Port Ellen is on the Isle of Islay (pronounced I-la) and it’s got a lot of rocks all around it!. Also, there isn’t much tide and the entrance has only about 10 meters of water from the harbor wall that is deep enough to let a keel boat through. So – even with sizable ferries coming in and out – the keel boat getting in to the small Marina is a little tricky. In any event we made it safely in and docked up in the pouring rain on a slimy, guano covered pontoon (which we then spent a short while cleaning so we didn’t drag stuff into the boat, which some might say would be an upgrade To Tonic and overcome the smell that permeates the boat currently).
Port Ellen is the major port of Islay and it’s where most of the traffic, products and everything else arrive (strange really, because it is very small). Of most interest, it is close to a whole number of distilleries. Close in are Laphroaig (to me, like drinking neat TCP, but my family love it), Lagavulin sand Ardbeg. It’s a beautiful place.
The Islay hotel was the closest watering whole to the boat and the obvious destination for both the evening drinks and the connection to the Internet. It seems most of Scotland’s West Coast sufferers under O2 offering only GPRS and not 3G or 4G, which is actually available, because one of my co-conspirators get’s 3 G everywhere we go and he’s with a small provider I’ve never heard of. 
Surprise of surprises, The Islay Hotel, which looked a bit drab and pub-in-a-box from the outside, was in fact a facsimile of a London Gastro-pub inside and very nice – just a little out of place and lacking in any local color. But – it had decent enough beer, a fast and free wifi connection and strangely enough, both the bar and the restaurant had the prettiest girls working there. I mention this not in the creepy old man sort of way, but to provide a more in depth picture of the contrast in this place between biased expectations and the reality of what was found. It may have been MY biased expectation, but I thought we would be holed up in an old dingy bar with a comely lass serving behind the bar. Not one bit of it. These young girls were all quite beautiful, bags of personality and wonderfully softly spoken. Either great recruitment or something nefarious is going on!

Also Of interest – not one local inside – just wealthy visitors, and some of them were American. In fact – I kept my head down and my accent very “from Newcastle” when at the bar – because a rather loud, almost comic book America Lady, resident of the hotel, was explaining why she couldn’t charge anything to her room because she had a room mate and things would get complicated. Things did get complicated when she also said she had no cash on her or pay – so charge it to the room for now, but don’t put it on the bill, just hold it and she’ day tomorrow before checking out. A very patient, softly spoken Scottish Bar Manager tried to explain how she would be able to tell who had, had what the next morning when they came to pay their bill and it could all be settled then. Pity the room-mate! 

Oh dear – how do American’s get their reputation for always wanting their own way and for listening to no-one (well Mr Trump – what have you got to say about that?).

An early morning rise by me on my day I n Port Ellen and a walk to the public showers (very, very damp ones – honesty box in the corner, enough mould to reinvent penicillin, but clean towels laundered by someone locally and provided by the Center for abused Towel Rescue). Refreshed by my shower, I went for a lovely walk around the bay to the Co-op food Store. Now I have to say – everywhere we’ve been we’ve used Co-op Food Stores and they have been clean, well stocked, well staffed, polite and they have everything we needed. Someone is clearly doing a very nice job there. I like to try and buy something locally to support the local economy, other than beer and wine in the pub. So I bought an early breakfast from the Co-op and I sat with a bottle of sparkling water and a cereal bar and looked out over the bay, writing some e mails and contemplating the meaning of life (well the up and coming day and a well earned trip to one or two distilleries). In another “wee” shop a bit further on, I read an ad placed in the middle of the window. On a typed up template from a local undertaker, completed by hand – there was a notice to let people know that “My husband Ernie Clerk” would be cremated the following Saturday in Clydebank Crematorium. I have no idea how old or under what circumstances Ernie Clarke died, or whether he was actually dead – may be it was the prediction of a future event and may be the locals are very good at that, but it was the personal words “my husband” clealry written by his wife and not someone anonymous which made me sad and made me think of a lonely person losing their partner and close friend. So personal, so intimate, so final. Anyway – let’s not get too depressed when a distillery tour was in the off.
While our distillery plans didn’t go quite as we thought they would. Not sure why Carol of Carol’s cabs could have mistaken a pick up at the Islay Hotel at 9.15 for a pick up at the Ferry Terminal at 9.30 – but anyway she did and so our our tour plans changed – and it seems for the better.

We ended up on the 10.00 fully guided tour at Ardbeg and we had a blast (possibly not as good as the partially guided tour which might have room for much more excitement). For 20 pounds – we got a tour lasting over an hour with Ross (‘he’s just back from UNIVERSITY you know”) and he did a fine job of guiding us around the business end of the distillery and educating us as to what went on to get the brown nectar. He excelled at his next job – giving us 5 drams of various whiskies complete with insights into their deepest qualities. Anyway – 5 generous shots of whisky before midday seems to set the day up nicely (not encouraging you to try this – frequently). 

After the short return journey with Carol’s Cabs (who couldn’t remember dropping us FLF there 2 hours before – most bizarre) we lunched, rested and then set sail shortly after 1.30 for Oban. What a delightful sail up through the cut between Islay and Jura – where we ended up with no wind, but traveling at 8.00kts towards our destination – a tide like that can get you around the world. What a beautiful part of the country and a place I absolutely want to revisit. At one point – we passed by a small car ferry plying from one bank to another – in what I thought was quite a romantic setting. The stoic life of using daily ferries across wild waters and living in live weather like this part of the word has. One of the most wonderful aspects of thei apart of the journey was that the light was just wonderful – broody and a but misty, but light enough – as it was through until after 10.00 pm. Of course all good things come to an end and shortly after 7.00 the rain started and then it stayed with us until we got to Oban around midnight. In fact, as we entered the narrow Sound of Kerrera, the heavens opened and we were almost drowned. I was on the helm, Liz (crew) was on watch with me and the other two were down on the Salon supposedly watching the Chart Plotter.

Arriving in Oban we took a little time to spot a suitable Mooring Ball and once we did – landed on it first time, incentivized by the thought of warmth and dryness and may be a whisky, and then we secured the hatches, had the usual night night Whisky and I climbed in to my sleeping bag to get some sleep. 

Before going to sleep, I called Bernadette to see what how things were and got the terrible news of the goings on in Dallas. What can I say. Just shocking. The shooting events earlier in the day elsewhere in the US – absolutely terrible. I have no idea whether there were mitigating circumstances or not, but it does seem to me that Black lives have a lower value placed on them and you can’t win if you’re a Policeman. Not all Policeman are racist and not all Black People want revenge. Where will we find another Martin Luther King or a Nelson Mandela- two of the most sensible, articulate and genuinely accepting and tolerant people of the twentieth century? Who is on the horizon to match them? We really need to find peacemakers who focus on what we have in common and not people who focus on differences. I really can’t understand how the color of anyone’s skin, their sexual persuasion, their gender, their religion or anything else can define someone as a good, bad or a plain indifferent person. There are bad people all around, and what differentiates them from the rest of us is simply this – they are bad people and they happen to be what ever they are. Sorry for the serious ending, but I am quite sanguine about our collective future – between Brexit, the change of UK Prime Minister (Michael Gove – really?) and any prospect of Donald Tramp. Aren’t you depressed!

I’m writing this from Oban and the journey will continue tomorrow – not sure who will be with us – but we hear there will be 6 other folks joking us and a new Training Skipper. This boat is probably comfortable with 5 or 6 people. But – having 9, of which 1, the training skipper, will have to sleep in the Salon – not terribly comfortable. Now if it rains – and it will – we’re in Scotland – putting your wet gear somewhere to dry when you come off watch – there is nowhere now, where will 8 people put their’s? Ridiculous! And – my cabin will now be shared – and so we’ll see how that goes. It’s 10 days and we’ll make it through. Skippering this diverse crew will be interesting!

More to come – no doubt!

Pip pip,

N