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.