Votes wanted for advert of the year

Not for the squeamish.

Doritos

New ships and the same old enemy

Not taken today!

9 days into my trip on the Caledonian Isles, ferrying folk and their cars, bread, post and pretty much everything else between the mainland at Ardrossan and Brodick, the main town on Arran.  A similar service in many ways to my last ship though the crossing time is 55 minutes, 15 minutes longer and we have half an hour to load and discharge rather than 14 minutes as on the Isle of Mull.

Similar service and ships but in a lot of respects very different as the layout of the passenger and crew accommodation is nothing like the Mull and the vehicle deck is quite dissimilar.  For my comfort my cabin is considerably bigger, though that isn't saying much given the cupboard that I lived in on the Isle of Mull.  The cabin here hasn't got the galley dumb waiter, hot press and pantry sink right next to my bed, nor is the galley directly underneath to warm the carpet up, all bonuses.

The vehicle deck on here however appears to have been designed by a naval architect with a sense of humour.  To be fair the design of the ship seems to have been changed while it was being constructed as casings added later run down both sides of the ship and protrude in by about a metre making life much more complicated and confined.  There are also two mezzanine decks that can drop down to take 48 cars half way up the space and a central casing dividing the deck which has an overhang that can take cars and Ford Transits but not if they have anything protruding up like a roof rack, and the height tapers as you go forward.  When the mezzanine deck is in place the height is halved as well and the locals suddenly need to park near the lift, avoiding the dreaded mezz deck as it will be the last to discharge whereas lift cars are on the main deck.

I also need to get my head round the local terminology, "Wullie NAC" is the driver of the North Ayrshire Council garbage disposal wagon at 19m and 40 odd tons and "Sticks" are timber wagons about 11m and 44 tons.  The information from my colleagues sometimes comes in drip form, oh aye you always load them first, you have to leave space up to the O in No Smoking on the bulkhead if you want to get him in, that's the escape hatch and you cannae put anything there and so on.  I'm sure in a year or two it will all be clear, others have been here before me and survived. 

Some things are the same, the weather is just as windy.  My first full day on here we didn't go anywhere due to a screaming North West gale and last night we spent in Brodick sheltering from the viscous storm passing through this weekend.  We did one sailing across to Ardrossan late afternoon today and some say they have never seen the ship moving about quite so much even when alongside.  Well the waves were going over the top of the lighthouse which is about 30 feet high.  Here's a video someone posted on Youtube.

Home on Wednesday for Christmas and then back on the 1^st before the ship heads North to Greenock for the annual dry dock in Garvel.  

First full day, didn't go anywhere

I'm here on the Caledonian Isles the ferry that has for the past twenty odd years taken folk back and forwards to Arran.  We stayed overnight in Ardrossan on the Ayr shore and the wind got up during the night to over 80 knots with an impressive swell coming through the harbour entrance.  We clearly couldn't sail first thing, actually we couldn't even stand upright when I was on the quay trying to sort the gangway out.  The situation was reviewed at 14:00 and as it was still gusting up to Force 10 we called the rest of the day off.  The good folk of Arran will have to wait for their fresh bread, newspapers and milk until tomorrow.  

Gave me a chance to look around and do some maintenance work on board which was useful.  On my last boat, the Isle of Mull, I mentioned how much I missed not having an opening porthole in the cabin.  I have on here but I'd just as soon not today anyway, as it leaks, over my bed unfortunately.