Carra Tidings

20^th June

We awoke to the steady drumming of rain on the deck, which wasn’t conducive to going sailing. Plus there was next to no wind so it was a rather lazy start to the day, breakfast in the cockpit – 3 cheers for the cockpit tent. We watched the optimist ‘match racing’- well drifting to be precise. It is fantastic to see how the island is set up – it has a 4 little Oppies for kids of the club to sail. By lunch time the rain had stopped and finally the sun came out.

We explored the other half of the island – which was covered in blueberry bushes which will be ready for picking in about a month or so. We were just watching the world go by when the Club Captain came by to talk to us – so we now have a good understanding of how the Island functions. He also gave us some good advice –stay out of anything marked blue on the chart unless you are mooring. We have certainly landed on out feet when we picked the marina – particularly as when we put our names down on the waiting list we had no idea about the club’s island.

The Bastu or Sauna like in Finland is a great tradition. There is private one on the island but the common one is floating, which is a clever way of avoiding the building regulations which prevents any new building within 300m of the shore. Our British visitors (and Mags) will be pleased to note swimming costumes are worn in this one as it is open to all.

The mid summer pole should have gone up yesterday – but the weather was miserable so they had the ceremony today – with children singing and dancing round the pole. Where as yesterday most had stayed on their boats prior to the party – today with the better weather the club element became much more apparent as the island came to life. It was lovely just to relax on the boat after our hectic travels earlier to get to Sweden.