Tobermory to Wingfield Basin

July 19: We took it easy this morning, enjoyed our coffee and tea watching the traffic and savouring the cool air we had been missing for most of the trip so far. We made a trip to the grocery store for a well filled cart full of heavy groceries, especially drinks, then wheeled the cart all the way back to the boat along the docks. It was smoother than expected and we were very conscious that shopping carts could probably plunge as easily as young girls on bicycles, but there were no mishaps in either direction.

We topped off the tanks, then motored out for a look at Flower Pot Island. The island is unremarkable until you come around the corner where two flower pot stone formations show up really well from offshore. The view from the lake lets you see the geology as a whole, with many similar structures visible. Unfortunately it was a little lumpy out for pictures, so you'll have to look up the Five Fathom National Park website.

We tacked outside Bear's Rump Island, then back towards Wingfield. The 15+ NE gradually faded to zip and we motored the last few miles to get in by about 1800. We were sharing the basin with just two other boats until a third came in about 1900 as we were making dinner.

After dinner we dinghied over and explored the ruins of Gargantua, a huge wooden tug that apparently burned to the water line after being run aground in the basin. (Google says there was 20 years between the grounding and the fire, likely started by a careless sailor's BBQ in the early 1970s, which sort of takes the romance out of it.) With the water being so low, a lot of the structure is revealed above the water. There's a cottage on shore that looks directly out over the wreck, which must be interesting.




The wind is coming up now, but we are snug in a very well protected harbour.









July 20: With the wind still up from the east, we decided on another lazy day in harbour. More determined souls ventured out through the cut, but with reduced sail.




I spent the morning wiring up and playing with the circuitry designed to monitor the engine speed. For those who care, it's a voltage divider with a Zener diode to shape the decay waveform off the coil into a single TTL pulse per spark event. The result is something I can monitor with an Arduino micro controller to track and record, and even act on engine speed, temperature, oil pressure, etc. I have no good reason why, other than the idea of a computer monitored Atomic 4 being perversely amusing.

Laura spent the morning at least equally well, reading murder mysteries.

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