A cunning navigational plan.

 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.

Full flood puts feathered friends to flight.

I had originally intended landing at the south end of Ballantrae beach, where it is more sheltered from the surf. The last time Tony and I had surfed in over the bar at the mouth of the River Stinchar but David didn't fancy it and stayed out. So I was quite surprised when David nipped in, but the rising big spring tide meant there was more water over the bar and the swell wasn't breaking. I followed David in with Andrew, leaving Jim to gather Phil in.

Once inside, we were paddling up the River Stinchar but on the map we were on dry ground! The estuary of the Stinchar is very active and a combination of flood and storm causes the mouth to alternately move north then south over time. You can see the amount of erosion caused by our recent winter storms in the top photo. The hill in the distance is Knockdolian 265m. Like Ailsa Craig, it is a volcanic plug and as it was sometimes mistaken for Ailsa Craig in poor visibility, mariners of the time called it "the False Craig". The Clyde Cruising Club Sailing Directions still warn about it.

 As the river meanders beneath the slopes of Knockdolian, it leaves isolated lagoons which...

...flood in spring tides...

...creating a very rich habitat for bird life and is the reason this area is a Nature Reserve.

Despite this protection, the birds still had to take flight as the gravel beds and lagoons flooded with the rising  spring tide. First the whaups (curlews)...

 ...then the geese and finally...

...the peewits (lapwings) took flight and filled the air above us.

Little and Large on the Clyde: Ocean terminal and Kilcreggan pier

Arriving at Greenock we turned south into the little bay behind Whiteforeland Point. This is the beach that the Royal West of Scotland Amateur Boat Club launch from. They have sailing, rowing and canoe sections. Kayaks (decked canoes) have been paddled and sailed on the Clyde since the mid to late 1800's but traditionally they have been called canoes.

The large brick structure behind is called the Navy Buildings and houses the Clyde Maritime Rescue Co-Ordination Centre or Clyde Coastguard for short. It was built on the site of Fort Matilda, a defensive gun battery, which was completed in 1819.


Under the watchful eye of the coastguard we decided to cross the shipping lanes by hopping from buoy to buoy at right angles to the lanes. The first buoy was the Whiteforeland mid channel marker.


The wreck, just to the SE of the buoy is that of the Iona I, a paddle steamer that had been nick named the "Queen of the Clyde" because of her speed. She was built in Glasgow in 1855 but sank here after colliding with another ship in 1862. She was on her way across the Atlantic to run goods to the Confederate States through the Union Naval blockade* in the American Civil War.


We looked back to the cranes of Greenock's huge Ocean Terminal which is a sheltered deep water port and is the main container port for Scotland and the north of England. It is also visited by an increasing number of cruise liners evern the huge Queen Mary 2. Not so long ago the skyline would have been a forest of cranes working the shipyards and the docks. Now most have gone, though the 250 ton Titan crane at the James Watt dock can just be seen in the background. There are still 4 Titan cranes standing on the Clyde. The others are at John Brown's shipyard, Clydebank, Barclay Curle & Co, Glasgow and the Finneston crane, Stobcross Quay, Glasgow.


On crossing the Clyde we found ourselves at the Rosneath peninsula which divides Loch Long and the Gare Loch. Kilcreggan is its main town and this is the pier backed by a line of elegant Victorian mansions. A sign at the end of the pier says no cycling... The pier is the last Victorian pier left on the Clyde. The town grew up from the 1820's onwards when the steamers allowed wealthy business people in Greenock and Glasgow to escape the industrial smog and build fine Victorian mansion houses along the coast. Frequent steamers allowed them to commute to the city for work.

*see comments.

Number 38

Crossing the Tan, which is the channel separating the Great and Little Cumbrae isles, we came across this funny looking buoy (No 38) with a top that looked like an upside down bishop's hat. There were no directions on it so we proceeded in a southerly direction...


...and were soon paddling down...


...the series of raised beaches which characterise the west coast of Little Cumbrae.


Assisted by wind and tide, we swept past the old and new lighthouses.


But it was cold. The chill wind blew right from Valhalla, in the cold wastes of Asgard.

Crossing the bows of Dauntless

As we left the shelter of Little Cumbrae, we were hit by a light, but chill, wind from the NE. It blew down off the snow covered slopes of Ben Lomond, which was some 57km distant. On the sea horizon I spotted a light grey tower, "Strange", I thought, "I don't remember a buoy there."

We then passed a marker buoy for a wreck, 1km SW of the lighthouse. It was dancing in the current and making impressive gurgling noises. Again I was surprised, it was only 90 minutes after neap high water and even the maximum the spring ebb is only 1 to 1.5 knots. The dark brown colour of the water gave it away. This was all the flood water from the recent rains, making its way to the open sea.

I stopped paddling and the drift speed was just over 2 knots. We were going to have an interesting crossing. We set off on a very high ferry angle and half way across it looked like we would be swept south of our destination, Garroch Head on Bute.


The mystery of the grey tower soon revealed itself. It turned out to be HMS Dauntless. At first she was heading straight for us (we were in the middle of the Firth of Clyde Channel) and we had to calculate whether to maintain our high ferry angle and cross the channel more slowly or head straight across the channel more quickly and risk being swept down tide of Garroch Head. Not wishing to get in the way of Dauntless, we headed straight across the channel, until we saw her starboard side. In a test of her Samson radar (in the dome on top of her tower) it apparently managed to simultaneously track all aircraft flying into and out of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Paris CDG, Schiphol and Berlin. Despite this processing power, we thought five kayaks might just be under her radar, so we were rather pleased to clear her bows.


HMS Dauntless, D33, is a type 45 destroyer. She was built on the Clyde at Scotstoun where she has been recently fitting out. This was her maiden voyage to the Naval dockyard at Portsmouth.


After crossing in front of Dauntless's bows we then had to paddle very hard indeed to keep out of the Garroch Head tide race. On taking a breather we saw from the left: Cameron (a mooring vessel), Svitzer Mercia (a tug) and Dauntless all leaving the Clyde and Bellatrix (bulk carrier) waiting to enter the channel. There were also a couple of small fishing boats.


We were pleased to have got safely across the channel and enjoyed our second breakfast on the beach at Port Leithne on Garroch Head.

Queuing up the Clyde!

As we left the dark rocks of Portencross...


...we could see the vast bulk of the Bellatrix, a 225m bulk carrier, coming up the Clyde behind us.


It looked like she was heading up the Hunterston Channel between Ayrshire and the Little Cumbrae. We were headed across this channel to the distant isle of Bute beyond.


Rather than cutting straight across, we went well up the channel towards the channel marker buoys. Big ships keep between them, so it is quite safe to sit there and wait until they pass.


It turned out that Bellatrix wanted to go up the main Firth of Clyde channel, on the far side of Little Cumbrae. We realized this when we saw the Navigo emerging from behind Little Cumbrae. The Navigo is a 142m Swedish tanker and she was the first of many ships to make her way down the Clyde that morning. Bellatrix was in for a long wait!


We were not sure if Bellatrix would so patiently wait for us, so we nipped across the channel as quickly as we could!

Losts in the mists of the Mull of Kintyre

Tony and I were not the only ones rounding the Mull of Kintyre. Quite independently, Rab, Julia and Donald from the Drumchapel and Clydebank Kayak Club hit on exactly the same itinerary and timing as us!


Although the coast of the Mull of Kintyre is almost beach less, there are large areas of sand below low water. They gave the water a lovely luminous green hue.


There are actually two caves at...


....Uamh Ropa.


The heavy rain of the night before was cascading down from the heights above the mist and plunging into the sea.


Tony attempts to plot our position in the thick mist. Alternatively, keep the Mull close to on the port bow!

26/07/2008

U2 can Bono Rock

U2 can Bono Rock in the Sound of Luing, if you have a sea kayak!


But you had better look for it 750m to the NE of where the chart says it is!

A tale of two lighthouses.

"I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you.
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through."
-Video killed the radio star. The Buggles.

Paddling in the pitch black last night I found my self humming the above song. In the darkness we were particularly grateful for the flashing light buoys that mark the Hunterston shipping channel. This was despite the reassuring glow and precise information about our location and speed from my GPS. This got me thinking about lighthouses such as the one above which is situated on a raised beach on the west coast of Little Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde.

This magnificent building was constructed in 1793 to a design by Thomas Smith. The work was supervised by a Glasgow university student, Robert Stevenson, who was later to marry Smith's daughter.


The 1997 light is the square tower to the right of the 1793 model.

Sadly the light is no longer active. It was replaced by a simple concrete tower in 1997. The current light is a white flashing light with a period of 6 seconds. Despite its youth, this tower looked in worse condition than its venerable predecessor. Is this a story similar to the "Twa brigs o' Ayr"? Does anyone remember when you could get an electric kettle fixed? Nowadays many things things are not built to last. It seems this would include lighthouses. Has it been purposely built with a short lifespan because the Northern Lighthouse Board know something we do not?

Has GPS killed the lights?