July 7th-8th: Monday morning, and the plan was now to take the inside route through the Firth of Clyde, the long narrow inlet protected from the Atlantic by the Kintyre peninsula.

Ailsa Craig

Tides were gentler and navigation straightforward.  Our first reference point was the conspicuous island of Ailsa Craig, the volcanic plug of an extinct volcano which, despite having a circumference of only 2 miles, rises 338m in the air.  The unusual granite on the island is apparently the ideal material for making curling stones, a sport at which Scotland has had some success.

Ferry traffic is plentiful in the Firth, but even the words ‘submarine training area’ spread liberally around the charts didn’t prepare us for the appearance of one such large naval vessel off our bow.  As I flicked through the almanac for any mention of exclusion zones, our naval friends took off to port.  Maybe they wanted to be out of sight of the Irish boat before diving.

Is it a shark? Is it a whale?

Our next stop was in tranquil Lamlash harbour, off the Isle of Arran and inside Holy Island.  Anchoring is awkward with the deep water and steep banks, but the friendly folk at Lamlash provide visitor moorings in about 20m of water.  We rowed ashore to pay the £10 fee, and just managed to row out of the way of the speeding Holy Island ferry.  The evening and night passed pleasantly, with a box of wine and a bottle of Tawny port procured in Stranraer.  It doesn’t matter how big the box is – if you put a tap on the side of it it doesn’t last long.

Tuesday afternoon was a cracking beat up Bute Sound.  Our destination was Tarbert, a horse-shoe shaped village full of the now familiar Scottish hospitality.  Tying up in the spacious and recently extended council marina, we discovered jib no. 2 was a casualty of our beat with a small tear in the leech.

But that would be tomorrow’s problem – it was time to soak up some Tarbert hospitality and watch Germany dispatch Brazil from their own world cup in a very decisive fashion.