Friday 13th and Saturday 14th June

I had a shower then porridge for breakfast and then pottered to the shop to buy some ham and milk. As I was walking back to the boat I saw a chap knocking on  the deck. Thinking that this was likely to be canal staff wondering whether I was wanting to go up the flight of locks I shouted ‘no! I’m heading to Inverness,’ however he didn’t seem bothered about where I was going. I then noticed that one of my solar panels was missing. It turned out that he was the charterer of a Caley cruiser,  motorboats for rent on the canal, and had run into me trying to berth, smashing the panel and bending a stanchion. He said, not to worry, we’re fully insured,  which was marginally irritating.  Anyway we swapped details and I swept up the broken glass, threw the panel in the local garbage skip,  took some photographs and tried to ‘phone the company from whom the boat was hired. I got through on the second attempt and they were quite friendly and offered to send a couple of engineers to see what they could do. Inevitably, they also wanted pictures and details which, eventually, I managed to send to them. I tried googling PV panel suppliers in Inverness but without much luck - I managed to get through to a couple of them but no one had any in stock. Lindsay the manager from Caley also tried and had one that could be in Inverness for Tuesday but as the weather for crossing the North Sea is looking quite good for early next week and because I’ve experience of deliveries to the Highlands not always being on time I told her I’d rather just head off and try to get one in Denmark or Germany. The engineers from Caley turned up shortly afterwards and had a  bar to straighten the stanchion with which they did to a certain extent. In amongst all this I was looking out pillow cases for Scott and his children who were arriving later and found that they didn’t look that clean so did a quick wash in the sink and hung them out to dry.

I have two solar panels on each side of the boat so with one missing it means that the system on that side doesn’t work but I ran for a year with only panels on one side and it’s OK. I may have to start the engine a little more often but that is the extent of the nuisance so not too bad.

Scott, Alfie and Kyle arrived at about 1430, Alfie is 11 and Kyle about 20. We loaded up fishing rods, pillows! sleeping bags cases of coke, sweeties and crisps and then went for a walk up the locks. Fort Augustus is quite busy and attractive during the day, particularly with the sun shining which it was. The youngsters were bought ice creams and we bimbled back to the boat. I had ended up the wrong way around because the Caley marina people had wanted to have the stanchion shore side whilst un bending it so it gave us to opportunity to rig a spring and have the Westerly wind blow us around until facing about the right direction before letting go and heading out into Loch Ness. Alfie and Kyle vied to dominate the steering and once clear of the canal we got out the genoa and sailed downwind to Foyers where we arrived, having seen no monsters, late in the afternoon.

Going to the position Ailsa and I had anchored a couple of evenings earlier we were soon preparing bags to take ashore for a barbecue. I’m using my smaller dinghy so going ashore involved a couple of trips. I went down to the dinghy and then had Alfie, who  is on the stout side, come down the fender steps to sit in the bow, he is not particularly athletic, but managed this fine and then Scott came down and we rowed to the beach which has a small gradient and stones underfoot so we grounded several yards from the beach. I was in wellies with the others in trainers so I thought I’d carry Alfie ashore. I managed but only just as not only was he heavy but his trousers were very slippery so it was difficult to grip him. In the meantime Scott hopped across a couple of rocks getting one foot wet. I then went back for Alfie and the carrier bags with food and so on in them. As there was no chance of my being able to carry Kyle I gave him some crocs to exchange for his trainers and we all met up on the beach and then made our way around to a West facing beach where Scott, Kyle and I gathered fire wood and I lit a fire.  Friday was supposed to be a reasonable day in terms of weather with Saturday looking like rain all day. There is a nice walk at Foyers that Ailsa and I’d done on Thursday but walking wasn’t something the youngsters were into and we’d gone straight to the barbecue.  I’d brought sausages and burgers and, once the fire had died down a little started cooking them. I thought it was all pretty good but the sausages didn’t meet with Alfie’s approval as they were a little black in places, the burger however went down well.  No sausages were wasted. I’d started cooking a little earlier than I might normally have done as there appeared to be showers in the offing. We did get a little spat on for a time but actually were quite lucky in terms of the weather.  Back on the boat we got out the cockpit table and had a fine evening playing Pit, Jenga  and Perudo, with the jenga being a little unsatisfactory as the boat was moving around a bit too much making game  a little arbitrary.

On Saturday morning I woke up fairly early for a pee and had a look at the battery voltage which I had suspected might be quite low because there had been little sun the previous day and, obviously I’d lost half of my power input with the solar panel having been destroyed. The voltage was at 22.8 which is as low as I let it go so I started the engine. Looking around, it was dreich, as forecast but not actually raining at the moment. With the engine running anyway I thought we might as well be motoring so I weighed anchor and we motored slowly to Urquhart castle and re anchored in Ailsa and my previous spot. Scott, Alfie and Kyle had appeared with all of the commotion and once anchored we breakfasted on cheese  and ham toasties, crisps coke coffee and tea. By now it was wet, in a West of Scotland kind of way, I didn’t think that a tour of the Castle would be all that appealing and as there appeared little to keep us amused I thought it would be best to potter on along the canal so we weighed anchor again and motored slowly against the wind with Alfie and Kyle taking turns steering and making a good job of it. Once out of the Loch and into the canal various boats passed including several rowing boats which take up more room than one might imagine however not so much as to cause a problem, unless one is not paying attention. Occasionally the rain became pretty heavy and Kyle did a good job of pretending not to care about it whilst  the rest of us  all sheltered under the spray hood. Too soon the canal banks got busy with a mixture of nice and dying boats and we arrived at the first lock we needed to go through as a team. I had set up my bow and stern lines on the blocks to the cockpit  and had briefed Scott and Kyle on jobs,  I’d spoken to the lock keeper on the, now fully charged, radio and thought we were all prepared. At the last minute I realised that I’d taken all the fenders in for the Loch Ness transit and forgotten that I needed to re deploy them, Kyle re took the steering for me whilst Scott and I put them back out again and we then had an uneventful Lock passage with the lock keeper briefing us on the remainder of the canal.

After this Lock there was a pair of bridges requiring us to loiter in between them before passing the Caley marina and  going onto a small flight of Locks to the canal marina before the Sea Lock where we berthed on one of the available Hammerheads and I went to report in  to the office whilst Scott made sandwiches for lunch. Being a weekend the office was unmanned. After lunch

I wanted to look at the Gael Force chandlery  and find Lidl for shopping topping up so took a carrier bag and went for a walk whilst Scott, Kyle and Alfie went to a barber’s shop for an Alfie haircut up at the flight of Locks that we’d spotted on the way in.

I found the chandlery closed  but wandered into town for a bit of a walk anyway  and came back to the. boat in the late afternoon. We had Cheesy Hammy Eggy, a naval staple, for tea with pancakes for pudding and Julie, the youngsters mother arrived just after 7 in time for a pancake and coffee before they all left to go home whilst I went to the pub.

Canal Locks, probably Fort Augustus

I thoughth I’d posted this some time ago but obviously hadn’t, Scot had sent me photos of Kyle and Alfie steering but they have disappeared so you’ll have to manage with this photo from a day or two earlier.