Being Stornowayd

After catching up on some sleep, since the weather was wonderful we decided to break out the bikes and head around to the castle area before it was over-run by the Hebcelt attendees and hangers-on.

From the other side of the harbour, you can see how cosy we are with the local lifeboat:

In fact our departure on the bikes was delayed by a long and very interesting chat with the lifeboat mechanic. They'd been out on a training exercise the evening that we'd arrived:

and he knew of John, the man in South Uist who has the two retired Trent lifeboats.  The mechanic was concerned for John's mental health.... The Stornoway lifeboat has two big MTU engines that churn out 1,600 HP each. To quote the mechanic, they sound like a bucket of spanners when ticking over as they run on 5 cylinders out of the 10 but when on song.... They simply drink a litre of diesel in around 14 seconds between them. That makes our monthly donation to the RNLI seem rather paltry, we might just about cover the fuel for a training session, when they run the boat more gently.

Heading further around the harbour, the sailing club were out and about, plenty of kids were practicing, with a Nordhavn in the background:

We enjoyed the opportunity to cycle and walk with no wet weather gear on, or the need to carry it "just in case". We stopped off for a coffee in the park, chatting to a London lady who had moved to the island many years ago. Her east end accent was still there, no Scottish lilt at all. Some accents seem rather resilient. 

In town, the sign outside the Crown Inn detailing the exploits of the young King Charles hasn't been updated to reflect his new position:

A very enjoyable cycle trip to the east of the island, across the causeway to Knock gave us a bird's eye view of the little Loganair plane taking off for Glasgow. The end of the runway is more or less where the road and cycle path runs. 

The airport doesn't quite have the same level of fencing and security as Heathrow. Nor does it have such a busy runway which is fortunate for the folks who are going to live in the new houses being built right next to it and the main road. We were amazed at the amount of construction going on all over the area. Things seemed very buoyant compared to other towns that we've visited in Scotland recently. We were told that there are some big energy projects planned that will only increase this. Have a look at weblink for more information. The local folks we talked to have very mixed opinions on the windfarm as you can imagine. Particularly the massive number of workers that will be brought in to upgrade the power grid and install the turbines which will really stretch the local facilities.

On our cycle trips we were sad to see that the longstanding island practice of just dumping dead cars and vans and letting them rot away wherever is continuing: 

So fetching! No matter, the rest of the scenery is just lovely, as are most of the people. We say most as the excitement of having a big Tesco store was dashed by the fact that the store looked as though it had been ram-raided and the checkout staff were surly beyond belief. It almost felt as though they'd managed to corner all of the miserable looking and unhelpful staff in one place. Cracking recruitment Mr Tesco.

The evening light was lovely, here is the view from our aft cockpit of the inner harbour area. As you can see, it was busy. We were glad that we came before the festival kicked off:

To celebrate a couple of lovely days, some good bike trips and the wonderful, unusual weather, the crew went wild and enjoyed an alcohol-free gin and tonic on the flybridge:

She knows how to go big. By the way, the big pretzel on her plate was, amazingly, from the Coop store and it was very good. It missed the rock salt on the outside that the Bavarian Brezn have but was almost as good as the ones the captain fondly remembers from his many trips to Munich.

We had another one of those chance encounters when, wandering along the pontoon to head for a tempting local coffee and cake place, we bumped into Tom and Helen who were heading the other way. The captain was wearing a Nordhavn cap, given to us by the USA Nordhavn folks a while ago. Seeing this, Tom said that they were en route to look at the boat as they recognised it from our time in the Clyde area.  The green covers are pretty distinctive. He had taken some pictures and video of us and shared it on local boating groups. So, they joined us for coffee and cake and then had a look around the boat. Then he added a picture to the Facebook Nordhavn Dreamers page:

Wandering around the harbour area, you really see just how dire the state of the fishing industry is, looking at the condition of the boats moored up:

Being Sunday, the harbour was busy with them. Here, you don't fish or set out to sea on the sabbath. It is seriously frowned upon. However, things have changed since our first visit. There are a couple of cafe / bistro type places which now open on Sunday! When a supermarket floated the idea, the Church of Scotland intervened big time. Pubs of course are OK, after you've been to morning service and before you go to the evening one, fully dressed. The cafe that was open was crammed with younger folks, a huge queue outside too. You can see how the traditions and grip of the church on the island will slowly die through the years.

We were having a good time here, seemed popular with the harbour staff, the lifeboat mechanic and we were enjoying using the bikes too. Even the wildlife was friendly, this lady was extremely tame:

However, so we could explore further afield, we arranged a rental car for a few days. More on that in the next post.

Maintenance news:

The horn, which made a feeble little groan when the crew tried to use it to scare off a hitch-hiking gull during our trip here, needed attention. The captain checked and found that a new compressor, the likely culprit, was available via Amazon with a pretty quick delivery, even out here. Other suppliers were less bullish on timescales. To prove the problem, the captain wriggled into the hatch under the flybridge helm where the compressor is housed, removed the air hose to the twin external horns and gave the compressor a run. Well, after giving the tube a clean out and the compressor a run, the thing worked just fine when reassembled. It worked well enough to get lots of people looking - it is wonderfully loud.

Will this be a permanent fix? Who knows, but for now, it is happy again. 

We also managed some polishing work, finishing off the flybridge exterior and doing some of the aft cockpit too. Not a massive amount but to quote a famous supermarket, "every little helps".

Lochaline to, not as planned, Stornoway

The best laid plans and all that. We'd plotted a slow trundle up the Outer Hebrides chain to enjoy the promised lovely weather over four days, with a couple of nice anchorages on the way to Stornoway. Everything was fine until the evening before our planned departure. We met a lady who told us that Hebcelt was on in Stornoway and they were heading up to it by yacht. Oh dear. A big Celtic festival and the harbour was going to be packed. We checked and it was going to start the day before our planned arrival. Fat chance of getting into one of our favourite places then.

A quick re-plan made us decide to just head straight to Stornoway instead. That gave us two days before the festival and the chance of getting a spot rather than anchoring off which is less than ideal in the harbour there. You can imagine what the tides dictated. Yes, the optimum departure would be around 1am... We decided to be a little less than optimal but to take as much advantage of the north going tide as possible, so we left at 2:45am. It didn't feel like a lie-in! A busy FLIR camera helped us out of the quiet harbour and into the pretty calm sea. The office view:

Being so far north meant that things got light pretty early on, around 3:30am which was nice as there were several pot markers to avoid. However, it was calm, tranquil and with the promise of good weather for a few days we were as happy as you can be after getting up that early. This is how the early morning light appeared:

and we were then treated to a stunningly beautiful sunrise which the phone camera didn't really do a good job of capturing. The captain was too lazy to dig out the proper camera, sorry:

The sun made an appearance and all was good. One course alteration was needed for an old fishing vessel that was working as a guard ship:

No idea what it was guarding out there at all. We had a most annoying hitch-hiker:

who refused to budge. The crew tried scaring it with the horn only to discover that our very very loud air horn had developed a sore throat.  Something to look at. Passing the Shiants, the interesting seabird quota (gulls do not fall into that category) racked up a lot. Plenty of puffins too. We also witnessed the minor miracle of the new CalMac ferry the Glen Sannox passing us on the way to Stornoway. This is the one that was "rather" late in delivery and a teeny bit over budget. The navigation system treated us to a closer picture than we could get from the pilothouse windows:

It has been called in to replace an old ferry that had technical issues and it was doing a strange "round robin" route to cater for North Uist and Harris / Lewis. We do feel for the islanders. 

The sun removed the remaining clouds and a beautiful run up to Stornoway ensued. We had to slow down a little to let the Loch Seaforth ferry go into the port first, we gave the wing engine a run and the main a good burn to clean up the piston rings and exhaust. We don't look at the fuel consumption gauge when doing that.  We like the just under 10 litres per hour for around 6.4 knots figure better. 30 odd litres for 8.5 knots isn't as nice.

The harbour folks were as well organised as usual, they called us asking if we wanted a berth, if we would be leaving the boat unattended and allocated us a lovely spot right alongside the lifeboat. Happy folks. Unfortunately, our liner curse was still active. This rather scruffy looking thing, the Corinthian,  was berthed in the commercial harbour:

Not quite Hebridean Princess standard we fear (probably way way cheaper though)  The hull seriously needs a repaint, the weed growing along the waterline was epic and the rust streaks on the superstructure added to the rather run down impression. A 1990 build she looked her age.

We had the usual "Stornoway greeting" - one of the harbour staff came down to the pontoon to help with lines and give us the info pack and registration form.  All rather nice really.

Our route up the island chain shows a couple of wriggles - those were to avoid commercial ships / the guard vessel:

The route is 72 nautical miles out to sea plus the wombling around in and out of the harbour areas. It took around 10.5 hours. So, we arrived in plenty of time to enjoy a late lunch, showers and then wander into the town briefly enjoying the sun and warmth. Almost a perfect trip in glorious weather and calm seas. The stabilisers were centered until we hit the wash from the ferry going into Stornoway and there were no complaints from the crew - that gives you an idea of how calm things were.

Maintenance news:

The dead microwave thing is a real nuisance. On longer trips we usually microwave something that had been batch cooked and kept in the freezers for dinner. As the built in microwave is a funny size (not the standard kitchen cabinet dimensions, that would be too easy) we decided to get a cheapo free standing one to use until the winter. Then we can struggle the dead one out, measure up and figure out what will fit. It was hard to find something suitable back in 2018. So a wander into the Euronics store that is handily on the harbourside, a chat to the nice ladies running it and a suitable free standing one was procured. It took it's place on the countertop. Not ideal but better than nothing.

The horn that has gone a bit husky - after the early morning wake up, that has to wait for another day.

Tobermory to Lochboisdale, then "doing South Uist"

The rain was going to ease up, but it was replaced by some fog banks instead. The weather just kept on giving somehow. Still, as we'd kind of "Tobermoried" all that we wanted to, the decision was to head across to South Uist. Tides dictated an early (for us) start just after 7am. Getting out from Tobermory, despite the hour we had a huge audience of yotties who wanted to see how the Nordhavn would wriggle out of the place. We were kind and waved at several of them, just to make a point....

Things started very calm indeed - see the true wind speed:

You can also see the edge of the radar picture which is a hint that there was poor visibility too. It opened up a bit for a misty pic of the little lighthouse just to the west of Tobermory:

and then kept closing down again. Not a huge problem, we have a couple of very capable radar scanners to use. The smaller (they are both open scanner devices) is a digital one that offers all sorts of sexy signal processing to improve the image and bin stuff coming back from waves, birds etc. The bigger one is old school magnetron based and has a way better range and definition between targets at very close quarters thanks to the size of the scanner. With either of them running, we are pretty happy that we will see anything else that is out there.

As we passed the (in)famous Ardnamurchan Point, so the depth reading took a holiday. The three dashes are not that helpful:

This is why, it struggled as the depth was over 200 metres:

You can see that we were not that far away from land either! It decided to work again as soon as we got into the comparatively shallow 180 metre area. It is kind of important to know how much water is under the keel....

Here is the route, tracking across the Sea of the Hebrides to the Outer Hebridean island of South Uist:

It took around 8.5 hours and as you are fully exposed to the Atlantic Ocean, there was some nice 2 meter swell on our beam that kept the stabilisers busy and upset the crew enough to need to take some Kwells tablets. No nice pictures from the run over as it was foggy / misty and even when clear, just grey. As we got further out there were a few bigger waves that the freshening wind encouraged but nothing dramatic.

Approaching Lochboisdale entrance, we were being raced by a rather nice Halberg-Rassy yacht that was alongside us in Tobermory. We are not built to race anything bar maybe a pedalo. However, they had to heave to (turn into the wind) to drop their sails and that let us approach the loch first. Happily, the sun came out a bit and the mist cleared so we could see the shore:

although this picture fails to show the lovely light and shade that the sun was picking out on the hill. We gave the harbour a call on the radio to check on where to berth. No reply. Tried the mobile phone number - same outcome. The place has to be manned when one of the CalMac ferries is moving (they need to put on the red "do not" lights but around that the hours are very variable). Proper Outer Hebridean island stuff. Lovely.

We spotted a nice alongside berth, one that we'd used before and settled in just before all the fish farm boats returned from their working day. Maybe we'd stolen one they wanted? No idea. When the assistant harbour guy arrived he was happy for us to stay put. All so wonderfully relaxed. A long chat ensued about the challenges of island life, how the flights to Glasgow had been cancelled for the past 4 days due to poor visibility and how his pregnant wife had to go all the way to Stornoway for a scan as the Uists / Benbecula don't have good enough kit. The NHS pay for the ferry fare over to Harris / Lewis for him and give something towards the fuel costs. Only when they did the scan, the baby was in a poor position to check everything and despite her best efforts, it would not move position quickly enough. The person doing the scan refused to wait, said he'd reached his contracted 12 hours that week so they would have to rebook and return another time.

Bear in mind that the trip (with the ferry) takes 4.5 hours each way. The joys of island living indeed. However, this is a stunningly beautiful island to live on.

What to do in Lochboisdale on a misty day? Well, you walk around to the local community cafe place. The ex ferry Hebridean Princess was on the pier, our liner curse continued. You can see how misty it was:

Luckily the liner folks had been whisked away by bus somewhere so we found space in the little cafe. The building it lives in is, to be blunt, ugly:

at the end of a row of equally ugly units. Hence, you walk in expecting little despite the three Google 5 star reviews. There are only three reviews, probably from family of the volunteers who run it or the volunteers themselves? No matter, they were accurate. It is run as a community place offering mental health support too, something much needed in the islands. Here is a sample of their specials to go with toasties, quiches, excellent home made cake etc:

The volunteer staff and cook were lovely ladies. We were served by a Volvo dealer trained and qualified car technician, another lady who spins wool and makes soaps and the cook was a lifeguard. They had some amazing back-stories, tasty food and such a friendly place. We had to visit twice. We hope it succeeds. 

These two rather hard as nails looking ex RNLI lifeboats were rafted in the harbour:

Now both owned privately by the same man who was interested in our not quite as hard as nails Nordhavn:

We chatted, gave a tour of the Nordhavn and were then treated to a good look around one of the retired Trent class lifeboats. They've been kept exactly as they were when in service- the owner and his partner just sleep on the floor if they spend time away in them. Karen, the partner, was keener on spending overnight time on board the Nordhavn for some strange reason.

Once the sun came out (it was windy too), we exhumed the Brompton bikes and did the trip down towards Eriskay. The Main (A classified) road through the spine of the island is, naturally, single track with passing places. We needed those to let the odd car / campervan heading to the ferry that runs from Eriskay to Barra go past us. The views across to Eriskay and Barra once you get to the coast are just beautiful. The little camera in the phone doesn't do it justice but here are the feeble attempts anyway:

We had a break in the Kilbride cafe at the campsite. We sat outside, enjoying the sun for a change, chatting to an interesting father and son combo - the son being over from Sydney Australia. You do have some odd and most interesting and educational short encounters whilst travelling around. This was one. The folks in the community cafe was another. 

Whilst we had coffee, the Bromptons had a snooze in the sun:

in an almost synchronised and balletic way. They quite enjoyed the scenery too:

You can easily tell the local folks versus the tourists on the roads. The locals are nice to bikes and pedestrians, they give you space even when walking on a pavement. They are courteous in passing places and always wave thank you if you wait for them on the single track roads. The visitors are another game entirely. Some really ought to just go home if they are in such a rush. Wrong place to be, it is all so laid back here.

Maintenance News:

We had a real first world crisis. The microwave combi oven thing went pop, or at least the microwave bit did. It made an odd noise, so the crew reported, but then happily spun some broccoli around and counted the time down. Only it didn't cook it. Sure enough, the microwave part has failed. It is an 8 year old Miele device and does get lots of use but still irritating. Getting a new built in one with the right dimensions in the Outer Hebrides? Forget it.  Getting a little free standing one to use before we replace the dead one - tricky, that will have to wait until we get to a metropolis, like Stornoway. 

Loch Aline to Tobermory and pottering around

As delightful as Loch Aline is, the time had come to move on. We saw a really grim weekend forecast ahead with biblical levels of rain and some pretty windy stuff too. So, we opted to have a little trip (13 nautical miles or so) through the sound of Mull to Tobermory where there is a bit more for rainy days. Including, major excitement in these parts, a little Co-op store. 

Naturally, the tide times meant we would be pushing the current all the way if we left before low water, which takes a lot of the stress out of exiting the harbour. So, to protect our stress levels, we burned a bit more fuel and headed off with a wild 2 metres under the keel. That of course meant a slower trip:

The 118 metres depth is just outside the harbour entrance, way nicer than the 2 metres as you go through the narrows and way way nicer than the 0.9 we had on the way in. The conditions continued to be grey and less than tempting for a flybridge trip as you can see:

There was a surprising number of yachts out and about, it almost felt busy for Scotland and we actually had to alter course to avoid one. Most unusual. Then we thought of the Solent area and realised how, even in the busy areas, it is pretty empty here.

The short and easy route along the Sound of Mull:

As we were in for a very wet weekend, we wanted to get a walk ashore spot, not a buoy or anchorage. A good thing as the anchorage was already rather full, one little cruise liner the MS Hamburg was in place and hogging the anchorage area. We were given a nice hammerhead berth, close to a rather enormous Fleming 78. We looked most insignificant (actually we like that) although the guys on a rather nice sailing yacht next to us commented on what a great boat the Nordhavn is. The "go slow and don't drain an oil well" thing appeals to many sailing folks, especially those getting bored with being soaked / freezing cold in their cockpits when underway. 

There was a serious looking fishing boat conversion nearby:

The odd looking contraption that looks like a rocket launcher at the stern intrigued us. We know that the Royal Navy is a bit short of warships but an old MFV seemed like desperation. Finally we discovered that the impressive and substantial structure was holding a couple of solar panels that could be rotated to face the sun in all directions. Very impressive bit of engineering. We hope the power they generate outweighs the cost of the setup which must have been significant.

Here is the liner that was occupying the harbour and disgorging passengers into the very small main street of Tobermory so they could block up the pavements, look miserable and generally behave as liner passengers seem to do when ashore:

MS Hamburg holds 420 passengers and it felt as though they were all ashore. Luckily she headed off that evening. Hopefully the bridge crew were being more careful than in 2015 when she hit a charted rock in the Sound of Mull. Whoops. 

To escape the masses, we climbed the rather ludicrous incline / north face of the Eiger that leads up to An Tobar, the locals arts centre and cafe. The cafe bit had gone from excellent to average to grim and had just been through another incarnation so it had to be checked out. We are delighted to report that it is back to excellent, especially the pistachio and rose cake. There were some interesting artworks there, we kind of liked this cartoon like representation of a Cal Mac ferry:

but resisted buying anything. The views from up on the hill overlooking that bay are lovely, even if there is a lump of painted steel in the middle of it:

and the best bit is that 99.9% of cruise liner passengers never venture up the hill. It was a tranquil and very welcome haven.

During our stay we, of course, raided the Co-op for some basics, walked around the harbour area a few times and once up the main road (another evil hill) to Island Blue, an arts and crafts place:

Why would you paint a building housing a business called "Island Blue" that (griping) shade of pink? It is run by a couple and the lady is from Thailand. They do some authentic Thai style little lunches and take away options too. We resisted. The lady is lovely, very friendly and happily chatted about life in her home country which brought back happy memories of work visits there for the captain. 

We knew that we were in for a very very wet Sunday. The forecast was unfortunately spot on and it just kept on raining.  Into Monday morning as well:

We didn't even venture off the boat.  It reminded us of visiting here with Andrew and Linda on board when we had three solid days of rain. We hoped not to repeat that treat. However, the fates had a different opinion.

After a day of incessant rain, we had hoped for a better start to the following one. Only this pitched up and anchored off the harbour:

More liner passenger pollution ensued but as it continued to rain all morning, we avoided them until the afternoon when we had to revisit An Tobar and also went into the An Camus fused glass workshop. A fascinating chat with the owner who had moved to the island and was talking about the challenges of life there and bringing up two children when the facilities for them out of school are very very limited. Laura the owner bought the business and self taught the fused glass techniques. Impressive.

The harbour had a most unusual number of serious cruising motorboats visiting. Very rare to see such a mix together. When we arrived, there was a humongous Fleming in situ, B 4 Bliss. To get a nice image, we've taken these from MarineTraffic:

Then a USA registered Selene trawler Yacht arrived, Hookipa 

with tinted windows in the pilothouse? Less than ideal we thought. This arrival was followed by a Turkish built steel explorer, Mrs Robinson (all 25 metres of her):

Very unusual to see so many serious passage making motor boats in one location in the UK. There were very few fast motor boats about. We are finding that the planing motor cruisers, who like a good drink when going fast, are mainly travelling more slowly now anyway which isn't good for their large diesel engines or comfort of their crew. Fuel prices are beginning to hurt maybe? 

Our final wander around the village, including the compulsory stop at An Tobar the arts and of course coffee place, showed that some of the locals are proud to show Mull as their home island in many ways:

Maintenance news:

That ***** manual bilge pump had to be looked at. It was clearly unhappy with signs of corrosion and a weep from one pipe fitting. So, the lid was lifted off (last overhaul was around 4 years ago) to reveal some nasty corrosion. Some of the mating surfaces for the thick nitrile-like gaskets were badly pitted from corrosion and overall, the pump was in a very poor shape. A nice new one looks like this:

The outside of ours looks a lot like that. The inside - well, that is another story.  This winter it will need a "rip and replace" job.  With the help of a tube of Sikaflex (how could we live without the stuff?) it was sealed up again and its days are numbered. 

Several folks have totally removed the manual pump as in an emergency, it isn't going to help much. We will ponder on the options. One is a new bronze (ie seawater corrosion resistant) version of the same pump. They look prettier:

but when bought in the USA cost $1,573 (no, the comma is not a decimal point). Add in shipping and VAT and import duty for delivery to the UK and you can see why we are hesitant to order one. Wild price indeed.

On a slightly simpler and way cheaper note, the bulb in our Miele electric oven had failed. The captain persuaded it to come out and fully expected to struggle finding a replacement until we reached a bigger town. We should have known though. Browns of Tobermory were established in 1830 and some of the stock might well date back that far. An amazing range of hardware (and alcohol) in one smallish shop. They even stocked the heat resistant bulb needed for the oven, together with really random things like a box full of chalk cubes for billiard / snooker / pool cues. The oven bulb must have been on the shelf for a while as they were a pound cheaper than the best price Mr Amazon could offer!