While the south sweltered in May, we went sailing in the Hebrides, where it was so cold and wet most of the time that we wore full winter thermals. That summary doesn’t do our mini-cruise justice, though, because we had some good sailing to interesting places.
We started with a vague idea of trying for the third time to get to St Kilda, 45 miles out in the Atlantic. So we planned to go to the Outer Hebrides in the hope that a weather window would emerge later in our fortnight on board, when the warm high pressure over the south of the UK moved north. In the event, it pushed a weak ridge north for the briefest of spells, then retreated again.
Since it was the first cruise of the season, we drove the 500 miles to Oban, instead of taking the train, and loaded the little ferry to Kerrera with a pile of boat gear and clothes. We then spent the first couple of days fitting out Spring Fever in between the showers, before heading up the Sound of Mull in alternating sun and rain for a brief stop at Tobermory.
We were beating and then motor-sailing into a northwesterly headwind whose direction bore little relation to the southwesterly everywhere else. Sometimes the wind blows one way at the south of the sound and the opposite way at the north, as it bends round the hills.
After a night on a buoy at Tobermory we headed for Canna, the most attractive of the Small Isles, just west of Skye, on a murky morning with an initially strong southwesterly Force 5 to 6 on the beam, giving us a good turn of speed.
As at Tobermory, we did not fancy the idea of inflating the dinghy in the rain, so we spent another night on a buoy, which sadly meant spurning the delights of the Canna Cafe’s sea-weed rich food. (Their recipe book is full of information about how to gather and cook different types of seaweed).
Next morning we left in a murky southerly Force 6 with gusts of 7 at times, with visibility down to less than half a mile, and headed north for Carbost in Loch Harport, Skye, home of the Talisker Distillery. There seemed no point in working too hard when a reefed Genoa alone got us going at 6 to 7 knots, so we did not bother raising the main.
Carbost has a long pontoon with finger pontoons attached. Facilities on them are non-existent, with no pontoon lights, water or electricity. There are showers in the village but they were out of order. That all sounds bleak, but the local volunteers who manage the pontoons are very helpful.
The village has a nice old fashioned pub, which we discovered over dinner had rather average food. During the day, the Talisker visitor centre was packed with tourists from all round the world; it sells Scotch from £46 a bottle up to £6,000.
There’s also an expensive restaurant run by the distillery, which was booked several days ahead, and the Oyster Shed 10 minutes walk up the hill, which suited us a lot better. The owner used to run an oyster farm that was wiped out by disease, and switched successfully to retail. The Shed sells raw or cooked oysters, soft shell crab, scallops with garlic, lobsters, langoustines, prawns and kippers. We went two days running for a delicious lunch, sitting at benches.
There were bluebells everywhere in the lanes near Carbost, and we also noticed that wherever we stopped in the Hebrides there was always a persistent cuckoo near our mooring.
Finally, on a cold, damp and windy Sunday morning, we decided to wait in Carbost no longer, because the brief forecast window of good weather for St Kilda had shrunk, and was now only from Tuesday to Thursday. Monday’s weather forecast looked worse than Sunday’s, so there was no point in waiting. We needed to be in Lochmaddy on North Uist to be in easy reach of the Sound of Harris, the passage through to the Atlantic.
The south-westerly wind would be funnelling straight into the Loch Harport entrance as we left, so we had no illusions about what it would be like – banging into short steep waves, hit by strong gusts off the cliffs, of which the worst were registering Force 7 apparent over the boat. That’s a true Force 6 plus our 6 to 7 knots speed to windward. As an old but fast cruiser-racer, Spring Fever leaps into action with that sort of weather, double reefed on main and genoa.
Once we were out, and well clear of the entrance, we were away from the funneling effect of the cliffs, and we settled down for the rest of the lively 45 miles to Lochmaddy. It was another murky day with poor visibility, and we arrived at a time of sudden violent gusts. We moored on a pontoon next to the ferry terminal.
Lochmaddy in the wind and rain is a touch bleak, but there is some grand, sweeping scenery when you can see it. The village has a marina with shower, lavatory and washing machines, a shop which also has a diesel pump where cans may be filled for boats, and a big, friendly hotel where we had dinner in the bar.
There we studied the updated forecast: that nice weather window was shrinking again. It now lasted from Tuesday morning to the middle of Thursday, when it began to break down into a rainy south-westerly 5 to 7 which would blow all Friday.
St Kilda’s harbour is a half circle bay, fully exposed from east through south to southwest to wind, waves and long distance Atlantic swells. If swells are too big, landing a dinghy could be difficult, even if the local wind-driven waves are modest. The forecast westerly swell would refract round into the bay, with 2.4 metres predicted for Tuesday, dropping only slowly the next day. The wind forecast also turned easterly after a while, far from ideal for getting back again. With the swell forecast and the continual shortening of the weather window we decided not to try, and instead to use the next couple of days of better weather to visit Barra, the southernmost of the Outer Hebrides.
On a sunny morning with cold but light winds – the first good weather we had had – we motor-sailed 45 miles down the coast and moored on a pontoon in the marina at Castle Bay, the main settlement on the island. (Pontoons, not anchoring, were out preference this time, since Tony had a new knee and I had a new hip, both installed over the winter).
The Reformation did not reach Barra, which is still a Roman Catholic stronghold with a large Victorian church, built to replace the old one at a time when Castle Bay was one of the richest and most important herring fishing ports in Britain; the bay is still lined with the foundations of gutting and salting factories.
We left Barra on another bright but cold morning, with light winds, so we motor-sailed much of the way across the Sea of the Hebrides back to Tobermory. As we entered the sheltered bay in front of the village, the temperature shot up to the low twenties, the sun came out and we were briefly down to shirtsleeves for the first time since we arrived.
Next day, we headed back down the Sound to Kerrera and Oban. On the way we were passed by two boats which we had seen anchored off Kerrera before we started out the week before: they were Mogambo, a 77 meter super-yacht belonging to Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp, and its 55 meter helicopter tender Power Play. It’s interesting what you can discover through the AIS automatic identification system we have on board.
Koum’s other yacht, Moonrise, is much bigger, at 100 meters, and it has it’s own helicopter tender. The beauty of Scotland is enough to attract the super-rich away from the Med and the Caribbean in spite of the cold, though I guess the air conditioning kept everything at a lovely temperature, so they only had to enjoy the view.
Back in Kerrera, we found the mainland temperature stilll 8 or 10 degrees higher than in the Outer Hebrides, but with the wind building and heavy rain due soon. Dinner at the Waypoint restaurant was a good way of signing off the fortnight.
LIke most first cruises after layup, a few problems were revealed. The marina will replace the unreliable bow navigation lights with new LEDs, and install a new masthead VHF aerial. The current one is 18 years old and we think it is deteriorating because performance is not as good as it ought to be. When we return in July, Spring Fever should be ready for the 700 miles back to the south coast.
We were disappointed that we did not get to St Kilda, but the underlying reason is that our recent cruises have been limited by many other commitments to just a couple of weeks, so our chances in any given holiday of catching a long enough weather window to go out in the Atlantic to an exposed anchorage are not that high. A lot of sailors in the Hebrides spend far longer on their cruises.
tide by tide 