The stay in Loch Spelve was very pleasant, apart from Thursday. Wednesday was such a lovely day, sunshine and gentle breezes, that the cold and rain and grey skies of Thursday came as rather a surprise, and not a pleasant one. We put on our warmest clothes and ran the cabin heater to keep warm during the day and early evening, when we played Scrabble by the light of our hurricane lamp. We relished the fact, though, that we had been the only yacht in the anchorage overnight, and laid bets as to when others would begin to arrive. Ju won, as two yachts arrived on Thursday afternoon and anchored a distance away from us. Weather was much better on Friday, and we were invited aboard the two yachts for coffee, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We also did a number of chores around the boat. There's always something to fix, something that has stopped working, something that has frayed with the constant movement. We have a fault list and tried to work our way through it. On Saturday the morning was fine and we took our new dinghy ashore and Ju painted its name on the transom. We 'launched' it with a splash of Talisker and rowed back out to the boat. We watched as other intrepid club members climbed to the summit of the nearest hill, and marvelled at their energy! Then the afternoon brough a spectacular thunderstorm, which caught a lot of people out as they were moving around the anchorage in their dinghies visiting friends and hadn't taken waterproofs with them. The lightning was spectacular, the thunder deafening, and the rain was so hard it picked out a few leaks on our boat, which we later tried to cure. The mussel supper was at 6.30pm at the mussel farm, and by that time around thirty to forty boats had arrived to take part. It was the usual great food and wine, and good crack with people we haven't seen for a few years, including some who now have sold their boats and either use a camper van, or crew for friends. We were back aboard before 9pm, and for once we did not get involved with ongoing parties aboard our boat or anybody else's and had an early night. On Sunday morning the weather was still poor, and the forecast for the next two days was not good, turning into really nasty. So we decided to wait until lunchtime before taking a decision as to whether to stay put or head onwords towards Tobermory, perhaps stopping off in Lochaline on the way. The tide for going up the Sound of Mull didn't start running until about 3-4pm, so this strategy made sense. We stayed put and watched as one by one all the boats which had arrived after us left the anchorage, until there was only one other boat left, that of the Vice-Commodore. It stopped raining after lunch, and we decided to go for it. So we set off down the loch, followed and then overtaken by the other yacht. We left Loch Spelve through its intersting entrance and bounced out into a choppy Firth of Lorn, and decided that with strong south easterlies behind us, all we needed to run was the genoa, so we hauled it out, and, as the wind was fluky between 20 and 3 knots, motorsailed up past Loch Don and into the Sound of Mull. On cue, we met the Clansman, the Lord of the Isles and the Lochaline ferry, plus another ship that was headed for Tobermory. We travelled loosely in company with the other yacht, and decided as we were doing over 7 knots over the ground that Tobermory was the preferable option, and we could get there, on the tide, and with this wind, by 7pm. And we did, only the last couple of miles the wind rose very stepply in speed, and we registered (later) on our wind instrument that it had maxed out at 38 knots at one point. Picking up a mooring in Tobermory Harbour was a difficult task, as the wind kept blowing us off as soon as we dropped speed to catch the pickup buoy. No fewer than six attempts were made, during one of which we lost the tip of our boathook. Using the old long wooden one, however, we finally managed to snag a mooring, made it secure and retreated to the cockpit for a well-earned beer. We then enjoyed the lamb shanks Ju had cooked in the pressure cooker before we left, for dinner, and had another early night. The yacht club dinner at the Western Isles Hotel is on Monday evening, and we are going to have lunch with Bren and Ek and Cookie at Glengorm, so we will be here for a day or two.