A relaxed start at 11:30am with blue skies, fluffy clouds and light winds. We drifted along slowly in the light winds for a while, trying to fish (no bites) and enjoying the scenery as we passed the distilleries we'd visited yesterday. As the tide turned with is we wondered why we were still going so slowly - the answer became clear when we had a look at the hull in Jura, we'd got a reef growing on there!

An few miles from Craighouse the big, black clouds that had been looming behind us for the last few hours suddenly seemed to get a lot closer, so engine on and onto the mooring. Would you believe it! The wind increased as we entered the anchorage and we had to make 2 attempts to pick up the mooring.

The Jura distillery had closed for the day so we planned for a visit in the morning. Ha ha so wrong we were! Heading off to bed that night and doing the customary check of the weather on the Navtex what had been a F3/4 forecast had suddenly turned into an imminent F8 for sea area Malin in which we were. Bed was postponed whilst we prepped the boat for the wind arriving in the night and possibly needing to make an escape. As it was it never got higher than F5 and we slept soundly.

On hour or so after getting up the wind started to increase from the SE, bringing a bit of swell into the bay. This continued, sometimes going easterly and blowing straight in to the bay setting up a fair old chop. Bucking around on the mooring we sat in the cockpit eating biscuits and nervously passing the time reading as the wind went up to F8 with an occasional F9. One boat came in during the gale and we watched helplessly as it took them at least 10 attempts to get hold of the mooring pickup. Finally around 6pm it began to decrease, a F6 seeming gentle in comparison and it eased off further into the night. The moorings are rated at 15 tonnes, Emerald is about 13 tonnes so we were very pleased that the mooring held - well done to the Jura people who have set them.
Finally on Saturday morning we made it ashore. It was a drizzly, grey day but we wanted to get to the distillery shop before it closed. We tried a couple of drams and went for a bottle called Superstition, mainly as I liked the bottle design! A wedding was taking place in the village and the poor bride and her bridesmaids had to hold her dress very high to prevent it getting soaked in the puddles as they paraded along the road to the tunes of a piper.

Whilst ashore we spotted an otter, diving and fishing close to the beach and seemingly unbothered by the small crowd that had gathered close to it to watch. When we got back to the boat later the otter headed out towards the moorings, caught a fish and hauled itself out on to one of the mooring buoys to eat the fish providing us with a perfect view, maybe 40m away from us. It had very big teeth!