Got up at about 6:20 today and decided we would head out, aiming for Rathlin island but possibly changing our course depending on the weather. We helped Arran off in the morning on his little Vancouver called Badger and left relatively soon after him. We had some really great sailing today. Had the mainsail on second reef and 2/3 of the fore sail out for 3 hours then later took the second reef out the mainsail and had it fully up which allowed us to sail at a solid 7-9 knots for a couple hours. We saw how much the leeway and tide affected us today as when we set off from Port Ellen we were pointing towards Rathlin island however we only just weathered the Mull of Kintyre. We decided that we would go to Glenarm instead of Rathlin due to the weather and tide. We tried to tack across towards Glenarm from near the end point of the Mull of Kintyre however our speed over ground wasn’t passing 3 knots really. We decided to then motor-sail the rest of the way which was about another 3-4 hours. 
Going across the north channel we had some huge Atlantic swells with some reaching upwards of 6 metres in hight. In the troughs of them was like a kind of wind shadow where the boat got a bit de powered. When we had the full main sail up it was a fight to stop the boat rounding to wind which was a good laugh on the tiller. At some points we were going along with the rail on the deck basically submerged. Very thrilling. 
We made it safely to Glenarm and had a couple beers in the sun. Currently sat in the saloon with a hot chocolate ready to go to sleep soon.

Port Ellen to Glenarm

Crew: 2

Crew Logs

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