Phun Cruise 2011: Sunday 18 September 2011 – Ardfern to Loch Craignish via Lussa Bay

A fine day with reasonable forecast but low pressure. We decided to sail down the Sound of Jura with the tide and then come back again. It seemed as if it would be a broad reach down there and close-hauled coming back. We took a look at the Dorus Mor and as there was not much tide against us, went through and continued South down the other side of the islands. The tide ran quite fast with various swirly bits but always smooth. Making good speed with the following tide we selected Lussa Bay as our lunch stop as we would have enough time for a trip ashore.

We followed a wooden fishing boat style yacht into the bay and found an elegant old gaff cutter already anchored there. Whilst we were getting lunch ready a dinghy came from the gaffer and offered us a big pan of prawns. The man from the gaffer was taking a small charter party for a day sail and had over-catered, so we readily accepted the prawns. After a generous lunch we took a quick trip ashore and met the charter party coming back. They said we could have tea at the top of the beach. We thought they were joking as although Jura is a large island it is very wild and empty and there were only a handful of cottages around the bay. It seemed impossible that one of these could be a tea shop. However there was a table at the top of the beach labelled “Tea on the Beach”. On the table was a menu and a walkie-talkie radio, so we ordered our tea and cakes, which arrived quite quickly. What a brilliantly simple way to run a tea shop – there were not even any chairs!

The other boats had left so there was plenty of room for us to sail away from the anchorage and find that the wind had backed so we had a reach all the way back. The wind held almost all the way back to Ardfern where we dropped off Chris and Anna and just had enough light left to pick up a mooring in “The Lagoon”. Follow the track on Google Maps.