Warm end of season sortie

As the end of the season is looming just around the corner, we made the best of what could be the last chance to get out on the water before crane-out. Our plan was to head to Aberdour, but nip into Dalgety Bay if the harbour was vacant.

There was a light easterly breeze as we headed east down river later in the afternoon on Friday. The image above shows the new Queensferry Crossing with traffic (including buses), while the Forth Road Bridge stands redundant in the distance.

As luck would have it, the little harbour at Dalgety Bay was vacant, and so we were able to park our Macwester Malin there just before dusk. Given that the crew and I both had pretty tough weeks, Friday night was an early night followed by a reasonably early rise the next morning.

The weather forecast for the weekend threatened high winds with rain and clouds as the weekend progressed, but it was blue skies on Saturday so we got out and about as much as we could. We walked up to the local store for provisions, and after lunch we walked west to St David’s Harbour.

There was a club plan to anchor off Inchcolm overnight, and we spotted at least one club boat (Christina II) to the north of the island sheltering from the easterly wind. Overnight anchoring isn’t something that we’ve got much of an appetite for yet so we decided to pass. The image above shows Inchcolm to the right, which is south and east of Dalgety Bay.

The fear of missing out dissipated as we fired-up what would prove to be our last barbecue of the season. Of course we didn’t know that at the time, but the following weekend would turn out to be a bit wet and windy.

It was a balmy 15 degrees through the night on the Saturday, which is pretty good for late September on the Firth of Forth. The high winds didn’t amount to much and we took the opportunity of a further installment of rest and recuperation.

The journey back home was uneventful, and that pretty much sums up our weekend. It would have been nice to go out on a high, but we were both drained and it was good to recharge our batteries. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that one of the key reasons we bought our Macwester Malin was to facilitate some time out. In that respect at least …it was job done!