Mallaig to Kyle of Lochalsh

Armed with our shiny new Rocna anchor and a fridge and freezer full of the best that the local small Co-op store could offer, we thought that we should move on. The loose plan was to head up the Sound of Sleat, try to stop off at the Kyle of Lochalsh, do the supposedly beautiful train trip up to Inverness then head around to explore the nice anchorages around the west coast of Skye.

The weather forecast had been changing a lot but looked pretty benign if occasionally soggy for the next week. The only problem was that getting an ideal time to pass through the narrows that we mentioned before meant getting going by 6:15 am.

We were preparing the boat to depart from a very quiet harbour (even Pimmy was snoozing) when it started raining. Just enough to be annoying. The start of the trip was grey, gloomy and peppered with the odd shower. Scotland at its finest (except for the amazing shortage of midges):

Then fate was kind to us and a little blue stuff peeped out to lighten the mood:

We got the timing for the narrows pretty well spot on and swept through at 9 knots (getting a 50% boost from the tide) - much more and it would get very interesting controlling the boat through the strong eddies there.

The Kyle pontoon is run by a community trust thingy. However, a very nice man called Hughie has a trip boat based there and kind of looks after berthing etc. He was around and shooed some local kids off of the hammerhead and beckoned us onto it. Fine except there were no cleats at one end to tie up to - just an old piece of polypropylene rope looped through the decking. We made do.

After a long and entertaining chat with him, and many cuddles for Wolfie, his gorgeous alsatian / wolfhound cross dog:

We did the getting clean and tidying up the boat thing. By now, the weather forecast had changed yet again and some blowy stuff was promised for later in the week so, Hughie kindly arranged for us to move to the main walkway where there would be a little more shelter. Our 40 plus tons would be a challenge for the hammerhead too it seems. Astern of us now was a stunning varnished yacht from Sweden. Although a 2002 build, she was immaculate. No marks on the varnish, highly polished fittings etc etc. You don't get perfect reflections like that from many varnished hulls or without spending obscene amounts of money each year:

The perfect yacht had one drawback though, the genset kept overheating and so the nice (and clearly very wealthy) Swedish owner kept vanishing into the bowels of the boat armed with a tool kit that must have cost what a minimum wage worker earns in a year. We took pity on them as there is no shorepower here yet, ran a cable from our boat to theirs and gave them some 240v power so they could charge their batteries and keep their fridge / freezer box working. We are storing up riches in heaven.

We stored up a few more by inviting Hughie and his wife to join us for Strawberries, ice cream and then coffee. He has an interesting background - used to fly helicopters from a ship for Greenpeace when they were spotting whaling ships etc. A claim to fame? Well, he chipped some ice off an iceberg in the Arctic, kept it in the freezer and then added it to a G and T when the ship was down in the Antarctic. Not many folks can say they drank G and T in the Antarctic with ice in it from the other pole. Or would want to perhaps?

Kyle of Lochalsh is what you would expect from an ex very busy ferry port that suddenly had the ferry removed when the Skye bridge was opened. Still, it has the usual Co-op, only a bigger one this time. However, we found that bigger just means more space in the aisles, not a wider range of goods. Mind you, all was well as the evening view of the bridge is pretty impressive: