Campbeltown, 0500 hours, dead calm, beautiful sky

Leaving Campbeltown at 0500 didn't give us a chance to enjoy its highlights that much, but we are now officially in Ireland: about thirty miles from where my grandmother was born, and the same from where my other grandfather was born. Not really a homecoming, but it did cross my mind.

So this is a picture of the only highlight we came across. Geddit? Highlight?

 The sunrise was gorgeous. The sun shone for hours, but later on in the day, around 1130. it began to rain, a sort of fine mizzle where dense, dark cloud had replaced a marvellous sky full of shapes and gannets, guillemots and varieties of gulls, as well as dolphins, and, much earlier, seals and otters in the slight swell near the harbour.
At 1315 hours, having called Bangor marina twice on the radio thing, and having had no reply, we moored up in berth E3 and settled down for lunch. The rain had recovered from its fineness, and was now normal, large, dense and everywhere, but we had been able to escape quite a lot by huddling up under the sprayhood and we were spared the need to turn the inside of the boat into a drying room.
Rain has become a pursuit, now, and we can identify different kinds: nice rain, for example, keeps the dahlias in bloom, and horrid rain makes your feet wrinkly because it has been trained to slide surreptitiously into your boots.
Ho, hum. Officially it is the coldest spring in existence. And the wettest. The rain, at Rain Headquarters in the Sky, is immensely proud.
Anyway. The journey of 52nM across the North Passage took eight hours, and the tides are strong and the advice given by the Campbeltown brochure was spot on: leave two hours before low water.

Two hours before low water. Just to prove we were really up early.

 Tomorrow it will probably be Strangford Lough. Notice that it is lough, not loch. Different Gaelic.
I must take the Scottish flag down and get out the Irish Republic flag for hoisting.