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.