Adventure-wise it’s been a frustrating Summer so far; I’ve had various work commitments regularly taking me away from the Highland’s since Spring. My genetic need for adventure ; aka “feeding the rat” has been gnawing away at me…
There were lots of “hash tags” recently on Twitter regarding a “supermoon” – when full moon coincides with it’s closest approach to the Earth in it’s elliptical orbit. …and so with the Sun-Earth-Moon all lining up to create the regular spring tide, with the moon closer than normal; this also created a bigger than usual spring tide.
The mean range of “springs” at Oban is 3.3m and on the afternoon of our trip it was forecast to be 3.8m. At the Corran Narrows, where the ferry runs across to the Ardnamurchan peninsular, that extra half a metre in ebb and flood of Loch Linnhe would increase the already fast 5 knot flow.
The weather forecast was good, and soon we were being catapulted on the ebbing tide South West through the narrows and on our way…
We visited the pirates store en route and our journey took us past lots of wildlife; orchids, starfish, hermit crabs and the local heard of feral goats.
Eventually we pulled in for lunch at Camas Chil Mhalieu when we spotted this huge buoy washed up on the shore. Stuart really had difficulty climbing up on to it…
Weather improved as the afternoon wore on…
…and eventually we were spat back through the Corran Narrows on the flood tide. My GPS registered we were travelling at 9 knots…
Date : 13 July 2014 – 1 day before Spring Tide.
Oban : HW 07:03 LW 13:21 HW 19:28
Max Speed : 18.3Km/h
Trip Odom : 37.8 Km
Moving Time : 5h 48min
Moving Average 6.5Km/h
Forecast – Wind W F3, Sea Slight, Weather Cloud, some Sun, Visibility Good
