Ben Nevis and the Caledonian Canal

I am now a bit out of order. I left the boat in Mallaig on Friday 24 May to head home for a week via Fort William. Internet connection has been a big problem so I could not write up the last week, a spectacular few days spend between the Outer and Inner Hebrides including a trip to the infamous Couillins. I cannot do it now as I have left the photos on the boat, I will do it upon my return to the boat.

I had an uncomfortable blowy 24 hours in Mallaig but got all the jobs done and hopped on a 6am train for Fort William with a fine forecast. Was I really going to see the top of Ben Nevis? It was a wonderful train journey, 4 hours through the most stunning Highland scenery of mountains and lochs, much of it following the West Highland Way.

When I got to Fort William 'The Ben' still had his head in the cloud so with a clear day forcast for the following day I hired a bike and set off up the Caledonian Canal in beautiful sunshine. What a place! AND the midges still hadn't cottoned on to the fact it was May (they had obviously decided that one swallow does not make a spring!)

This is the Ben Nevis range (note the snow which came down on the miserable Thursday I had in Mallaig - the midges must also have clocked the temperature!)


The canal, built in the early 1800's by Thomas Telford to get shipping from one side of Scotland to the other without going round the much feared Cape Wrath (see blog in a few weeks time!!) starts with a series of  8 locks lifting small ships and boats up from the west coast sea loch to Loch Lochy, up again into Loch Ness then down into the sea again at Inverness.



Once up the locks and after 4 miles of canal the waterway opens up into Loch Lochy.














There were splendid views of Ben Nevis; note the shear (dark) north (left) side of Ben Nevis - more later.











Saturday dawned with a beautiful clear sky, I am told one of only about 10 days a year that the Ben has its head out of the clouds - I'd earned this,  I was on for Ben Nevis! Ben Nevis is the largest mountain in the British Isles. After a beautiful start from the valley floor the walk itself is a bit of a grind, a 4400' climb from almost sea level, much of it snaking up the south face walking mostly on scree.

The view from the top however are something different altogether! I reached the snow line at about 3500' and the views of the surrounding mountains started to open up, sadly a camera does not do justice.










On the summit you soon sea why this is such a dangerous mountain which does claim several lives each year. The 'path' (completely covered in a staggering 1.5 metres of snow) goes within 6' of a 500' shear drop that you could see on the earlier photo, look behind me!

The walk was 3 hours up and 2 down of actual walking time with a very nice snooze half way down next to a pretty lake at lunchtime.

I am now off home to spend a few days with my long suffering wife which I am looking forward to very much. I am heading back up on Saturday 1 June with Mike to set off for the second half of the west coast of Scotland.

The Outer Hebrides

I left Skye for the Outer Hebrides with a brisk breeze 

behind me and a promising looking day. Sailing past some huge sea cliffs I was looking hard for a pair of Sea Eagles that I had been told nest there, the biggest of eagles with a wingspan of a massive 8’ but sadly there was no sign of them. 

There was an angry looking sky behind me but all was well ahead; the sun came out and I had a lovely sail for the 30 miles to North Uist, roughly in the middle of the 100 mile long string of islands that are the Outer Hebrides. I dropped anchor in a lovely shallow inlet. The evening was beautiful, the sea oily calm, the sun reflecting off the water and the only company a bunch of squawking sea gulls and the nattering of terns as they swoop around me; tranquillity indeed.

I telephoned ashore this afternoon in search of a physio. I triggered a spasm in my back a couple of weeks ago. Despite many attempts by both Rob and David to ease it, the spasm stubbornly resists. Now that I have no one to rub it (which did help) it is getting worse and I am starting to find it difficult to move about the boat. There is no private physio on the islands so I have got hold of the local hospital (NHS) and after much blagging and despite being told that it is highly irregular I have an appointment to see an NHS physio!

The next day I was on my bike at 7 o’clock on a beautiful morning (after a very early night unable to keep my eyes open after tea!). Is the summer here? A 40 mile circuit took me round most of North Uist. Rocks and peat bogs dominate the islands but they have a remote beauty about them; a funny mixture of harsh rocks on the east coast and island beauty on the Atlantic west coast with green field, cows, sheep and golden sand beaches.

An old crofters house that has been renovated.

Rush hour on North Uist,                                                   and a sign less usual!

These fellows may need a hair cut but there was definitely a feeling of 'don't mess with me' about them.

I was back for my afternoon physio appointment at the hospital on Benbecula. She has diagnosed a pulled muscle (it doesn’t feel like that to me) and recommends a few days rest, yeh right!

Nigel, a friend from university was due fly out to Benbecula and join me but has had to cancel due to work issues sadly so I have pulled up the anchor and headed out for South Uist. The forcast was the standard ‘force 5-7’ which usually produces a force 6. Within an hour it was gusting force 7 with white caps all around me and spume starting to be blown of the wave tops. I was running with the wind so it doesn’t feel so strong but it was starting to become quite a sleigh ride; an hour later it was gusting force 8 and getting a little too thrilling! I pulled in to South Uist somewhat relieved to be out of the sea way but the wind was still whistling through the anchorage. 

I dropped the anchor which happily took first time (thank goodness for a seriously over sized anchor!) and we began swinging like a mad thing as the wind  picked up still further and  Moondance did the little dance around her anchor that she does in a gale. She swings 45 degrees one way as the wind grabs her head, gets pulled up by the anchor then swings 45 degrees the other way, rolling from side to side 10-15 degrees as she goes with the rigging clattering in the wind, its quite a cacophony. The ferry turned back; it didn't like the look of mooring alomgside the pier when it looked like this!

This is the worst gale I have sat out to date. As gusts came down from the mountain that I was sheltered behind the water was whipped up and whisked by me.
Even the water in the anchorage is white with the wind blowing a fairly steady 35-40+ knots (force 8/9).

The wind started picking up the dinghy (secured to the back of the boat) and flipping it over, that’s a first. Tying it in really close behind the boat seems to have stopped it. It’s all pretty spectacular but a bit scary too. I had hoped to go ashore to find a pub with some live music but I wasn't  going anywhere unless this wind abated an awful lot!

It had calmed to 15 knots by the next morning. An inspection of the boat revealed 2 minor casualties. The dinghy had lost its wooden seat whilst being turned upside down (goodness knows how it had come out, it is a two man job to get it in it is so tight a fit) but I found it in the seaweed after scouring the downwind shoreline.

The second casualty was the bow line, used to take the strain off the anchor chain, it had chaffed through its protection, put there to stop the rope chaffing through. It is 2mm thick reinforced tubing, such is the power of chaffing in strong winds. I met a local fellow who said the gale was the worst he had seen in a while; that is saying something for up here!

Fruits de Mer for tea; mussels from the pier and mackerel from off the headland!

Mull, Rum and a trip to Skye

While the gale blows over I will go for a walk, find the highest point near to me on Mull and see what a force 8 feels like at 600 ft. Good plan? Hmm. I got rained on, hailed on and even sunned on, not to mention pretty well blown off my feet! Still, it was nice to be walking again. I saw several groups of deer, prolific on the islands (venison seems to be their staple meat). Despite the wind the afternoon turned out to be nice; I diverted my walk to visit Glengorm Castle, not a bad pad for the Laird of Mull!

Tuesday 14 May I awoke to the pitter patter of rain on the cabin roof. Some say that it’s a nice sound when you are snug in you bunk. Aaaarrrgh! I dragged myself out in temperatures way too low to sustain human life (well spirit anyway), able to see my breath in the cabin. The forcast was for a brisk westerly with strong northerlys following it so I wanted to get north before having to fight headwinds.

Happily the rain soon stopped and despite angry skys to the south there were blue skys to the north. Was I going to be chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Well I found it, 4 hours of sunshine, marvellous! I took off my woolly hat and winter mits, mistake, they soon went back on. Its so cold!!

The island of Rum appeared on the horizon; its quite a lump of rock rising over 2000’  up from the sea flanked by Eigg, Muck and Canna, collectively known as the ‘Small Isles’.

I sailed between Rum and Canna, two stunningly beautiful islands. I very much want to stop and explore but I need to get up to Skye to beat the forthcoming northerly winds; I will visit on my way back across from the Hebrides.

30 miles north was Skye, the Cuillin Mountains soaring straight up 3000’ out of the sea; sadly they were shrouded in cloud by the time I got there. I arrived at Skye after an 8 hour sail to some angry skys, passing Talisker, the distillery, in a spectacular spot. 

The wind dropped right off so I pulled out the fishing rod, unsuccessful to date, score!! Not only are the mackerel back in from their wintering grounds but they are now on my plate!
The first of the season are always the tastiest. The wind then picked up from the north as forcast, the sun came back out and I had a lovely sunny run into the lock as I had a bowl of piping hot rhubarb crumble and custard, lovely! I anchored at the head of the loch with the Cuillins behind me, now completely lost in the cloud; hopefully I’ll get to see them sometime!

The next day I did 30 miles on the bike, up to the base of the Couillins, over to the east coast of Skye and back over the hills. A tough ride in windy and showery conditions. In the chilly morning the Cuillins were showing their lower 1000’, the upper part of which was newly covered in snow;  it’s chilly here!

Iona and a touch of serenity

We set off for Iona this morning (Saturday 12.5), still blowing like stink and still raining. I can manage without sunshine but the rain is starting to get to me. May is supposed to be the driest month, what does that make the rest like! It wasn’t far and two hours sail saw us anchored in Iona Sound.

St Columba arrived here on a currach in 500AD and brought Christianity from Ireland to the Druid Picts of Scotland. Moondance arrived on 11 May 2013 and I’m afraid that all I brought was two bags of rubbish! It is a lovely place; there is a serenity perhaps brought on by its religious past. St Columba founded a monastery and turned Iona into a place of pilgrimage. The monastery was razed time after time by the brutal Vikings who murdered many of the monks over and over again but a new monastery was built in 1203 which still stands today.

In the 1500’s a beautiful abbey was built with a very pretty cloistered court yard.

There are many Celtic crosses on the island. The Druid symbol of Bel (the shining God), a circle, was incorporated into the Christian cross to become the Celtic cross, no doubt to placate the die hard Duids, St Columba was a good salesman!

My pilgrimage seems to have done some good as it did bring the sun out by late afternoon as we sailed away leaving Iona in our wake.

When you can see it the scenery round here is stunning. 

There is a mountain on the other side of the Lock in which we are anchored that rises sheer from the sea perhaps a thousand feet with water cascading down its front in two spectacular water falls, their feeding streams snaking their way down from the mountains upper slopes.

The plan for Sunday was to sail out to Tiree on the Inner Hebrides, drop Dave to get a plane home and then for me to sail on to Bara, the most southern of the Outer Hebridean Isles. We woke up to another rainy morning and a forcast ‘southery force 4-6, veering westerly 6-8 possibly 9’. These waters are not for the faint hearted! Southerly 4-6 would have done nicely but westerly would have been on the nose and at force nine the only sensible place to be is in the pub. There is not a good enough anchorage on Tiree to sit out a gale so we headed back north for a wet 4 hours return sail to Tobermorey where Dave can get a bus and train to Glasgow. Well at least we are back to Tobermory's nice pub (excellent Scallops)!

My next crew, Nigel, a friend from university days has run into a problem at work; hopefully he will be able to make it for next weekend. In the meantime I will now head north to Skye.

The day Dave went for a swim (but forgot to take his clothes off)

We had a cracking sail up to Tobermory, wind, flat water and even a bit of sun. We ripped past the Loch leading up to Fort William and Ben Nevis (sadly buried in the cloud) but past our first Scottish castle on the way, Duart Castle. Tobermory is a pretty place, its lovely colourful houses now a trademark.

Friday 10 May was a beautiful morning, flat calm and sunny with a forecast of more of the same. We were up at 6 as we had a long day planned; the blue sky calling us to weigh anchor from Tobermory. Two hours later…… yes, it was raining (but it was late afternoon before our force 6 returned). 

Our first stop was the island of Staffa, a few miles off the west coast of Mull and home to Fingal’s cave, named for an Irish warrior who helped defend the Hebrides against the marauding Vikings and made famous by the composer Mendelssohn who was inspired by the cave to write his Hebrides overture. The island has a band of 12m high basalt hexagonal columns rising out of the sea, in parts the columns have been twisted into dramatic and contorted shapes. This is the result of the same volcanic activity that created the Giants Causeway on the north coast of Ireland that I visited last year. 

The rock is almost black, the columns hexagonal shape is caused by slow cooling volcanic lava. The cave is cut into the cliffs columns.

An hours brisk sail north (in the rain) took us the rather wonderfully named Treshnish Isles, the principal island, Lunga, being home to a colony of Puffins. We anchored close to the shore for a short dinghy ride to the rock strewn beach (in the rain). When we went ashore at Staffa, Dave had almost come to grief boarding the dinghy because he had stepped into the dinghy but still held his weight by hanging on to the pier, a natural enough but somewhat hazardous reaction to climbing aboard a flimsy dinghy. The dinghy of course is pushed outwards by the weight on his feet and he is left hanging on as his body angle increases and the gap between dinghy and pier gets larger; cause of much hilarity but asking for an unplanned dip. At Lunga I encouraged Dave to commit to the dinghy, not hang about in no mans land and commit he did! He jumped, landed squarely in the dinghy, which proceeded to skid sideways with the impact and Dave flopped backwards into the drink!

I can report that automatic inflating life jackets do work; Dave popped up with a florescent collar inflated round his neck spluttering somewhat. He grabbed the side of the dinghy (rather worryingly it became immediately apparent that he would be unable to climb back into the dinghy with an inflated lifejacket bulging in front of him and there was no way to quickly deflate the jacket). A combination of me rowing and him paddling with one hand got him the 2 metres back to the boat where he was able to haul himself back on board using the stern swim ladder. A little shaken (but not stirred) he declared that I had had my swim (a few days previously on ‘the’ sunny day) and it was his turn! 

Shortly after the boat resembled a Chinese laundry!

Dave was wringing out his clothes I went ashore to see the Puffins. It is breeding season and there were hundreds of Puffins lining the cliff top guarding their nests. They dig nests in the soil along a band up to 10’ back from the cliff edge, about 6” down and going at least 12” down and horizontally. There was a lot of toing and froing with twigs and other nest like stuff.

They are very endearing creatures, looking at you with their brightly coloured beaks and a slightly cocked head as if you are a little mad!

My new anchor is fantastic. Each time we have lifted it I have been unable to pull it out with the very powerful winch and have had to drive it out with the engine. Very encouraging; good news indeed.

A little more wind and a little more drama

Rob left us on Sunday morning in beautiful sunshine; Dave and I set sail back for Mull in 12 knots of wind, things were looking up, but not for long, this is Scotland! Half an hour out the rain started and the wind picked up. We went back to Lock Spelve from where we planned to take the bikes ashore and do some exploring, in particular taking a look at a couple of castles. We dropped anchor and the scene was set for the next little drama. By 6pm the wind was gusting down the glen at the head of the lock at 30-40 knots (force 8)  with the boat doing her usual dance around her anchor in these conditions. I then noticed a change in motion and looked out of the window, oh dear, we were now in the middle of the lock and moving at a knot or so towards a lee shore, not good. Foul weather gear donned (yes, this is Scotland, it was raining) we picked up the anchor to try again. This was very worrying; you really do have to have absolute faith in your anchor. We had sat out 3 gales in Ireland last year without ever dragging and yet this was the second time in a week in the Scottish lochs, something is different here. We dropped the anchor again without success, picked it up and tried again in much shallower waters. This time the anchor never even tried and on pulling up the anchor we found we had picked up a shed load of weed and a pretty hefty branch from a sunken tree which was going to take some removing; to all intents and purposes we now had no anchor until we could get to the bow in the dinghy to sort the mess and that was not going to happen that night! Fortunately there were several moorings nearby which, judging by the size of the mooring lines were made for some serious vessels, the mussel boats I suspect. It was quite a drama even trying to pick up the rope from the bouy in 40 knot gusts of wind, it took us half an hour to pick up a rope and secure ourselves.

The following morning I went to chat up a couple of other yachts that had also been at anchor about the anchoring problems I had experienced . They were locals and said the problem was the Scottish loch mud which does not give the holding power of sand or good thick estuary ooze and the solution was a seriously over sized anchor and even more chain than the 40 metres I carry, so, off we trotted to find a seriously over sized anchor from a chandlery 4 hours sail away.

Double whammy, they had the required seriously over sized anchor and it was a very pretty place (AND the local pub did a very fine ale and dinner!) The shiny anchor on the right of the two is the new one, 33kg against my old one at 20kg and rated to take a boat 30% bigger than Moondance,  overkill makes for a good nights sleep! As well as the extra weight it has a much bigger surface area and a better shape to dig into the mud. The front of the boat needed a small adjustment  to take said seriously over sized anchor (being seriously over sized) but now, I hope, we are set for some evenings without added excitement!
The small adjustment turned into 2 days worth of adjustment, removing the whole anchor carrier from the front of the boat and getting the marina's fabricator to weld on some new cheeks to lower the roller.

On Thursday 9 May we set out again to resume our adventure with the now regarded as friendly force 6 behind us and taking us between the islands at a cracking pace up to Tobemory at the north end of the island and it hardly rained! 

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Fuel problems and a little drama

After a windy night in Loch Tarbert we set out for Mull and the second drama in 10 days! An hour out the wind died completely so we started to engine. It wasn’t long before it died. I have a problem with polluted fuel that I am in the process of dealing with that involves adding chemicals to the tank, the pollution gets dissolved and gets caught in the fuel filters. The downside is that the filters soon get blocked and need changing regularly  it seemed that the bug had beaten me to it, no matter, change the filters, an operation I have performed several times and off we go again; sadly it wasn’t that simple. Having changed the filters I couldn’t get the fuel to come through, the little hand pump was pumping fresh air and I didn’t know why. Now we had a problem, no wind, no engine and drifting ½ mile off a rocky shore. Time to call the cavalry. I put out a call to the coastguard on the radio, no answer, the had some big hills between us and him and VHF radio is line of sight, the problem just got bigger. However, over the horizon sailed our saviour in the form of a big square rigged sailing ship, Stavros Emarcos (which I think is the ship I took my sister Jenny on for a day for her 50^th birthday!).

Not only could I call her but she would probably have an engineer on board. I did and they did! They put him in a boat and sent him over while they stood by. It took us half an hour but he did get the engine going, showing me how to prime the pump to help the fuel through and left with profuse thanks. Sadly that wasn’t the end of the tale; within 10 minutes the engine had died again. By this time the wind was back up and we were heading the same way as the Stavros so we sailed in company while I tried again with the engine again and again and again, 5 times I got it started as the engineer had showed me and then died again, I was now scratching my head and more than a little concerned.

The engineer had misdiagnosed the problem. After much head scratching, discussion with Rob (who had taken the helm through all this) and sucking of diesel by mouth to determine where I had fuel flow and where I did not (the taste was repeating on me for many hours afterwards!) I dismantled the fuel filtration system (something I should have thought of from the start but then hindsight is a wonderful thing) and found a blob of black gunge in the pipe connection to the filter housing. Now that could be the problem! Start her up again, cross fingers and wait. 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10, 15 – we had cracked it and with a major sigh of relief headed for Mull and a very large dose of  wine!

We anchored overnight in Loch Spelve on the east coast of Mull. The entrance to the loch is a narrow channel, about half way in we nearly ran over a sea otter who quickly swam out of our way rolled onto his back and gave us the eye whilst chomping on whatever was for tea held in his mouth. The loch is full of mussel farms so we collected our mussel scrumping gear and had a large bowl of fresh mussels to help our large dose of wine on its way; everything was looking better with the world!

Saturday was another windy damp day. We sailed over to Oban in the now standard issue force 6 and went ashore for supplies and to pick up David Munden, my next crew member. 

Isle of Man to Jura

Rob and I had another windswept trip to Ireland in a force 6 arriving at a Lough north of  Belfast after a chilly 8 hours. The following day the winds veered northerly so rather than fight a headwind we stayed put and had a day in Belfast. We did the Titanic museum and a bus tour centered mostly around the areas of the Troubles. Although Belfast is a run down city having had no investment for the 30 years of the troubles on the grounds that your investment would get blown up the are now few signs of those troubled times; I saw much more evidence in Londonderry last year. The only remaining monument to the troubles is a 'peace wall' built between a catholic and protestant area to stop them hurling missiles at each other. It still remains because the residents still feel safer with it up than down.



Belfast brought us our first sunshine, breakfast in the cockpit no less! A sign of things to come? No such luck! Our force 6 came back with a vengence and is still with us nearly a week later although we have had our share of sunshine thrown in.
The next leg was up the coast to the top of Ireland, past the beautiful Mull of Kintyre and on to a stop at Rathlin island where we were greeted by a flock of beautiful Eider ducks (as in Eider down)




From Rathlin to Islay and our first taste of Scotland, the Laphroag distillery (there are a total of 7 on the island!).The trade mark of the island whiskys is that the barley is smoked with smoke from peat fires, you could taste the smoke throughout the process and certainly in the finished product, many varieties of which were tasted! Sadly it doesn't do it for me; it tastes like it would make good toilet cleaner but its a tad expensive at £35 to £230 per bottle! My sister Caroline (something of a whisky fan) is now the proud owner of one square foot of the Laphroag estate for which she gets rent of one small bottle of whisky, but you have to go and collect it in person!

This years rent is partly consumed, a necessary part of establishing Caroline's new real estate!

 

We left Islay for Jura after our whisky session (force 6!) and were joined for half an hour by a couple of dolphins, beautiful creatures.

And here is another not quite so graceful creature fully dressed for battle; there is no such thing as bad weather as long as you've got good gear!

 Islay and its neighbour Jura are very harsh and barren. Heather, peat bog and rock make up the entire islands, and some very big hills! 

There were some beautiful views from the top.