Escort Duty

This morning the weather seemed strange, in that if I looked east, that is, out of my front windows, I was looking at heavy, purple-grey clouds from about the middle of the Firth eastward, while from the back windows I could see blue sky and sunshine, with the odd white, unthreatening cloud drifting over. Would we remain in the dry zone? I hung out some washing and did some heavy-duty bramble hacking in the front garden - I realised this morning that I could see the white blossom on the bramble among the shrubs and that I'd failed again ... I also picked the tiny quantity of gooseberries that our now 50-year-old bush miraculously produces. 

Then we had our main meal, at 1.30pm, like a childhood Sunday, and sat for a while reading the papers. But the aim of the day was to be on time at the pier to board PS Waverley on her first day of Clyde sailing for this summer, to sail upriver to Greenock to meet up with the cruise ship Queen Anne and escort her down the coast as far as Largs, where the bigger ship would pick up speed and head on towards Southampton and we would return to Dunoon. 

By now it was a perfect evening, although on the water, as always, it was considerably chillier than on land and I was glad I'd taken my puffa jacket, not normally seen before November. The boat was busy - she'd already been on a cruise from Largs - but we managed to find a place by the rail on the stern deck and wondered which side the cruise ship would be on as we sailed. When we rounded the point and saw her size, we felt very small - and very proud, somehow. We sailed past and loitered astern of her, turning to make another pass and get ahead. All this was accomplished with mutual hoots on ships' hooters (what do you call them?) and cheers on both decks - one of the cruise passengers was waving a Saltire on the top deck. We waited, paddling quietly, until the bigger ship cast off - that's when I took the photo I've used out of the 70 I have on my phone. 

Not to go on and on, I'd like just to note that after the captain asked some more people from the by now capacity load of passengers to move to starboard, we fairly thrashed through the water and kept ahead of the big ship as far as just past the Gantocks light. We saw the pilot boat leave, the gradual increase in speed ... until the Queen was pulling ahead and away to sail down the West side of Cumbrae while we turned into Largs pier and started unloading the first lot of passengers. 

By now we were feeling the cold, so headed below for a heat - the best place for this, unless you go to the bar, is beside the engines. I'll stick a photo of the engine room in as an extra ...

We got back to Dunoon at 8.30pm and marched stiffly home up the hill. A crazily satisfying trip - and tomorrow the weather will break. 

Ah well...