Dan's 1989 holidays

Summer 1989: “Lomond Heather II”, Loch Lomond Cruisers of Inverbeg

After a successful boating holiday the year before, where I had definately caught the boating bug we were off again in ‘89.

I’m not sure if this was from my pestering or because my parents had enjoyed it too, but either way I was pretty chuffed!

Sadly though, this was a much less brilliant holiday!

Our first choice was unavailable so we’d dug deep to go for “Lomond Heather II”, a 40ft 6/8 berth ‘Ideal 40‘ mould cruiser. After problems with our ever problematical Ford Escort we arrived quite late at the base and were not very impressed compared to the connotations the rather smart brochure exterior picture had given us! The exterior was faded and looked scruffy, and the interior was a rather unexciting but practical mix of brown vinyl upholstery, brown laminates and lino, completed by a rather huge burn mark!

The weather was a bit mixed and included some pretty rough and stormy weather, but sunshine was mixed in.

Loch Lomond was short of mooring spaces, especially for the 25 or so hire craft there, and the the limited cruising length made a week hard to fill with new cruising ground.

We repeated much the same ground each day, and moored nearly every night at Inverbeg.

My Sister’s were far from happy, admittedly their cabin floor being full of water one morning due to the boat being damaged by the previous crew didn’t help! I thought it was OK but somehow sensed we wouldn’t be wanting to return. It was no suprise when the company ceased trading at the end of the year. All of the boats were bought up by Richardsons of Stalham and transferred to their Norfolk Broads base.