Great Odin’s beard …it’s summer!

With good weather flirting with the forecasts and a busy time ashore over the coming weeks, we grabbed the opportunity to set sail on Thursday evening’s late tide. After a short overnight stop at Port Edgar, we were sailing again before 7am on Friday morning. It was a grey, moody, but soft start to the day and we had the river to ourselves.

Once clear of the bridges, with Hound Point to our starboard, we threw up some sails on our Macwester Malin ketch. This proved a bit pointless, as there simply wasn’t enough wind around. However we could see the promise of sunshine in the distance and our hopes of good weather for the weekend started building.

After a while we reluctantly brought our Macwester’s sails back down and motored on towards Braefoot Terminal (top left in photo above), The Haystack (top middle in photo above), and Inchcolm (top right in photo above). As we got closer, we conjured up far-fetched names for the green tanker that was alongside the terminal in the distance.

The sky brightened as the journey unfolded and by the time we reached Braefoot Terminal, we were beginning to think that the weather might even surpass the forecast. As for guessing the name of the tanker …we didn’t come close. [Handy user tip: If you click on the image above, you can just about make out Odin’s mythical goatee beard at the bow].

Approaching 8am just one or two nautical miles later, we reached Aberdour. By then the sun was beaming down on our home for the next couple of days. It was such a great feeling to be back.

We took things pretty easy for the rest of Friday, mainly catching up with friendly local club members that we hadn’t seen since last season. On Saturday we had visitors from the West coast onboard. Their young son brought a pirate flag with him especially for the occasion. He was keen to learn all about our 32ft centre-cockpit ketch and almost got the names of the sails from stern to bow nailed. It went something like this: …’Mizzen’ (correct), ‘Main’ (correct), ‘Chihuahua’ (umm …nearly, but not quite).

Although we offered our friends a bed for the night, they had to get back, so we enjoyed another peaceful night alone with only the crows, ducks and our pet heron for company. The next morning we woke up bright and early to another fine day, and after breakfast we were invited for a mid-morning cup of tea at an ABC member’s house on the beach. He had a fabulous home, and we learned that he typically walked his dinghy through the front garden, on to the beach and from there it was a short transfer out to his yacht in the bay. Late morning we walked  (in shorts and short-sleeves) a couple of miles East along the coast to a small harbour at Starleyburn. The harbour is privately owned and was locked up. From a distance, I spotted a couple of old boats on the hard, but there wasn’t an awful lot to see. It was an enjoyable walk nonetheless, and we had a relaxing late lunch with long chilled drinks on returning home to our Malin.

Like our long weekend, the weather didn’t last. On the journey back we tried to get our Macwester Malin’s sails up, but once again there was no wind. It wasn’t cold, but the cloud cover was dense and the sun was struggling to put in an appearance. The shot above shows Inchgarvie a small island near the Forth Bridge. Like many of the islands on the Forth (Inchkeith, Inchmickery etc), Inchgarvie was intentionally modelled to look like a battleship.

The weather improved as we neared the end of our journey. On the approach to our mooring, we met a friend from the club out on the water. We rafted up and slowly drifted down the river for a while as he told us of his week-long trip down to Lindisfarne and back. Sounds like a journey we’re going to have to make sometime.