler Eilidh Ann GK2 was chugging down the channel while towing her trawl.

 Soon Garroch Head on Bute lay far behind us as we approached...

 ...the west coast of the Great Cumbrae. We were pleased to get across the main channel  before this...

 ...submarine and her three escort vessels came down the Clyde from the nuclear submarine base at Faslane. I think she is a Trafalgar class attack submarine.

Their escort duties over, the two RHIB's raced back to Faslane with Meatloaf's "Bat Out of Hell" blaring from their Tannoy system.

After all the excitement, it was a relief to land on Fintray Bay on the Great Cumbrae for a leisurely second luncheon.

Some glorious paddle sailing down Dunagoil way.

 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.

Seals and a fear of gliders in Scalpsie Bay.

We set off down the west coast of Inchmarnock with Holy Island on the horizon and a decent following wind.

At the south end of Inchmarnock we decided to cut across the Sound of Inchmarnock towards...

 ...Ardscalpsie Point on the island of Bute and then...

 ...follow the coast round into...

 Scalpsie Bay. This was Ian's first time out with his new Flat Earth sail and it was good to try several points of sailing.

 In the lee of the land the wind dropped a bit but Ian was already fully at home with his new rig.

 As we paddled deeper into the shelter of Scalpsie Bay the...

 ...wind steadily dropped away and our eyes turned to the shore where...

 ...the resident seal colony was pretty well camouflaged.

At the head of Scalpsie Bay there is a large expanse of reddish sand. A series of wooden posts in the sand were part of WW2 defences against landing gliders. Beyond the bay lie the fertile fields of Scalpsie farm.

Our spirits rose with the sun and the wind.

After a comfortable night's camp we rose before dawn to find clouds of midges swarming round the tent vents. Once down on the beach a gentle NW wind was just enough to keep the worst of the midges at bay.

 We quickly brewed some warming tea and...

 ...porridge but despite it being the height of the Scottish "summer" it was bitterly cold.

 Fortunately as the sun rose so did the temperature and our spirits.

The wind also began to rise as we carried our kaks through the narrow gap in the reef to the sea. As our eyes turned up the Sound of Bute to the NW....

...it looked like the forecast F4 wind might shortly arrive and it would be going our way. It was time for some paddle sailing!

Fire at sunset by the Sound of Bute.

Once we had got the kayaks up above where we expected high water to be we unloaded our bags just as...

...the sun was setting.

A few midges came out as we were putting the tents up but fortunately the breeze increased just enough to stop them flying.

There was no sign of the fire Mike and I had made back in June and we set a new fire in the same place.  It was nice having the heat of the fire while preparing our evening meal.

It was not just the fire that was glowing. Long after sunset the sky was too!

We decided that our new Helinox chairs were a fabulous addition to any camp fire!

Once the fire was well lit and...

...there were plenty embers we put the tatties in to bake.

We enjoyed our perfect baked potatoes in the twilight. The only sign of human activity was the Holy Island outer light and lights from a couple of fishing boats plying the Sound of Bute. All this, companionable conversation and no midges, we were certainly in heaven!