We had booked our passage through the Crinan Canal with an expected time of arrival at the sea lock at Ardrishaig at 10:00 BST. Left Tarbert at around 08:00 in drizzle and actually had a reasonable sail to Ardrishaig and arrived on time but as we took the sails down we could feel the wind building. The lock keeper radioed us to say the lock was open and available for us with three other yachts already in and waiting. We rushed to set up the mooring lines, fenders and fender board and despite nearly running aground at the entrance managed to make a more or less a safe entrance and secured ourselves in the lock. Once up to the basin level, we had to wait whilst the other yachts booked in since clearly they hadn’t bothered to book online as we had, so this made us even more annoyed at being rushed.
Anyway, by this time it was really raining and blowing hard and with the wind behind us it was tricky manoeuvring into the locks so we were really grateful to have Thomas with us. Having three onboard instead of two makes a real difference in these situations. It poured with rain and we were really soaked but we carried on with another three yachts all the way through the canal to Crinan where we tied up to a pontoon just above the last two locks back out to sea.
After being wet through and tired after a stressful day it was time for a big fry-up with black pudding and an early night!!
Nice to see you back on the water.