A blessed relief to leave the Isle of the Saints.

After the exertion and sweating of manhandling loaded boats to the low tide mark in the heat of the day, it was a blessed relief to be on the cool water again as we rounded the SW corner of Eileach an Naoimh.

Our destination was Loch Buie in Mull, some 16km away across the Firth of Lorn. The first time I did this crossing was in the dark in the middle of February, so it made a very pleasant change to repeat it at the height of a midsummer day!

 As we paddled under the small lighthouse...

 ...the NW coast of Eileach an Naoimh slowly revealed itself followed by...

 ...Garbh Eileach and soon...

...the Isles of the Sea were little more than memories in our wakes.

The sainted rocks were as slippery as an eel.

It was a big spring tide and as it was now low water on Eileach an Naoimh (Isle of the Saints) our heavily laden boats were left high and dry. The very rocks where once the saints had trod were now a treacherous, slippery trap for itinerant sea kayakers. Not having the patience of  saints, we did not wish to wait until the tide came back in and so we carried the boats to the water. It was the hottest day in the year and we were completely exhausted by the time we had the boats afloat.

My "good" left knee suffered a very painful dislocation here and it was at this point that I knew that I would inevitably need an operation on it as well. (It was finally operated on, two and a half years later, in November 2013. I am still recovering and off the water.)

Despite my sore knee, I took pity on this little eel. It was lying in a partly desiccated state, half out of a little crack in the rocks in which it had tried to escape from the sun. Unfortunately it was too big to get fully  in. I put it into the sea and it seemed to recover a little...

Possibly the base for a standing cross.

We made our way down from the summit ridge of Eileach an Naoimh to the site of what is reputed to be the site of  the grave of Eithne who was the mother of St Columba.

St Columba had followed St Brendan from Ireland, bringing Christianity to the west coast of Scotland. He founded a monastery and church on Iona. However, it thought that he and the monks came to Eileach an Naoimh on religious retreats. They knew the island as Hinba.

West coast Paddlers Flat Water Symposium

I would like to draw attention to the forthcoming West Coast Paddlers Flat Water Symposium which will be held at Castle Semple Loch  and the various locations on the Firth of Clyde on 29th and 30th March 2014.

The organisers are particularly keen to attract those paddlers of all grades who are not affiliated to any club. All the Saturday sessions will be held on inland Castle Semple Loch where one of the biggest demo kayak fleets ever assembled in Scotland will be available to test. Unlike exposed coastal venues, coaching sessions of all levels will run and the demo fleet will be available to all, despite the weather.

The Sunday sessions will suit all grades of paddler. Weather dependent, there will be trips that involve open water crossings of 15 km in the Outer Firth of Clyde to more sheltered locations in the inner Firth of Clyde.The more exposed of these trips may be anything but flat!

Saturday sessions include:

Forward paddling for sea kayakers

Turning strokes for sea kayakers

Balance games leading to self rescues

Greenland paddle stuff

Buying a Sea kayak, help with demoing

Kayak Sailing,

In these sessions (Sat AM and PM)  I will be showing how to both rig and paddle sail your sea kayak. For those who don't have their own kayak sailing rig there will be loan kayaks to try. I also hope that a fleet of the new P&H Aries kayaks with forward skegs and the new P&H sailing rigs by Flat Earth sails will be there. I will be bringing my own P&H Aries/Flat Earth sail, which is one of the best sea kayaks for sailing.

Stroke blending, ie rock hopping skills

Canoe skills for sea kayakers

Guided trip around Castle Semple

Sunday destinations may include:

An open crossing and circumnavigation of Ailsa Craig.

A circumnavigation of Little Cumbrae.

A visit to Great Cumbrae.

I am looking forward to it already!

The summit ridge of Eileach an Naoimh.

 The rough stone platform where we had stopped for lunch on Eileach an Naoimh was...

 ...encrusted by beautiful alpine plants and lichens.

 The meadow above was composed of lush grass and a perfusion of wild flowers.

 We started to climb high above the meadow to...

 ...the spine of the island from which we had a marvellous view NE up the chain of the Garvellachs to the Firth of Lorn with the Slate Islands beyond. Ben Cruachan on the mainland can just be seen mid horizon.

 In the heat it was a real relief to reach the summit trig point (77m) and look...

 ...SW to Jura, Islay and Colonsay. The Paps of Jura can be seen just to the left of the trig point.

We walked down the ridge until we came to a point where we could see the lighthouse with Islay on the horizon.

By the time we climbed back to the summit of Eilach na Naoimh it had started to cloud over from the NW. The air became less hazy and we had a great view of Ben More and the entrance to beautiful Loch Buie on Mull. Loch Buie would be our next destination.

A harp and beehives on the Isle of the Saints.

We now slipped through the narrow channel between the SW end of Garbh Eileach and A' Chuli leaving the wild NW coast of the Garvellachs in our wakes.

A'Chuli is smaller and lower than its neighbouring isles. There are no beaches and the seals and cormorants just about have it to themselves.

SW of A'Chuli we came to the next island, Eileach an Naoimh (Isle of the Saints). This fine rock arch is known as An Carclach (The Harp)

By now we were needing a break and we stopped in the little inlet...

... which once served...

...the monastery that was founded here by St Brendan in AD542. The beehive cells on the island may be the oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Britain. As we ate our lunch we enjoyed a fantastic view over the Firth of Lorn to Scarba and Jura.

The smell of the sea hung in the air of Garbh Eileach.

We paddled across the channel which separates Dun Chonnuill  from Garbh Eilleach which is the biggest and roughest of the Garvellachs group of islands. Its name means Rough Island and though its NE tip is pleasantly wooded it...

 ...generally lives up to its name, as we discovered when we started to paddle down the steep cliffs which...

 ... line its exposed NW shore. The island is nearly...

  ...split in two at one point, at a gap called Bealach an Tarabairt, though I can't imagine anyone wanting to portage the rough ground. (A place name of "Tarbert" or similar usually means a portage.)

 Towards the SW end of Garbh Eileach the lazy swell was surging up the dark rocks...

...and exploding in cascades of spray, which drifted in the still air and cooled us. The smell of the sea hung in the air and our nostrils.

Crossing to the Garvellachs, the Isles of the Sea.

A big spring tide was ebbing down the Firth of Lorn. Soon we were making good speed at 9-10km/hr towards our halfway point the lonely rocks...

... of Dubh-feith. From the rocks we had a wonderful view...

.... to the south over the Slate Islands of Lunga and Eilean Dubh Mohr to the bulk of Scarba beyond.

However, our main attention  was drawn to the Garvellachs, which we were rapidly approaching. Despite the SW direction of the ebb tide, there is a NE going eddy, which curls round the NE end of Dun Chonuill (the first of the Garvellachs). It then joins the main SW flow, which goes down the SE of the islands. In a wind this eddyline can be an excitingly rough area. Even in no wind there was enough disturbance on the eddyline to get our faces wet. Our progress slowed to 2 km/hr until we entered the calm beyond. We had arrived at the Garvellachs, the Isles of the Sea..

From the Slate Islands to the Isles of the Sea.

It was midsummer several years ago, when Jennifer, Phil and I met below the whitewashed cottages that fringe at the little harbour at Ellenabeich on the Isle of Seil.

The harbour  was built to service the slate industry, which once flourished in these islands. They were known as the Slate Islands or the "Islands that roofed the World".

We were sweating in the hot sun by the time we launched below the cliffs of Dun Mor that back the harbour. So it was with great feelings of lightness and anticipation...

...that we glided over the cool sea to the skerries of Easdale.

Beyond the swell breaking on the reefs of the Slate Islands lay our destination, the Garvellachs...the Isles of the Sea.

I need to get out sea kayaking again.

Several people have recently emailed asking if I have given up sea kayaking. I am pleased to report that my absence from the maritime environment is temporary albeit somewhat prolonged. I faced the double whammy of a shoulder operation followed by a knee operation in the second half of 2013.

No sooner had I partially recovered from my shoulder operation in the summer, than  I upgraded my sling for a crutch in November. This little knee operation has also kept me off the water. In case the outside does not look serious enough to cause cabin fever, I attach the X ray...

The two large screws are pretty obvious. The shattered bone round the screwheads might be noticed by some as might the 6mm tunnel through the patella (kneecap). The other tunnel drilled through the femur (big bone at the top) is not so easily seen. The six biocomposite screws don't show on X ray, neither do the harvested tendons from a sacrificed muscle or the diverted tendon from the medial hamstring show.

Basically the ligaments that hold the medial side of my knee and knee cap have been reconstructed by a miracle of modern surgery. My left knee had been heading the same way as my right, which ended in a horrific dislocation while seakayaking to the remote island of Gunna in 2009. I now hope to have two stable knees, which will allow a return to sea kayaking and possibly other activities.

Anyway, I really need to get out sea kayaking again....

Dell Precision M6500 workstation overheating and running slow.

This is a sea kayaking blog but blog authors and visitors need to use some sort of  computer to access the Internet.  Please excuse a technology post!

For the last 38 months I have been using a Dell Precision M6500 workstation notebook. It works like greased lightening when editing and previewing large RAW files from my Canon 5D mk3 camera in Adobe Lightroom 5. I bought it because of great experience of three  Dell Precision M6400 computers I used at work, The M6500 was three years old in November 2013 and I wondered about extending its warranty. A quote from Dell offered 3 year on site pro support for £311. I thought about it too long and by the time I had made my mind up it was too late, as the offer period expired when the computer passed 3 years old. The reason I had not made my mind up is that in general  I do not buy extended warranties but this one did seem quite reasonable. Anyway, the computer had been trouble free for three years so...I suppose I thought I didn't need the warranty.

Exactly one week after the original 3 year warranty expired, the computer began to develop increasing problems, which rapidly worsened until it was almost unusable five weeks later. It began to slow down to a crawl, especially trying to do anything with big RAW files in Lightroom. The Windows experience Aero graphics score fell from 6.8 when the computer was new down to 2.8. The video drivers on the Dell site for the NVIDEA Quadro FX 2800M graphics card were rather old so I downloaded the latest (Nov 2013) drivers off the NVIDEA site.  I also updated to the latest Dell bios. Neither made any difference. The fans began to run all the time. The computer frequently and spontaneously rebooted. It suffered several blue screen of death episodes. On other occasions the screen would freeze and the mouse pointer locked up. I thought I might have a virus (as the symptoms seemed to have developed quite quickly). Scans with Sophos and Malware bytes revealed nothing and the problem persisted  even when the computer disconnected from the Internet. Suspecting overheating I installed ThrottleStop found the CPU and GPU were running at 95C. I decided to explore the computer's cooling system and used the online Dell service manual and dismantled the computer, which took about half a day.

This was how I found the CPU heatsink. The fine copper grille was completely blocked with dust. I suspect it built up slowly over the three years but as it built up, it gathered more dust increasingly quickly, which explained the relatively rapid and recent onset of symptoms.

This is how it should look. 

The CPU heat sink and grill fits in behind two other heatsinks and grilles which cool the graphics card and share the left hand fan. The graphics card also has another built in heatsink and fan on the right side. Its grille was similarly blocked but was even more difficult to get at and clean than the CPU heatsink and grille.

Once back together, the computer is running cool again at 50 to 55C, with hardly any noise from the fans. It is also working like greased lightning and the graphics score is back to 6.8.

It is a real pity that the whole computer (literally right down to the motherboard) needs to be dismantled to get at these heat sinks. It is not a great design. It is almost inevitable that other Precision M6500s will become affected. It took me about 7 hours plus a trip to Maplin for some Antec Formula 7 heat sink thermal compound paste to get it running again. It is not what I expected from a top end laptop. Perhaps they are built with a three year life expectancy for business but I am a private buyer and expected it to last longer.

Still I have avoided buying an expensive replacement so now I can afford to buy something else!