Day 33 – Friday 15th May 2026
Reading time: Three minutes
It is rather wonderful all the people that you meet when boating. The staff at Dunstaffnage have all been marvelous. Then there are the other Sailors.
I had never met the Rev Bob Shepton before but of course he is a real hero figure in the adventuring world. If you haven’t seen the video of him climbing with the Wild Bunch then it is worth a watch. I was delighted when he agreed to join me for supper on board Sumara. At 91 he is still out there sailing whenever he can, a real inspiration for us all to keep on going!
I also invited Bob Bradfield to join us. He had kindly cooked a meal for me earlier in the week. Bob Bradfield produces the Antarres Charts and he must know the West Coast of Scotland better than anyone. We had a great evening and seemed to have demolished an entire bottle of port.
I have now moved the boat to the Oban Transit Marina. It is the start day for the Scottish Islands Three Peaks Race so the memories came flooding back. I entered the race in Sumara once and proudly came last – but we did actually finish!
Being in Oban town means I can collect Jannicke from the nearby station. Jannicke will also bring up my new phone and laptop so the pictures should start to improve soon!
My extensive job list had been more or less completed and I was looking forward to a restful day in town. That was not to be.
When leaving my berth I felt that engaging reverse gear was significantly harder than engaging forward gear. That was a bit of a concern as I now suffer from gearbox paranoia. Whilst motoring the boat around I also noted that the engine temperature gauge wasn’t registering. I decided to email the engineer to see if he had any thoughts on these niggles. He kindly said he would pop down to have a look. He arrived just midway through cooking my much needed lunch so I turned everything off. Robert found the missing temperature sensor and checked over all the gearbox cabling and set off to enjoy the rest of his day without me bothering him.
When I went back to finish cooking my lunch the cooker had a massive flare up! I dashed forward to cut off the paraffin and things began to subside. Out came all the tools and plumbing spares and two hours later a very hungry me was eventually having lunch.
Taylors cookers are ” interesting” appliances!
It is Saturday morning now, everything is working, I’ll do some provisioning, collect Jannicke and we will set off down the Sound of Mull on the tide tomorrow – Norway Day!
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