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.