16th Aug 2009, Kirkcudbright

Well, we left Maryport at 5:20 on Thursday 13th, which was as late after high-water as we thought we could and as early as we could before sunrise. Between Maryport and Kipford someone has planted a slalom course of 60 giant sticks with 3-bladed fans on the top – it could make for some interesting sailing but we just kept clear of them. The area goes under the name of ‘Robin Rigg Windfarm’…. We had a gentle sail across the Solway Firth to Kircudbright where we arrived at the mouth of the estuary just before low-water – so we went to explore how far we could get up the channel (low-water Neaps) ; answer: not far. We met Rab Thomson, the retired Harbour Master that we met the last time we were here in about 2000, who still does part-time HM; he was sailing out for a day’s fun with his cousin from Canada. But Rab was concerned that we hadn’t been into Kirkcudbright before and were going to come to grief in the shallows. So we went to the recommended anchorage at Ross Island to wait for the time to go in. After a lazy time of reading, lunch and a couple of coffees we pulled up the anchor and out with the foresail to sail as far up the river as possible – but just after the lifeboat station the wind died away to 3 knots and we had to put the engine on.

We’ve not been doing much here mainly because the weather has not been very good but we have managed to get out for a couple of walks, exhibitions and happened to visit a local ale-house for some refreshment on the day we arrived to find out that there was evening entertainment in the town square with Scottish music and dancing. It stayed dry and was a fantastic start to us being back in Scotland. We will be here for a couple of days more and then hopefully the weather will be kind to us for sailing further north.