Sunday, September 18, 2011

Tall Ships Festival: Dunoon, day 2, part 1

I talked about Day One in Dunoon in my last entry, leaving off just as we boarded the ferry to Gourock, on our way to see Royalist and the other tall ships at last.

It was a beautiful clear sunny day, with a wind just cool enough to keep it from being unpleasantly hot. On the top deck of the ferry, we discovered that the walkway went right round the bows under the bridge. Going forward, we saw this cruising along the far bank:

Ketch
I thought she looked rather odd with her straight bow and curving stern. I wouldn't go as far as to say she is ugly - I don't believe any vessel with sails is ever really ugly - but she certainly looked business like. I thought from here that she was actually very modern, but that's just an illusion because of her new masts and spars; she's actually from around the late 1800s or early 1900s, and her design was actually pioneered in Aberdeen. This sort of vessel was used for fishing. Although, I didn't learn that until two or three weeks later, when we stopped in Aberdeen on the way home from Shetland, having visited Lerwick as the next port of call on the Tall Ships race.

Looking downriver, we could see right out to see, past both Arran and Cumbrae (Arran's the lumpy one on the right):
Out to sea

On the other side, we could see up Loch Long:
Loch Long