The plan was lunch on Canna, then onward to Rum or Eigg for the night. An early start to catch the best of the tide had us through the usual boat and human morning rituals…and ended with a firmly blocked toilet. We’d only just replaced the valves, so those were the first suspects; a thorough investigation cleared them of all suspicion, which was not the outcome we were hoping for.

We looked at each other. Two days’ sail and a night at anchor or a mooring buoy ahead. Could we manage on the old bucket and chuck it system? The female contingent on board received this suggestion with something considerably short of enthusiasm, which meant we needed to get to the actual bottom of the problem. Pun very much intended.

Without dwelling on the gorier details, this involved extracting two metres of soil pipe from the bowels of the boat and attempting to clear it dockside. We were grateful that Sunday morning finds most sensible Barra residents still firmly in bed, and thus spared the spectacle. Suffice to say, a deep shower was required afterwards, our clothes went straight into a sealed bag, and it’s now clear the full run of pipework will need replacing at the next opportunity. For the moment, though, we have a fully functioning heads, which counts as a considerable win.

…sailing is all about the glamour…apparently…

By around noon we finally slipped back out into the bay, bound for Canna. We were fighting the tide the whole way, exactly the wrong side of it for this leg, but Canna is the right jumping off point for Mallaig tomorrow, so it had to be endured. The wind, at least, was in a more generous mood, a south easterly giving us a glorious beam reach almost the whole way across, making up for what the tide was taking off us.

A few dolphins passed by en route, entirely uninterested in ourcompany, and were gone before anyone found a camera. A solitary tern made a half-hearted attempt at the masthead, and the usual scattered rafts of guillemots dived nervously out of our path as we came through.

Canna slipped in and out of the mist for a while, and behind us the Hebrides stood in fine silhouette before finally sinking below the horizon, our last sight of them for this stretch. Ahead, Rum and Canna loomed as the sky cleared,…

… and we readied Heydays to work her way into the little harbour… threading in with care before picking up a mooring buoy for the night.

Snug on the buoy, we headed ashore to the café, which was packed. We’d been to Canna nine years ago and still have the t-shirts to prove it. The little café is open on Sundays, a small miracle up here, and we talked our way into a 7.30 booking, just enough time to get in, get changed, inflate the tender, and putter ashore. Four of us turning up in nine year old t-shirts hardly amounts to loyal custom, but they seemed genuinely pleased we’d made the effort. We got talking to the waitress about life on the island, just twenty one permanent residents, she said, and around half of them young. She’d come out originally as a nanny, then met the love of her life, as the bump rather gave away, and simply stayed. It’s a good thing to see, not just a handful of old timers holding the fort, but real life still finding its way to these islands.