We moaned about the Kyle facilities before and that hasn’t changed, but without a doubt the star of the show is Hughie  the pontoon manager who lives aboard his small motor cruiser there during the season. He is endlessly cheerful and helpful, always ready to take mooring lines and by the time we had landed he had already got 60L of diesel waiting for us. Great service, thanks Hughie.

The night is indeed rough but the morning brings some calmer weather and we meet Lyn and Ashley from the 11.30 train from Inverness, having travelled up on the sleeper. They must have crossed unseen paths with Chris in the night. With dreary drizzly weather we look around Kyle while waiting for the tide through Kyle Rhea…this doesn’t take long…sorry Kyle we wish you luck and better times.

We take the tide and sail for the first half an hour or so before turning into the inevitable headwind through Kyle Rhea. Even in the mist and gloom, the majesty of sailing between the imposing slopes of Skye on one side and the mainland on the other is inspiring. As the narrows open out, we get tantalising glimpses of peaks and glens which then disappear back into the gloom.

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Our destination tonight is Armedale on Skye where Brian and Anne are also waiting to meet us. They call us on VHF in the proper manner…”Heydays, Heydays Heydays this is the yacht Skoling, over.” This results in an immediate and  concerned  response from the Stornaway coastguard, before they realise that Heydays is a yacht and not a misheard emergency call. Perhaps we should change the name of our boat…

We spend a great evening with Brian and Anne who come over for some snacks, bringing with them a tin of Haggis which delights John and Yee Tak. They have written out for us a wonderful list of great anchorages (complete with details of un-published showers) and have taken such great care of us ever since we first met them in Peterhead last Autumn. We shall miss them as we trundle inexorably south and hope that they too will come south some time so we can repay their kindness.

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The wind would take us easily to Stornaway and we are tempted to follow one of the other boats there in a blast up the Minch. However time and trains etc. so we plan a motor across the sound to have a look at Portree, before a nice fetch in a promised south westerly out of the sound and over to Plockton. The wind is strong and once out of our cosy inlet we start plugging a heavy sea building from the south. We hug the coast of Raasay for shelter before scuttling across to Portree.

The intention is for a quick lunch then on….in the event, rainy squalls sweeping in across the mountains help us decide to stay in Portree and explore. Plenty of time to get the train from Kyle tomorrow!

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Tuesday 23 May…What a glorious day to be alive…

The motor runs only briefly this morning, just to get us off the mooring (OK we could have sailed off…) and then we sail with a wonderful sou’westerly out from Portree, down past Raasay and then slipping across the top of Scalpay before the Skye bridge beckons once more. Just west of the bridge we join up our dots when we left Kyle with Chris just a few short days ago, having circumnavigated Raasay and Rona. Until now, most of our UK circumnavigation has been passage planning, but it has been great to have had a chance to just cruise and explore some of the most beautiful scenery  we have seen. Chris has said that at times it reminds her of her old homeland of British Columbia, with the starkness of both rock and wooded hills plunging into a (cold!) sea.

Footnote: This is being written as Chris begins the journey south again and we are trying to cheer John up with a particularly fine chocolaty dark beer.

We need to start making some general move towards our eventual date with a train at Kyle, but winds are all in the south (ish). Brian and Anne on Skoling have recommended Acarseid Mhor on Rona and we can at least get most of the way there under sail. A double reefed main and full genoa has Heydays shooting out of the Loch at over 7 knots in a steady force 5 with gusts across the deck over 30knots. We consider a smaller genny but Heydays is taking it all in her stride. Skye in front, Rona to port, the Hebrides off to starboard in the distance. Only occasionally does Heydays bury her nose in a breaker, then shake it off all over us in a glorious surge of speed and spray.

The entry into the tiny harbour is tortuous and rocky, but inside all is peace and tranquillity with just another 4 boats already anchored.

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The visitors mooring buoy is vacant and we pick it up for the night, glad to pay the £10 to the caretaker at the lodge. In the centre of the little inlet is an island, home to dozens of seals and a few birds. As the evening draws on, they muck about in the water and several come over and check us out  as we make our way back from a walk on Rona itself.

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There are only two people who live here, plus a couple of holiday cottages, one of which is occupied at the moment by the island’s owner (Mrs Jensen from Denmark). The track across the island is very hilly but 45 minutes gets us to the now abandoned settlement in the centre. One barn has been re-roofed in corrugated sheeting and has a few old artefacts and some newspaper cuttings together with some old pictures of the long-gone inhabitants. It has a rather sad feel in many ways and a reminder of how vulnerable the old ways of living are to modern pressures…not for us, but still a sense of loss.

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On the way back to the boat, a red deer eyes us cautiously from among the trees, almost perfectly camouflaged in his domain. Of the rest of his herd (we assume he is not alone) there is no sign, although the Lodge sells freezer pack of venison…!

This is truly a magical place and we feel lucky and privileged to be able to come here with just us and at most a dozen others on the island.

With south or south easterlies forecast we decide to hop a short distance back up to Loch Gairloch. We stopped there on the way down but didn’t get ashore and it looked like a beautiful place to go and explore. The engine is on just long enough to give the batteries a quick charge and then we have just the sound of water …and the kettle whistling. A glorious sail with the wind over the quarter and very soon we are making the turn into Loch Gairloch. We’ve learnt our lesson and have booked ahead for our dinner in the Badachro Inn. Just as well as they are almost fully booked. The rain doesn’t really dampen our spirits, even a wet ride in the tender to the pub is still an adventure. With the last of the evening light we wander around Badachro…it doesn’t take long and then putter across the loch back to Heydays.

No alarms, no rush to get going, just a leisurely breakfast and sunrise over the loch. After a few bits of paperwork brought from home and a bit of postcard writing, we trundle ashore in the dinghy to post stuff.

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We avoid putting Miss Naughty stamps on the official bits (although it might suit our solicitor) but hope the grandchildren will appreciate them. The charm of the village in the morning is even more apparent and the gardens are awash with flowers and even some palms scattered around. But one local’s “…more palms than Morocco” is probably not strictly accurate. This is all such a contrast with the starkness of Orkney and Cape Wrath just a few hours sailing north.

Inside the little bay, all is glassy calm with just a mere hint of breeze and by lunchtime we let go of the mooring and nose out into the loch itself. A south westerly is enough to get the sails up and the motor shut down and Heydays heads north once more, but this time just exploring and no pressure for passage making. We’re in no hurry and just as well, as the wind dies down to a zephyr. We’re lounging around in the sun in T- shirts and we drift past the submarine exercise area control base. Two typhoon jets shatter the peace as they roar down the Minch seemingly just above the waves, before banking steeply and rising fast over the mountains. The peace descends once more but now the wind has gone entirely and we reluctantly put the engine on even if only to be able to steer. With Rona on the beam and the entrance to Loch Torridon opening up the wind returns. This time a chilly one from the north, bringing clouds and some rain. We have gone from dead clam and T-shirts to stiff breeze and full wet-weather gear in 10 minutes…but at least we are sailing again. Somehow it seems right to be sailing up such a beautiful loch rather than just burning diesel.

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We’re aiming for Sheildag  but there is some confusion about whether there are visitor moorings or whether we will need to anchor. We get everything ready as we reluctantly lose the sails and motor once more. Cautiously we peer around for some vacant mooring buoys and hopefully pick up an orange one. The line keeps coming and coming however and we decide that it would be prudent to avoid relying on a lobster pot to hold us securely. We decide that there is enough water for us to get into the other side of the bay without having to go back and round the island and a seal lounging on the rocks seems to be just waiting for us to go aground.

He’s disappointed. There is a large yacht on the end of the visitor pontoon (pick-up only, no overnight stays…more later) but there is a large friendly yellow buoy a little further on. We start to get closer to it to see if it is a visitor buoy, but get shouted at for our pains by people on the big yacht. Its theirs! So, anchoring it is. Our first attempt doesn’t hold and a huge lump of kelp comes up with the anchor. The next attempt is good and we can rest easy for the night.

Grump alert!! We take the dinghy ashore to the pub for some food, but we have forgotten that we are now in tourist land on a Friday night and it is booked. We ask if there is anywhere else to eat and are firmly told that there isn’t. The staff are less than friendly and it is clear that we should have known to book. We are slightly grumpy that the folk from the boat on the end of the pontoon (no overnight mooring) walk in and on to a table. We wander off round the village  and ask another couple passing if there is anywhere else. “Try the hotel” they suggest. This is next door to the pub and they have a table (several in fact). The young woman serving is very friendly and then it turns out that the pub and the hotel have the same kitchen…and the same food! A glass of wine and the grumpiness melts away and we make our way back to the dinghy past the boat still on the end of the pontoon (no overnight mooring) and past the still empty mooring buoy. Grumpiness returns in the morning when the boat is still firmly on the pontoon and the buoy is still empty. We think about rafting up noisily next to them to get water but they are gone by the time we get up. Just as well, we are not going let a few people spoil the beauty of this place.

A 4.30 alarm is a decidedly unpleasant thing and it takes an enormous amount of will power to crawl out from under our warm duvets.  But we are greeted by  a lovely dawn and the thoughts that our crew are not too far away. Few words spoken so early, but almost like a well-oiled machine Heydays is soon making a fine bow wave out of Loch Gairloch and turning south once more for Kyle.

Rona and Raasay come in to meet us from the west and it begins to feel like we are in a rather hilly solent. With the islands providing shelter from both wind and waves we start to turn past the Crowlin Islands and make out the Skye Bridge. The wind veers a little and we shake out the sails for the first time since Cape Wrath. Out at sea we have more phone signal than on land and it turns out that Alan and his friend George in Malli are also closing in on Kyle having come round from Inverness via the canal. The bridge to Skye beckons and soon we are sailing under its sweeping arch and preparing Heydays for another landfall.

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In the event they beat us in by about half an hour and we have several helping hands on the jetty ready with ropes…what could be easier. It is good to see Alan and George again and we have a chance to swap some stories before we set about making Heydays (and ourselves) a bit more fragrant.

We wander round to the railway jetty in time to meet the train from Inverness and Heydays becomes rather more gender balanced than before. The line from Inverness to Kyle is one of the most beautiful, certainly in this country and Chris from Canada thinks it is the best she has been on.

Kyle is trying to redefine itself now that it is no longer required as a ferry to Skye and the pontoons are now owned by the community instead of the council. Sadly the charges are a bit steep considering the facilities and there is no electricity on the pontoons and the showers are also the most expensive we have met so far. With some careful planning, two very close friends can just about shower including shampoo (but no time for conditioner) before the hot water runs out. We wish them well but they have some incredibly stiff competition from Plockton just round the corner in Loch Carron, which is where we sail with Alan and his family once we are all sorted. We have an exhilarating sail with them in the last of the bright May sun…

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…back out under the bridge and touching the southern edge of the sound against a stunning backdrop of mountains and sea.

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But as the evening draws on, it turns out that the pub and hotel are both fully booked for dinner, however there is a brilliant fish and chip van parked by the harbour.  Not many vans we have come across that sell haddock breaded in panco or steaming mugs of Cullen skink or marinated salmon steaks or…..

We finish off in the pub listening to a jam session of traditional Scottish folk music, which is getting a very enthusiastic reception from the several American tourists who are in town.

After another day waiting for some winds not gusting up to gale force we finally leave Lochinver after lunch on Wednesday, with the promise of lightening winds as the day wears on. The forecast is for F5 or F6 from the south or south-west and  it promises to be a slog into a headwind all the way. Not normally something we look forward to, but our wives are on their way to Kyle…

As it turns out the wind rarely goes below 6 and is often up to near gale. We register some gusts across the deck of 34kts …that’s definitely a gale. The seas are short and steep as we suspected after a few days of SW winds and the headlands prove to be a little unpleasant. Heydays handles the confusion brilliantly with only a few waves bringing us almost to a standstill. We are hunkered down inside the sprayhood and keep warm and toasty while watching for the inevitable pot-buoys.

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The only other boat we see is a Cal Mac Ferry out of Ullapool, heading we presume for the so far invisible outer Hebrides.

Before we round Rubha Reidh headland we get some respite from the waves and make some soup and sandwiches for lunch. Even out here we mange some olive-oil drizzling!! With food comes a bit of sun and our first sighting of Skye in the distant gloom. As we turn due south the wind has eased and Heydays begins eating into the miles.

All of a sudden there is a splash beside us and soon a school of dolphins is accompanying Heydays south. They are playing in and out of our bow wave, sometimes diving beneath the boat and at others just leaping as if for the pure pleasure of a fast ride. So much has been written by sailors about dolphins and so many clichés pressed into action, but everyone of them is true. They truly are magnificent and lift our spirits for the rest of the day.

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In a while they tire of playing with us and head off, presumably in search of either faster boats or more fish or both. With the seas and wind easing steadily we take the inner route to Loch Gairloch past Longa Island and on to Badachro in the last of the evening light.

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We pick up a mooring buoy, still buzzing from our encounter with the dolphins, but decide on an early start and so sadly don’t go ashore this time, but as the sun sets and the long northern twilight takes over, we can’t help but be spell bound by the beauty of the Loch and the long dark shadows creeping over from the craggy mountains. We have a smidgeon of phone signal and a brief chat with Yee Tak and Chris who are getting slowly pickled in the bar of the Euston to Inverness sleeper as they speed North to Kyle…

With the promise of a hard slog south into an increasing wind, we decide for the easy option of drying Heydays out and paying attention to her bottom. The harbour master Mark, (who together with his mate Joseph and us as James and John make a remarkably holy bunch appropriate for a Sunday) directs us to the old slip at the far end of the harbour. With Heydays drying out in the sun we attract an unusual amount of attention from folk passing by until they realise we are there on purpose. Heydays’ bottom is still clean from her pressure wash in March and after quick scrub we are soon happily lying on our backs in weed painting her in two fetching shades of blue (left over tins of antifoul and a bargain lot from Essex).

The only option is then to have a walk round the loch and through the village…

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…and then return to the (happily more gender balanced) bar for early dinner while the tides rises again. As we are leaving a tightish spot, my (completely useless but expensive) Sealskinz glove is flicked into the water to be rescued by Tommy and Barbro (correct spelling…they are Swedish) who are passing. Once we are moored again they wander down and we end up sharing some wine and scotch for the rest of the evening. It turns out that they own a 47’ Malo (rather nice Swedish yacht) called Altaire and effectively live aboard for 8 months of the year. Originally from Sweden, they have retired to Italy for winter skiing and over-wintered their boat in Lochinver. They have cruised extensively around Norway, Shetland, Orkney and Scotland for many years but are now making their way home to Italy over the next few years.

Monday’s weather is no more favourable and we sit out a near gale in our snug berth while continuing to marvel at the stunning scenery…

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By evening though, things have calmed a little and Mount Suilivan is majestic behind the village…

Our non-sailing friends can skip the next bit, as the afternoon found us attending to a niggling electrical problem which has resulted in us running out of battery power too soon when we are sailing. We are running an Adverc battery management system and have been concerned for some time that it is not delivering sufficient charge to the domestic batteries. With the prospect of more anchoring we are also reluctant to have to keep running the engine. We completely re-map and check the electrical charging circuits and voltages which involves of course, delving into the very bowels of the boat lockers and engine room. We come up with a range of bothering voltages across the various terminals and….a wire in the wrong place. After much checking and rechecking we move the wire to where we think it should have been (somewhat defensively we know this pre-dates our ownership!). We get a much better set of voltages but a very hot charging diode. A call to Adverc and they ask us to send the data and promise to get back in the morning. By 9.30 they are talking us through the issues and giving us reassurance that although the alternator has been upgraded to much higher than the diode, we have no cause for concern. A final test of the circuits with every piece of gear switched on confirms that we have solved the problem… The final point to note is that Adverc were brilliant in terms of advice and guidance and said that they were here to help for as long as we have the equipment on board…(and I won’t end on a grump about my utterly useless Sealskinz!!!)

Having secured Heydays and given her a metaphorical pat on the back, we pop into the closest bar which turns out to be attached to the unfortunately named Culag Hotel…the photos don’t help. We notice the exclusively male clientele and then duck as a fight ensues. It is more like handbags at dawn but they send our plates flying before the bar-lady pulls them both apart. The young lad is sent away, the old drunk returns to his corner and told to be on his best behaviour. This does not apparently exclude loud and frequent profanities along the lines of “look at the **** state of that” in response to various acts appearing on Eurovision which is being played loud and avidly watched.

After a break to attend to matters domestic, John and James make journey once more to Orkney, via Caledonian sleeper, beautiful train ride to Thurso from Inverness and then ferry to Stromness. Great night in the bar on the sleeper chatting to an Aussie who tries to convince us that the wildlife there doesn’t always see you as dinner. For the first and only time we out-drink an Aussie….but probably due to the fact that he is still jet lagged.

The photo of the Old Man of Hoy is a cheat as it is taken from the ferry…more of that later, but the winds and down draft off the high mountains of Hoy give both of us serious pause for thought, as we are due to sail out past here tomorrow.

We both spend a slightly restless night trying to think through the passage from Stromness to the Western Isles round Cape Wrath in forecast strong winds. Wind in the rigging always sounds grim and at 4 in the morning, the howling and whistling does nothing to reassure. We meet up with Alan and his old fishing skipper colleague who are of the opinion that a Friday lunchtime depart would not be for them. That settles it! If old fishermen aren’t going for it, then neither will we. The forecast for a Friday night departure looks better(ish) with Windy (our favourite weather app) suggesting 5 and 6. But…our own instruments are showing steady winds of F6 with gusts up to 7. We have an afternoon snooze anyway as prep for a night sail. Again, sleep is fitful and finally we have a brain wave…what about a Saturday am departure? The winds should be lighter and although we will have foul tide for a while, it means we can do the whole trip in daylight. It helps to see the waves coming (sometimes)!

We sleep that evening much more soundly but 4am comes indecently rapidly. However, the northern morning sky is already light and we busy ourselves with the usual pre-passage prep. Getting off the berth is tricky, but we are almost like a well oiled machine and soon we are punching out into Hoy sound, sad to be leaving Stromness, but great to be on the move again.

The GPS and our nav instruments tell us that Hoy is there, but we see almost nothing of it as we are spat out with the last of the ebb tide through Hoy Mouth.  Completely surrounded by around two shades of grey it feels like we are living in a Rothko. We hope the similarity ends there, as his grey and black paintings were about death (after suffering an embolism), although some describe their desolate landscape-like qualities as an arctic wasteland…

Occasional patches of blue appear…”enough to make a sailor a pair of trousers” as my old grandma used to say, but we see nothing of the north coast of Scotland as we sail with a fresh breeze over the quarter towards Cape Wrath. We have had some conflicting advice about the cape. Some have suggested keeping close inside Duslic Rock, with others saying 3 miles off is the minimum. As it happens, the wind makes the decision for us by veering to a more southerly direction and it makes sense to plan the course for 3 miles off.

The cloud lifts after lunch and Cape Wrath appears faintly off the port bow. Its full majesty isn’t really apparent at first, but as we close the headland we start to get glimpses of the towering hills of the North West Highlands.

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As the visibility improved so the wind died and we turned properly south, motoring into an ever more calm sea. By 3pm our first decision…do we head for Kinlochbervie or make some further southing to Lochinver. The weather for the following few days is not brilliant for passages south and we have a date with our wives in Kyle of Lochalsh on Thursday…it would be nice to meet them. We press on in the knowledge that we have a couple of hours fair tide left in our favour and daylight until at least 10pm for the final approach. We settle in for another few hours and the hazy coastline slides past.

We approach the Point of Stoer with a foul current, rain squalls and increasing murk when a school of at least 7 dolphins pass close by making their way north with the tide.

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We can finally confirm that David Attenborough has not been guilty of ‘fake dolphins’ and it lifts our spirits as we start to make out Soyea Island and the entrance to Loch Inver. The beauty of this part of Scotland becomes truly apparent in a weak evening sun and we are moored by 9.30 as the only visiting yacht. It’s is not about the numbers, but we covered a distance of 98.3 NM in 16 hours and 45 minutes with an average speed of 5.9knots and a maximum of 10.9 knots…

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