Armadale Bay on Skye's Sleat peninsula is one of our favourite stopping-off points. Over the years we have learned to live with its rolly moorings, and enjoy the excellent service that not only brings diesel and gas bottles, but also a long freshwater hose out to your boat on its mooring! And they remove rubbish bags voluntarily too! This is the home of the charter company, Isle of Skye yachts, and as their yachts need these services in the bay, visitors can have them also.

The gale forecast lived up to its pr3ess billing, and blew a hooly overnight and in the morning of Wednesday. We decided, though, to take the dinghy over to the pontoon, and set off for Mallaig on the ferry for the day, to suss out whether the much-advertised moorings and new pontoon berths were in evidence yet. Welcome Anchorages said they would be up and running by May, but we are familiar with the local gaelic word for manana, which 'doesn't have the urgency!' Sure enough, when we got there, there were no pontoons, but 12 shiny new yellow visitors' moorings were in place, and some fairly non-frantic activity on the rocky shore of the harbour was all that could be seen of the new pontoons. As often happens when visitors' moorings are introduced, a certain number of local boats snap them up, and this appeared to be the case yesterday. There were two boats which looked like visiting yachts. The new moorings are good news for the west coast yachting fraternity, as Mallaig has always been awkward for yachts, with numerous local moorings in the small harbour, and no room for visiting yachts to lie alongside as the large number of fishing boats fill the available space.

We spent some time online at the local community college, and planned a bit of shopping for groceries, but we were rather thrown by the man who sold us our boat tickets saying that the ferry could be suspended if the weather got worse in the afternoon, so we might have had to find ourselves a b and b if that happened. We went for a shower and some lunch at the Fisherman's Mission, then decided as the wind was on the increase that we would quickly shop, then get on the next ferry in case it was suspended later in the afternoon. We came back to the boat and had a bit of a struggle getting aboard, as the sea was very choppy, the wind was strong, and our backpacks and shopping bags didn't help much!

The weather foreast continued to talk of gales, so we hunkered down for another night on the mooring. The evening's entertainment consisted of listening to an audiobook of Patricia Cornwell's latest thriller, while playing Rummikub, an interesting game involved numbered tiles but reminiscent of the card game gin rummy.

On Thursday morning, around 4am, another gale warning was issued for later in the day. Pity, as the first gale had blown itself out and it was a perfect and quite still moonlit night. But by breakfast time it was already blowing up again, and after getting diesel, gas and water we decided to stay one more night and see how things go on Friday.

Meantime we dismantled the Aries, as it is playing up. This photo shows how its bevel gears just aren't meshing any more!