Island time (all 5 of them)

Lochboisdale is served by one of the (sadly many) antique Calmac ferries that should have been pensioned off already.  Lord of the Isles was built in 1989 so she is a proper geriatric, with bow thruster issues that prevent her from berthing in Mallaig in high winds. Perfect for a lifeline service to South Uist at any time of the year.  Calmac kindly describe her as the vessel in her fleet that has covered the most sea miles. The locals are less kindly. We get a ringside seat of her passing our spot and a little wash from her as she trundles off to the mainland:

Her timing varies a lot across the week so we don't get a regular early wake up call, luckily.

We thought that it would be good to see more of the island than our bikes permitted in the "variable" weather that was promised. So, we walked up to Laing motors, the local garage that has some hire cars. Phoning and leaving messages hadn't worked - an on-site presence was called for. Yes, they had a little Hyundai I10, automatic that was available. How long did we want it - well, just bring it back when you've finished. No wonder booking in advance is tricky! Fill in a photocopied A4 form with your licence information and address, get the keys and go. No need to show a driving licence or ID proof, put up with the extra insurance selling attempts etc. So much simpler. 

Where to go? Well, there is plenty of choice.  Using the causeways you can visit Eriskay, South and North Uist, Benbecula and Berneray.:

just over 60 miles top to bottom of the chain. That tested the little Hyundai. The hills on the road are not too bad which helps. The Hyundai is a good city car but the automated manual gearbox which they call an "automatic" is painfully slow to change gear (you feel the car slow down), dimwitted in gear selection and jerky too. It reminded the captain of the early SMG gearboxes on BMW M3's. To get a quick shift in one of those by adjusting the settings you felt that you were going to rip the differential apart with the power on jerks. The M3 had rather more BHP than the Hyundai which felt way less likely to rip itself apart. If you fancy an I10, please don't get the pretend automatic version.....

We toddled off to Benbecula and one of the west coast beaches. Little fishing boats on their moorings were bobbing gently: 

alongside a nice beach area but the whole place was exposed to the Atlantic and must be horrific in storms. It was hard enough for the crewmember that has hair  to see anything in the wind when it was behind her. In front was OK though:

We made another excursion to the far north - Berneray.  Despite the dramatic clouds:

we much enjoyed the pretty, remote, almost empty island. There is one cafe / bistro place that we had to frequent for lunch (excellent smoked haddock risotto) and then we went to look at the tiny harbour area. This pretty little yacht was snugly anchored off the entrance:

in amongst the multitude of seals basking on the rocks. Not a bad spot really. Driving back you get to enjoy views like these:

around almost every bend in the road. By the way, the locals don't follow the "drive at a speed where you can stop in the distance you can see ahead" approach.

We also discovered the North Uist distillery. By chance (really!) and it is in Benbecula not North Uist now. They, like most start-ups, produce and sell gin to keep the cashflow working whilst their whisky matures. We bought three miniatures from the lovely lady running the shop, they name their gins "Downpour" which is pretty accurate for the prevailing local weather.  Look at  website link for more details on a rather special place run by rather special people. We decided to test their grapefruit offering, the coast and croft and the straight Downpour gin. All were excellent but we opted to return and get the latter two which were distinctive and most enjoyable. They sit in a locker winking at us now. Seductively. 

On a particularly blustery day, we had to do the tourist thing and re-visit the Politician pub on Eriskay. For folks who haven't seen the original or remake film of the Whisky galore story, or read the book, you can read a summary in this weblink. The food was still good and the original bottles etc from the SS Politician were still on display on the bar:

To try and walk off some of our lunch, we hit the nearby beach and made a little video for you:

whilst avoiding the scary looking jellyfish scattered around:

Heading back to South Uist you get to drive across the impressive causeway linking the two islands and the crew gets to practice her video camera skills with the mobile phone:

In the Kildonan museum we learned some fascinating history about life on the islands, the challenges of crofting, having no right of tenancy and the many folks that emigrated to Canada. Very good little museum. We were amused by the comment on how the water mill didn't stop working that often:

It kind of fitted with the Downpour name for the gin. The folks running the museum reported a 50% drop in the cafe takings over last year, quoting the unreliability of the ferry service as one reason that visitors were not coming in the same numbers. Sure enough during our time on the island chain, the ferry north to Harris went sick a couple of times. The local residents were unamused that a truck delivering food was not given priority over motorhomes when it came to rebooking! Calmac gets more and more stick from residents, no matter which island they are on it seems. 

Lochmaddy was a last visit, it hosts the Ferry terminal in the north and a small settlement. They have a new pontoon area with some space at the end for visitors - as you can see, visitors were thin on the ground:

Lochboisdale was pretty quiet too, not that many visiting yachts, one motorboat. A local seal was very noisy though. Seemed to be a small one but boy, did he / she have a bark. If you've not heard a seal in fine voice, look a this You Tube video with the volume cranked up a bit.

After 4 happy hire car days, we returned the ball of fire Hyundai (naturally no check of the car for damage or fuel level) and raided the community cafe for one last time to see what cake was on offer. Then we walked back to the lonely looking boat:

That evening was fresh mackerel. Donald the harbourmaster had taken a party out fishing and brought several fish back. The crew played the "I am not good at filleting them" card which worked too. Free dinner, all prepared. Not a bad place to be.

Maintenance news:

There had been an unforecasted day of heavy duty winds. We'd not removed the bimini cover as the forecast suggested it wasn't needed. They were so wrong. Luckily the cover itself survived but a machine screw holding one of the spreader bars came unscrewed. So, it was replaced with a bolt, washer and nut and a dab of Loctite thread locker too, just in case. We also launched the RIB and gave the waterline a scrub - some grassy stuff from the sunny days. The hull was also treated to a wash off, the captain's arm too as doing it from the RIB does get you a bit wet. 

Stornoway to Lochboisdale

Leaving Lewis is hard, such a special place. However, all good things and all that.....  Where to go? Tarbert (Harris) was tempting but there are only a couple of places we could hide out there if we wanted a berth rather than anchoring and as we were forecast to get some wet and very windy weather, walking ashore not using the dinghy was tempting. Eventually we opted to head further South, back to Lochboisdale for many reasons. The optimum timing would have been around 1am on Sunday for our departure. We opted for the less optimal 4am in the interests of sleep and at the cost of a few litres of diesel.

It was darkish, drizzling and misty as we headed off. There is a tradition in the islands of not going to sea on Sunday.  Local fishing boats and commercial crews stay in port on Sundays to respect the community tradition and day-of-rest practices. We didn't feel bad about heading out as a leisure craft but were amazed to be followed by a fishing vessel:

"Our Pride" clearly wasn't observing the tradition - maybe because it was registered in Castlebay, part of Barra. The more southerly islands always seem way less god-fearing (or simply more commercial?) 

Our FLIR (infra-red camera) was pretty much useless as the relative humidity in the air was nearly 100%. So, we needed to keep a sharp lookout with it and the old technology eyeballs for pot markers as we left the harbour. As daylight came, it was still grey and there were heavy misty patches so the radar was needed for several hours. We were gently pushing the tide passing the lovely Shiants, a bunch of islands that are inhabited by massive numbers of birds. Sad to say that in the grey they didn't look too impressive through the pilothouse windows:

Way nicer on a sunny day. However, we had the bird population to enjoy on the water and flying around us, including plenty of puffin antics. There was the odd dolphin for amusement too.

On our trip up to Stornoway we had to divert for a guard vessel and we commented that we had no idea what it was guarding. So, we looked at the very useful Kingfisher bulletin website and discovered that some serious surveying was underway:

Sure enough, there was a survey vessel that had launched an unmanned craft smack bang on the track we wanted to follow. A little diversion followed, you can see the small kink in our track as we passed Skye:

It looks like a small kink but in reality means a diversion that adds half an hour to the trip. Not a huge issue in a run that was going to take 11 hours or so. The weather continued to improve as forecast so the radar was retired and we settled into cruising in gentle seas and calm winds. Just lovely. There were a few pot markers to avoid though, this one:

was in a depth of 148 metres. You are never safe it seems - at least they use good visible markers here unlike the old milk cartons we see on the south coast. 

The sun came out as we approached Lochboisdale which was nice. Less nice was that the one bigger berth in the harbour was taken up by a Swiss flagged yacht that wasn't really large enough to need it. So, we had to back onto a finger berth that is way too short for us, and then have fun trussing the boat to it ready for some blowy weather. The evening sun on the hill that we faced showed the rock and textures well:

and yes, the sea really is that colour.

Maintenance news:

Nothing really - the stern gland on the main engine shaft was starting to drip a little too often so that got tightened up. The wing engine had a good run as we approached the harbour too and behaved itself.