Kyle of Lochalsh to Stornoway (Isle of Lewis)

After a few days of strong northerly winds, things were forecast to calm down. Finally! May has been truly grim so far. Here is a wave height prediction from Windy:

The nice blue colours meant predicted wave heights of around a metre - you can see one example shown with the little "flag" in the picture. This is in comparison to over 3m waves in the preceeding days. Finallly winds of only up to force 5 were predicted. Wow.  We forgave the cold temperatures just to get rid of the horrid winds that have plagued us for most of May. 

Timing for a trip to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides was tricky, the optimum for the tides was to leave at a really silly time so we opted to go for a daybreak departure instead. Remember that this far north, daybreak is pretty early though. Stupidly so really. As an example, back in Southampton, near our house, nautical twilight starts at 04:15am whereas in the Kyle of Lochalsh it is at 03:36am, In Stornoway, around 55 nautical miles further north, it starts another 9 minutes earlier. This suggested a very early alarm call. 

We duly endured a 3am alarm, got ourselves and the boat ready and headed off half an hour later. This is how the elegant Skye bridge looks at 3:30 am:

and this is how the FLIR sees it:

We had the FLIR on although you could just about see things since it is much better at picking up pot markers than the naked eye in poor light conditions. The recently constructed and ugly fish farm pier and buildings looked no nicer in the half light and still spoil the area:

To prove just how much things had settled down, here is the wind strength as we headed under the bridge and pointed north again:

A whole 4.7 knots, About 30 lower than a couple of days ago. We enjoyed this treat rather a lot. The route is pretty simple to follow, you can see just how far north Stornoway is compared to the "end" of the Scottish mainland:

Once clear of the Isle of Skye we had the predicted swell left from the earlier winds more or less on the nose but as it was swell, with a nice long wavelength you really didn't notice it - only up to about a metre and an half  in height anyway. The grey gloom lifted slowly as we approached Stornoway and some of that rare commodity, the sun, peeped out. Oh yes, life was looking up.

One pesky fishing boat kept on altering course in front of us then going in circles so the crew, who was on watch at the time, had to keep changing our course to avoid him. She was far from amused at his antics.  We did see several puffins to cheer her up though, but of course they dived down as we got too close to them, so sadly no pics.

Approaching Stornoway we needed to slow down a little to let the big CalMac ferry Loch Seaforth enter and berth ahead of us. We called the harbour folks who gave us a berth on a finger pontoon which we guessed would be a bit of a squeeze but so be it. Just to spoil things, our liner curse continued and multiplied. The "thing" that was anchored off the Kyle of Lochalsh was anchored here too:

and the tenders, driven by the same dodgy crew presumably, were shuttling the American tourists ashore. In fact we were doubly blessed, another cruise ship was laying alongside the quay:

making a walk into town less appealing.

Heading for the inner harbour area we were called on the VHF asking if we wanted a berth. We explained that we'd already had a chat and got one. Then they called again and gave us a better, simpler alongside berth after they had seen the Nordhavn trundling in. We must look more imposing than we really are.  It was another one of those "got to spin the boat and back onto this spot with no thruster use" moments as the nearby yachts were more than a little interested in our arrival.

The harbour guy arrived, apologised for not being there to take our lines (wow!), delivered an information pack and had a long chat about where to go in town, what had changed since our last visit and life in general. So like the treatment in the south coast of England harbours!!! His welcome alone reminded us why we fell in love with these islands 6 years ago. Such friendly helpful people.

After a clean up for ourselves, we did brave the town and the huge camera toting cruise ship folks. Why do they always look so miserable?

Maintenance news:

The depth sounder took another holiday on this trip. Only it clearly was not the NMEA2000 network connection that failed as we still had a speed over the ground showing. (For the non boating folks, the sensor sends both speed and depth to our systems via one network connection) Perhaps the sender is struggling with very deep bits as we were in 140m of water or thereabouts. The older Furuno sender used to fail at around 120m but the newer Airmar used to be happy in all sorts of depths. Will keep an eye on it and if it is depth related, it might be as simple as a clean up. You never know....

Kyle of Lochalsh life

We do like this place, no matter what the weather does really. A little wander towards the Skye bridge gives you a nice panoramic view back down Loch Alsh itself:

We pretty much had the little pontoon to ourselves, bar one very ugly glass bottomed trip boat that berthed astern of us. Have a peek at  Seaprobe Atlantis website for more information. We chatted to the skipper who told us that the boat is a pig to helm (reassuring when they berth astern of us) but that they do get some good views of the old World War II minesweeper wreck at low water.

The fish farm invasion has kind of spoiled this area too. One of their workboats came and laid alongside the visitor pontoon and we did think that it was a tad heavy for the rather sad infrastructure:

The  classic view of the Skye bridge was still there when the commercial guy left (they had to visit the Co-op for supplies) and looks as good as ever from this distance with no zoom lens involved:

However, when you use the zoom function on a proper camera, things deteriorate a bit:

When you walk over the bridge you get to see the new fish farm pier and buildings which are visible under the bridge arch in the last picture. A local told us about the uproar caused when the planning permission was underway because it really blights the area but the commercial opportunity won:

In real life it is uglier and so visible as you approach the bridge. 

Kyleakin, the old ferry port on Skye which is opposite the Kyle of Lochalsh is dying quietly. Pretty much everything was shut on a Saturday bar the little local shop. Covid seems to have killed the few tourist businesses that survived the closure of the ferry service when the bridge was constructed. The ruined castle kind of sums up the feel of the little village now: 

In theory there is a small pontoon there which visitors can use and one that is sheltered from the SW or W winds that prevail up here, unlike the Kyle of Lochalsh setup. However, it is always full of local fishing boats and a couple of local yachts.

Our liner curse continued when this anchored off and sent the ugliest tender / lifeboats we've ever seen ashore. They use the same pontoon as us so the local Harbour Master has to be around to ensure "Port security". That was a real joke, one guy standing there or sitting in his Defender watching folks wander about:

The Fillipino crew running the tenders seemed to struggle handling them.  Berthing  alongside the pontoon was a long winded thing and their shouting at each other did not inspire confidence. We did wonder if we would fancy being one of 100 passengers crammed into it during an emergency evacuation of the liner with the same two guys crewing it.....

The Scotrail "emergency timetable" only provides two trains a day from the Kyle to Inverness. Again, helpfully, they leave at around 6am and then too late to make a run to Inverness and back worthwhile. However on Sunday things are better, a train just after 10am which we opted to take. The route is spectacular. Read the  Kyle line website

Here is Plockton from the not too grubby train window:

and the rest of the lovely bay which is a good anchorage too:

We greatly enjoyed the views, remoteness and relatively empty carriage on the trip until a rather large fake tanned (the palms of her hands were awesome) young lady joined the train and sat on the other side of the aisle to us. Somehow her mobile phone managed to keep a connection through most of the remote highland area so that she could chat to various mates and give them her view on life, the universe and everything in a wonderfully thick accent. Funnily enough, the most discernable words were the swearwords which peppered her conversations liberally. 

An excellent lunch in Inverness followed and a good wander around the place too. Luckily the return train was not cancelled at short notice - we felt safe though as we knew the driver and conductor lived locally to the Kyle and so would want to get home from Inverness too, after sitting for nearly 6 hours doing nothing, because the earlier return train was cancelled as part of the emergency timetable....

If you fancy a little investment and running a highland hotel, then this one is amongst the many on the market and right alongside the moorings and little village centre:

A most uninspired building that was pretty much closed but the views from it are just wonderful - you get a panoramic view of the bridge and Loch Alsh. We have a feeling that you would need to budget for a full refurbishment too though. We were less than tempted.

Mallaig to Kyle of Lochalsh

Since we were being evicted early on the Friday morning and the forecast still had SW'ly force 7 in it, we didn't bother to refit the bimini cover on the flybridge. Might have been a mistake if it was raining too (no surprise there) but we did manage to dodge the showers as we left. Left = got blown rapidly off the pontoon when we released the mooring lines. 

Heading out from Mallaig there were some chunky waves on the beam that kept the stabilisers very busy as the period (time between them) was around 3 seconds so they just kept grabbing at the boat. As we turned more to the north and got a little bit of shelter from Skye things calmed down nicely despite the 35 knot gusts. The route is one of those stunningly beautiful ones:

You trek up between Skye and the mainland with the narrows at Kyle Rhea being particulalrly nice despite the strong tides that run through it.  We needed to time our arrival there for more or less slack water which meant a slow run up at a lower cruise rpm than normal. The wind and rain kept going so we just sat in the pilothouse and drank tea. You know when the crew has the kettle on:

104 amps output from the domestic alternator at 24v DC - most of it is being used by the inverters to create the AC power that the electric kettle needs. Normally, when we are underway with the navigation gear powered up, engine room fans etc all running we consume way fewer amps:

That goes up a little at night with the navigation lights and FLIR working to the mid 30s.

Slowly, the weather looked like it might improve. A comment was made by the presenter on a Radio 4 program that whilst the south was enjoying sun and light winds things were a "bit colder and wetter" in Scotland and that "Skye will get sun at 12am, but maybe only for a minute". He was pretty accurate. Here is the first hole in the clouds: 

but approaching the narrows, normal service was resumed:

We were a little early arriving there so had to push a little bit of tide then got rocket assistance leaving the area, all in the driving rain so no nice pictures for you, sorry.  We did get the little ferry loading up which crosses to and from Skye, often diagonally as it fights the current trying to push it the wrong way:

You can see the turntable on it,  which is very rare, the cars are spun around ready to drive off at the other end as the ferry is not "roll on, roll off":

As we entered the lovely Loch Alsh, there was more rain and a fish farm ship that was just pottering about in circles making avoiding him interesting. We hoped to stop on the community pontoon at Kyle of Lochalsh and saw on AIS that one motor cruiser had stopped there briefly before continuing his trip towards us and through Kyle Rhea heading south, So, we hoped that there would be one space large enough and that the wind would drop and change direction as per the forecast. Otherwise the pontoons are very exposed and would be untenable. The backup plan was to continue to Plockton and anchor off there.

We really did not need to worry - the pontoons were totally empty, probably thanks to the strong SW / W winds of the last three days which let waves break right over them. Things were way calmer when we arrived and the forecast had the wind turning northerly, meaning we would be perfectly sheltered by the land.

The infrastructure looked very neglected. No water, no power (neither mattered much to us) and part of the structure missing. It seems that the community trust who run it are not too focussed on attracting visiting boats anymore. Their payment system at the top of the walkway didn't work and they don't answer the phone either. It looks like this little facility is doomed, which is a huge pity.

Maintenance news:

We had some fun with the depth sounder. For no obvious reason when we were in over 100m of water, the depth readings just showed three dashes - ie no data being recieved. The captain tinkered with the settings to change the input from the little Airmar sensor that does depth and speed to the Furuno fish finder. That didn't work either. Then the Airmar sounder vanished from the list of available inputs. A reboot of the nav system and the NMEA converters, reset the input to the Airmar device which was visible again and all was well:

We were back in 136m of water. No idea what happened, it seemed as though the NMEA2000 network link to the sounder had failed, but the rest of the devices on that were all working OK. All most strange. We need to check the fish finder though as it is not working properly any more. It gets used so infrequently (to show the profile of the sea bed from time to time) so we don't know when it decided to opt out from life.

Malingering in Mallaig

The rather catchy title to this post is courtesy of Norman (he of the 3 dogs, house in Cornwall and HUGE motorhome that you've met in here before). His inspiration just had to be shared, so Malingering in Mallaig it is. Actually appropriate too as we ended up staying longer than planned.

Once the fog had cleared we had a little wander around the rather nice harbour area with the Isle of Skye in the background:

The sun even came out to let us admire the Mallaig lifeboat, with a spot the Nordhavn opportunity too:

The pleasure craft area was very quiet indeed, unlike when we have been around here before. That was 6 years ago mind you and everyone seems to have bought a lock-down boat since then so the lack of shiny white GRP could only be due to the grim weather. The fishing boat fleet has dropped in numbers too - apparently there are only 7 local boats now:

The main contributor to the harbour income is from the fish farm vessels that come in to discharge the farmed salmon and various diseases too perhaps. They then get taken by road tanker to Fort William and the processing plant. We were told that they are planning for over 30 tankers per day shortly - that is a lot of fish, with most of it going to China.

The traditional fishing fleet have to pay 2% of the landed catch value in harbour dues. During January / February this income was not even eough to pay for the harbour rubbish skip disposal costs, that gives you an idea of how the local economy has changed.

One place that is still thriving is the boatyard which repairs fishing craft by hauling them up an elderly slipway with an equally elderly winch arrangement. Here are two being fettled:

Finding a gap in the rain showers to complete the painting work was tricky for the yard guys. We learned that there is so much work for them that the owner would like to find 5 more staff. The fishing boats now tend to be crewed by imported men, around £350 a week is the going rate. We saw them spending their wages in the local Co-op. Maybe P and O ferries had been watching what is happening with the fishing fleets and follwoed suit? 

We also learned a lot about some employment contracts for the CalMac ferry staff. To say they are generous is an understatement. It seems that if you go on a training course, for each day you are being trained, you get a day off afterwards.  If you work on your day off to cover for someone else being sick or on vacation, then you get three more days off for doing it. No wonder they have issues.

We havn't had any old lifeboat pictures for a while so Mallaig gives us the opportunity to correct that:

This one is in light commercial use still.

We did have a forecast of one relatively dry day and we were tempted to take the train to Fort William. Not to see Fort William, as it is a bit of a tip really (bar the big supermarkets) but because the journey is so beautiful. Well, thanks Scotrail. There are two trains a day now, one around 6am and one around 6pm. Totally useless, thanks to the various disputes going on with the unions and staff shortages.   Scotrail (now run by the Scottish government) has an emergency timetable going on and has cut about a third of all their trains across the whole of Scotland. Have a look at BBC report. What with this mess and the CalMac ferry issues we reported on in a previous post, the SNP transport minister must be under more than a little pressure.

Since the trains are not running we opted for the bus, feeling brave and more than a little worried about how many folks would be on it as the train is no longer an option. The trip to Fort William was on a nice VanHool coach, beautifully driven by a lady who had to be well into her 60s. Pretty quiet too. After puddling around the town and raiding Morrisons, we came back on a little bus that only had three folks (including us) on it until Arisaig when a few more climbed on board. Apparently the early morning run to Fort William has been full recently with people turned away. So glad we went at Lunchtime. 

Initially we asked to stay in Mallaig until Friday when better weather was supposed to kick off. However, we had been told that we needed to leave on Thursday, but on Tuesday night the forecast windy weather got even worse. So, we decided that heading out the next morning would be sensible - the first day shown is Wednesday:

Neither day is very tempting and the obvious next stop for shelter from a westerly wind is an anchorage in a loch just to the north of Mallaig. However it is reported in all the pilot books as having very bad squalls in windy conditions thanks to the surrounding hills. Not ideal. The pontoons at the Kyle of Lochalsh would be very exposed in a SW or W gale and probably would be closed anyway. Some other anchorages have steeply shelving sea beds and again, not ideal in a strong blow that is trying to carry you offshore. The best option looked like heading off to Plockton and anchoring there to let the nasty stuff blow through.

A 6:15am alarm was not nice but we roused ourselves, got the boat ready (in pouring rain) for an 8am departure - you need to time the run north carefully as the narrows at Kyle Rhea have very strong tidal streams and turbulence. Dropping off our rubbish at 8am, Chris the harbour moorings man arrived and after a brief chat he told us we could stay until Friday as long as we were off the berth by 9am. Oh yes, a way better solution. Access to the Mallaig facilities and good shelter from the two days of strong winds / gales is nicer than sitting at anchor off Plockton, not wanting to go ashore in case the anchor drags. 

Our early start was put to good use though when the crew came back and started making some bread.

Maintenance News:

The Racor fuel filters for the main engine and the polishing filter live in a little cubbyhole and the 24v light fitting in there had started to play up. The holder was not always making proper contact with the bulb so it got swapped out for a new LED light fitting that we had been given by Norn Iron Keith many years ago. You might not remember Keith but you might recall Bailey, his rather obedient little dog.

Spotting any dirt or water in the bowls of the filters will be much easier with the bright LED in place:

although this picture doesn't really show how nice and bright it is now.

Tobermory to Mallaig

Finally the near gales became a forecast of  "only" force 6 gusts. SW'ly too hence not an ideal direction for going around the infamous Ardnamurchan point but better than it had been. We opted to head off a little later than optimal for the trip to Mallaig but more conducive to a good night's sleep.

As we prepared to leave Tobermory, it was raining. We could see the fog bank heading towards Ardnamurchan too. Yes, it was going to be a perfect trip. Here is the "pre mist / fog" view leaving the harbour:

Yup, unending grey. It got thicker and so our view of the beautiful islands etc became this one:

Rounding Ardnamurcahn was a bit lumpy with 1.5 m waves on the port bow but with a very short period (ie they were close together) and then building to more like a couple of metres. The stabilisers dealt with them OK, we just bobbed up and down a bit and got the anchor wet occasionally. Turning to head NE'ly to Mallaig things calmed down as we got into the lee of the Ardnamurchan peninsular but the visibility did not change unfortunately.

Here is the route to help you orientate things:

The rather large "wiggle" in the route that you can see is thanks to this fishing boat who was glared at by Patrick:

The fishermen were doing the usual thing of  having their AIS not transmitting so we tracked him by radar and then had a diversion across his stern:

The little green circles are how our Furuno plotters display the radar targets that it is tracking, you can also see the second one that we safely passed ahead of. We had a yacht without radar on the same track as us too - since the visibility was so poor we do wonder how they would have avoided the two fishing boats if their timing had taken them as close as ours would have.

The area has some wild depth variations too - 130 metres under our keel was plenty although a nearby bank took that down to 19 then back up to over 100:

Following the coast up to Mallaig we heard rather than saw the "Harry Potter" steam train that runs between Fort William and Mallaig with wild ticket prices for tourists. Here is the best picture we could manage, mainly of the smoke and condensation out of the funnel:

As we approached Mallaig entrance, a CalMac ferry was departing, and he also had no working AIS transmission. Maybe this is the Bermuda triangle for AIS signals? OK, maybe not, we are just trying to be kind. Having read about CalMac's maintenance issues (see earlier post) we are not really too surprised.

We popped onto the nice empty hammerhead berth we had been assigned and the crew had her small "32 amp moment" which cheered things up a lot. The trip was one of those gloomy, watching the radar not the lovely views events. Not too bumpy off Ardnamurchan and all OK once in the shelter of the land again. the boat behaved unlike the weather. It HAS to improve sometime soon, please....

Tobermorying

The pilot book calls Tobermory probably the nicest (if not the only) pretty town on the west coast. Far be it from us to disagree with the author. The only drawback (apart from the rubbish weather of course) was that our faithful EE SIM card in our WiFi router failed us for the first time ever. No EE signal in the harbour! The good news was that the harbour WiFi was OK on nights when the moorings were quieter, less reliable on busy nights.

We walked up a hill that made Penarth look tame to try out the cafe at the local arts centre, An Tobar. Have a look at An Tobar website. The coffee was great, the cake too. The service was friendly, delivered by a local arty girl who had a most bohemian taste in clothes. It was quite minimalistic too. 

Here is the view over the harbour area from the evil hill:

We were very happy to be here and also pleased to get some good news from two pairs of friends so we had to raise a toast to them:

OK, any old excuse really but this time there was good news involved (and we were in Tobermory which is a happy place). On a rare sunny day, we dug out the suntan cream from the very back of a cupboard and walked along the bay area to the local park, enjoying the harbour views as we went:

Once again, spot the Nordhavn is not a tricky game.

The path is quite steep in places so the crew took some support along with her:

and a pair of sunglasses just to prove that things had improved weather wise - if only for one day. As we returned to town, you can see how quiet the area was:

Before this place had been over-run with boats and day trippers. Not now, we guess that the grim weather had put folks off. No matter, at least it had contributed to a busy stream come waterfall area:

Wandering to the cafe place / the Co-op between showers, we spotted a little cruise ship anchored off. The little town became infected with cruise ship folks who clearly own the pavements and all seemed very miserable. Wish they had stayed on board frankly!

We were also treated (not quite the word we would choose but...) to a fish farm support vessel coming in and berthing nearby:

We still have major reservations about the whole fish farming thing. 

Naturally after a sunny day, reality had to strike again and it did so in the form of a beautiful rainbow, visible from the aft cockpit:

which kind of acted as a portent for the day to come:

Rottten weather was an excuse to go back up that hill to the arts centre for another coffee and cake session though and we had one of the best carrot cakes ever. Most impressive. In the all time top 5 we reckon. After such a success we had a look around the exhibition that had been set up. Here is one of the two spaces used, you will need the volume turned up as you watch this video:

Being Philistines, we didn't really get it. However the notes told us what it was all about. Just in case you didn't get it either from the video here is what you should have experienced:

Got it now? To add to the feelings and sensations, there were some notes on the flip side of the information sheet too. For completeness, here is a copy that you can enjoy:

We remain unconvinced and ignorant. Just not wired up that way it seems. 

Some folks who were very wired indeed arrived in the superyacht Elysian and anchored in the bay area. She is owned by the guy who owns Liverpool football club and the folks who came ashore in this rather flash tender fitted our preconceptions of the "football hangers on / WAGS" lifestyle very well. As they climbed rather unsteadily off the tender clutching their drinks we did worry about the future of mankind a little. The tender is probably worth more than our elderly Nordhavn:

but they needed the canopy in place to keep them dry as they came over. Must have been quite demeaning being huddled under the cover rather than speeding around in the med under a blazing sun.

We learned a little more about superyacht lifestyle from Robert - the yottie who has marina connections. The Superyacht had been mooried in James Watt Dock, Greenock and left before a parcel that they had ordered from Amazon arrived. So, the JWD marina manager drove from Greenock to the Isle of Skye on a Saturday to deliver the critical parcel. What was in it? An Amazon Fire stick so they could see more TV. Google the drive from Greenock to Skye and weep......

Our last day in Tobermory was the usual soggy affair, we wandered up another hill with nice views:

To see what had happened to the sad old hotel that we visited in 2016 with Andrew and Linda when it was the only place to get WiFi we could find. It had just been taken over and the new owners faced some serious renovation work (like a leaky roof making the top floor bedrooms uninhabitable!). Have a look at old blog entry. 

It seemed to have been tidied up a lot but we didn't test out the coffee / hospitality this time.

Wandering back to the boat we had a last look over the harbour area, taking in the dead / dying dinghies:

Tobermory has a real charm to it, even when full of cruise ship types. Despite our enforced stay of 6 nights thanks to the weather, it was most enjoyable.