Tall Ships to Campbeltown: Mirly a Wylde Swan chase

There wasn’t a lot of wind yesterday (12th July 2011) and the tall ships leaving Greenock in the spectacular Parade of Sail were struggling to get anywhere.

Shooting off to Skipness on the Kintyre peninsula, facing the north coast of the Isle of Arran, was an attractive notion. The idea was to catch the ships there as three of them – Wylde Swan, Rona 2 and Tomidi – headed south down Kilbrannan Sound to Campbeltown.

Second problem – misty conditions.

Bouncing over the roller-coaster single tracker to Skipness from the A83 at about 17.45, there was the slightest glimpse of something over against the dark coast of Arran that just might have been a tall ship.

It was.  Just visible (above).  And it was the only one – a pale hulled, three masted part square rigger.

As it passed Lochranza, it picked up a bit of wind and moved a little more discernibly but it was a slow progress.

About an hour later, just as the first one – Wylde Swan we assumed (wrongly) – was visible to the south, standing off against the west Arran coast, another one hove into view just inside the north east corner of Arran (above).  This was a three master, bare of sail and must have been on an auxiliary engine.

Then the evening sky lifted,  bringing a daft decision to scud down the lush east side of Kintyre and shadow the lead boat into Campbeltown.

A low band of sea mist obligingly lifted and she was briefly glimpsed at Grogport.

The next sighting was when she was caught (below) in the setting sun from the heights south of Carradale.

And then it took forever.

Watching – for two hours – with tripod all set up in a field with a great view of the entrance to Campbeltown Loch under the Davaar Island Light, she inched her way down the Arran coast. The action switched to the south where the evening return trip from Ballycastle of Kintyre Express 2 came creaming past Davaar and into the loch (below).

By just short of 22.00, it was clear that this tall ship was not aiming for Campbeltown. On she went. The sun had set and the last we saw of her was just visibly ahead of the distant Ailsa Craig (below).

Into Campbeltown, looking gorgeous in the gleam of the evening light on the water. Sharp scan of the docks. No tall ships. Off north on the A3, glad that the pot hole filling has at least made this once grand road drivable for the summer. (The winter will be a different matter.)

And there was Jura, against the fading sunset (below). Who in their right minds would live anywhere but Argyll?

In the warm light of morning, and with a bit of image reviewing, it looks as if the tall ship followed down Kilbrannan Sound was the biggest of the lot, the giant Russian, Mir.

She would have been the first of the fleet, able to throw up more sail to make use of what wind there was – and she wasn’t slated for any of the three Argyll guest ports for the cruise-in-company. She’ll have been going round the Mull and heading north, possibly for Stornoway where berthing would be easier or even straight to Lerwick.

And a quick check with Stephen Scally at the port of Campbeltown revealed that the two masted Netherlands schooner, Wylde Swan, came in at 07.00 this morning (13th July), with the two masted ketch from the Hamble, Rona 2, following her at 08.00. The single masted sloop, Tomidi from Belgium, is due in later today. So the ships with the most sail were the form,  doing best in the light airs.

Our wild goose chase down Kintyre last night may not have connected with any of Campbeltown’s three tall ships, but the Mir looked mysteriously spectacular and it was a privilege to have an excuse to drive the wildly contrasting and beautiful ring of Kintyre on a night like that.

NOTE: On further examination of images and descriptions, it cannot have been Mir we followed last night. Mir is a fully rigged ship – with yards on its third mast. The one we followed was a three masted barque. We’d be delighted of someone could identify her for us.