Basalt ledges and wheeling birds at Gull Point.

 Leaving Castle Island, we paddled south over a shimmering sea towards...

 ...Gull Point, which is the most southerly Point of Little Cumbrae Island.

 It is always a grand sight to see Goatfell (874m), the highest mountain on Arran, appear as the basalt terraces and cliffs of...

... Little Cumbrae fall away to the dark basalt ledges of the point.

Gull Point is well named and the sky above was...

 ..filled with hundreds of wheeling gulls.

 The NW wind dropped to nothing in the lee of the point so...

...I dropped my sail and prepared for the long paddle into the wind on the journey up the far side of the island.

Resolving charity status and the sun on Castle Island, Little Cumbrae.

 We landed on Castle Island near Little Cumbrae just as...

 ...Rab and...

 ...the other guys from the Clydebank and Drumchapel Kayak Club were leaving. However, we had a good chat catching up on each others expeditions.

 Up at the castle this sign still remained but the similar one down at the end of the jetty has now gone. Needless to say, we made no donation to a charity which has not bothered to submit its 2011 accounts to the  Scottish Charity Register.

 Away to the south, Ailsa Craig and Holy Island could just be seen. Ailsa Craig is 53km away.

 Here the GoPro HD3 Black captures me taking a...

 ...photo with the Canon 5D mk3.

I guess it is fair to say that the 5D mk3 has resolved the sun better but the GoPro lens is much wider than Canon's 24mm.

Sea Fever

I have not posted for a while. This has been partly due to the poor weather but mainly due to a painful dislocation of my knee, trying to lift my kayak some time before Christmas. It has been hard not going down to the sea for such a long time. Last Saturday the forecast was for F3 gusting F4 NW winds so we convened at Seafield on the south Ayrshire coast with the intention of paddling down to Culzean Bay and back. When we arrived, there were white horses to the horizon and waves were breaking high into the air at the base of the Heads of Ayr. My handheld anemometer showed the wind was F5-F6. When Tony left his house, just up the road, the temperature was minus 6C. We didn't much like the look of this, but we were so desperate to get out again that we turned round and headed north to more sheltered waters off  Largs, further up the Firth of Clyde.

 Here the conditions were much more to our liking. A light F3 NW meant we were off...

 ...paddle sailing at 10km/hr into a 1.5km/hr adverse tide.

We were bound for the Little Cumbrae island which...

...lies between Largs and the mountains of Arran beyond.

 We soon left the douce Victorian villas of Great Cumbrae behind and...

...set off across the Tan towards...

...the Little Cumbrae and its tiny satellite, Castle Island.