The confines of the Clyde are behind us now as we cruise in virtual modus out of the Dorus Mor, or round the tip of Sanda into what many folk consider "The Good Stuff". Leaving Crinan or Southend behind, the ocean opens up with the tantalus of whisky dewed islands and hidden anchorages amidst breath taking scenery. In fact now that that warm fuzzy feeling comes back to me, I remember well that I even chose to dump clyde regattas in order to race in the finer waters of Argyll and Lochaber for a couple of seasons, which were amongst the best in my career.
Starting from the South with Kintyre under our belt, Gigha is well worth a stop these days, with a thriving wee community well up on making the isle an experience for yatties and land lubbers alike. To the north we have Loch Sween and Tyvallach, and Ardfern up another loch N. of Crinan, which many use as a base of course, but few choose to swing in unless they need the chandelry or some fixing of broken bits on board. I think I would take the tour up Loch Sween perhaps, given an everlasting summer or too little wind to sail in the glory of the Dorus Mhor or cross the great race. It boats Sween Castle and the Fairy Isles.
On a calm day on the west side of Kintyre and the northward coast, there also are secretive sandy bays and the odd eatery such as the nice cafe at Kilberry caravan site. No place to hook in during a swell though. However a week or so of high pressure over the west and many surfers are left disappointed at the flat calm and gentle off shore breeze to be had on this coast. When sailing is too pedestrian an affair, anchoring with a couple of meters under the keel in a sandy bay for swimmin and sun bathing cannae be whacked.
Islay was a place my father held in disdain as far as yatting went, although he was very happy indeed to have land lubbing, 'Dunlop' cheese consuming holiday way-back-when with us all. Perhaps it was a stretch of water twixt the Mull and the Oa for which he held a bitter memory of fool hardyness having set out in clement weather, bit of stiff breeze and bit of sea, to arrive cold and soaked in the mid eve, with no where open for vitals. The Sound of Jura is pretty unwelcomming too. However luckily for the whisky enthusiast there is anchoring to be had at Port Ellen and Craighouse, and also some wee sneek-ins for Lagavulin and LeapFrog distillieries if you need the more medicinal of malt experiences.
A round Jura trip would be a challenge with either overnighting at Loch Tarbert or Craghouse and a with tide navigation of the Sound, plus anchoring up and sight seeing at the Corryvreckan, which I hear can be quite a good day out, if you have the weather, sea and time at hand to come in on slack water and wait until the race is over before proceeding through. A passage of the Grey Dogs north of Scarba would be a bit too far but dooable just as the tide commences its ebb perhaps, with good pilotage observed. Jura would really mean going up the paps wi a good camera too before a quick dram at the distillery, whose dark amber distill has become more and more like angels tears as their attention to quality blending has improved over the last 20 years, first starting buying Jura Ordinaire as a kind of charitable act, it not being as smooth or interesting as any of its Neighbours.
Roon Islay, well, yes, It can be done and Bowmore can be dropped into. But not on the top of my Itineary, lest perhaps the ebb tide can be avoided while awaiting a passage eastward of the Sound of Jura whilst circumnavigating said mountainous isle.
We would then need to for old times sake, pop in on Mr.Ryan's fine establishment, the Crinan Hotel, and posh our selves up a bit in slacks and pressed shirts for some top rated sea food. You only live once, if the credit card will tolerate it. In fact it isn't like super expensive, and has a bar menu for the hoi palloi or them who have just paid the canal both ways on a 14m gin palace. Canal navigated or Mull, the tow path is worth stretching the legs along, and perhaps as far as Cairnbaan, which did a good spot of nosh last time I was there. Along that aesthetic stretch of genius short cut, one has time to ponder the sea farers and cruising pioneers who traversed its short span with the promise either direction held for commerce and fishers going inland or advernturers travelling westward. You can also see over the birth place of Scotland, Dalreada, where the old kings are burried at Kilmartin and society began a proper. Well not if you were a pict or ancient inhabitant, but they were careless enough to leave only stoney relics behind and no web pages or instagram evidence of their societal building skills.
Local shops are a kind of up and down thing. Some places I remember well, they were dieing out in the 1980s with ageing shop owners running stock down and letting the milk go sour. Some died completely, mostly to become holiday houses, while though others found new white-settler owners who managed to turn them into multifaceted enterprises, while eating away all the time at the lump sum capital they had from selling up in Surbiton or Slough. As places get visitor pontoons, they start to loose their allure.
Clyde confined, Tarbert is a perfect example, where some of its charm is lost to a sizeable pontoon area, on the "wrong side" for nipping oot for a pint o'milk in the middle of a rain shower, or a fly pint while the wife's head is turned on the pillow. Also Tarbert has a direct competitor right over the loch now, which is much shinier and the staff dont just grit their teeth when they smile to welcome customers I hear. Portavadie is a wonderful development, and very likely to be abosultely nothing I am interested in unless Scottish Series sprouts ten one design classes plus classic meter raters and has a big party with girls bussed in there. Stranger things have happened though.
The same is to be said to some extent of Ardfern and that new interloper, Croabh Haven, the latter being a very good place to keep your boat or start W.Highland Week. So encharmed by this pontooned intrusion in nature as the racoe organisers of WHW are, that they run a day race out and back. Actually this may be rather a jolly return after a roon the cans, which I suppose in relation to Oban which can be a bit diffuse these days with so many folk demanding walk off berthing instead of practicing their anchor skills. Many claim the same division of cosetted is killing Scottish series more than the credit crunch has killed people's need to overstretch themselves with boat mortgages, black accounts and hidden credit card biills for new sails.
The peachy wee late season Round Shuna race also runs out of Croabh, which is far more to my taste for a two night stay midst concrete blocks and at a time when there is a decided lack of loud mouth Glesga builders clanking down the pontoons like a heard of arrogant half cut elephants. The west coast regatta fraternity are far from the 'racing rabble' my dad described the Clyde's exodus as he tried to stay ahead of them at the Glesga Fair, Tobermory being their finish line.
No real crusing afficionado would consider further progress north of Croabh Haven or return there to, without the passage of the Cuan Sound, on a favourable tide of course. The almanac consulted and a northern (E/W at the sound itself) flood tide promised this may well entail a religious experience of getting up in the twilight or forgoing dinner to be squeezed through. I read on the electric internet of some intrepidation and discourse about actually doing the run, as there is virtually no slack water and seemingly at least 4 knots tide either way, building to 7 or even 8 kints W-E with a following wind drift. This can mean boat speeds of 14 knts, enough to which is enough to punch through any back eddy, but also enough to take the unweary helmsman onto a shoal or the three dreaded rocks on the Tarsa end Also of eddies and turning hard so as not to be sucked onto the Cleit rock, or washed down the Trisna sound which resembled a river last time I raced past it. Oh, did I mention dear yellow wellied friend that I have helmed a boat in a race, under spinnaker through the sound? I have done two races I believe or maybe just one, the other being the sound of Luing. This is no very attractive alternative for a sailor with ambition to use canvas more thank Don Quihote ( the donkey, viz the motor) I have seen boats doing about 8 knots SOG who have just taken their sails down and drifted in piroeting fashion northward, grabbing the bite of the tiller when possible rather than fighting both foils and sails as the eddied stream hits its peak at the narrowest hundred yards. You can actually stem the start or end of an ebb tide further out or even get a back eddy on the Scarba side - allegedly, disclaimer, own risk, medical certificate etc.
Cuan passaging has also the interesting bit of scenery of Easdale which is kind of a scar on the landscape turned work of art like a kind of Scottish inverted ancient pyramid, where roofing slates for many a button ben and single end were extracted for several hundred years from the perfect seam of the stuff there. I have not raced through Easdale sound but have cruised through it a few times and it is quite narrow with a big, drying shoal in the middle, which was badly marked in years gone by. Even Ken Grant of Tigh Solus fame, grounded his older 35 gfooter there on a return leg from Round DShuna on a sunny Sunday evening or was it a monday morning. He hid his shame below, knowing that the ebb tide would take hium off , yet give him a bigger headache of going the wrong way with the possibility for a leaky keel seal. The shoal is now marked I nbelieve., according to the chart with a big yella pole, but there are moorings for whale wathcer ribs and so on in the middle of the sound I see from the electric youtube. One to tick off for old times sake anyway.
Luing though boasts some cinemagraphic footage which was in the rather wonderfully down to earth bond fillm, from Russia with Love. Big Tam the milkman pollutes the sound of Scarba and Luing with firey oil drums one summer in the early sixties, and that helicopter crash on Jura or Scarba was the real thing, just filmed a bit wobbly. They used radio control to crash it , which seems a miracle of the day, and probably some secret stuff pinched from some military project here or there. Old Cargil Sandeman, of port wine and electric yacht services familyage, claimed to own the boat Sean was a drivin' off the coast of Yugoslavia, ahem, Luing. It did resemble it for sure, and why shouldnt it have been sold locally after filming ?
After clearing Scarba and the wee stuff to its North, the itinerant cruiser has the choice of the firth of Lorne, or west to the Bogas Mhor, Iona and the rest of that kind of stuff. Those wi' hob nailed boots an' bobble hats an' aw, could perhaps park up in the loch south of Ben More, loch spelve or spew or the like, as a half way house to later judge the winds and attractiveness from the lofty perch of Ben More and the Mull Red "Cuillin" ridge.
Iona has apparently some lovely anchorages, if exposed to sea building of course from west to south east. You have of course the place of my family folklore " tinkers hole" which was a secluded wee bolt hole for right proper sailors in the post war era, tieing up to the rings in the rock which allegedly date back to Stevenson times, when wee robert louis got so bored he came up with romantic semi nationalist, semi hannoverian stories of Kidnapped and Treasure Island. Such has the myth of the place grown as a kind of cruiser-sailor's Valhalla that it is usually stapped full of Bavarias and other white hulled caravans, as some of my less kind friends call them. My dad had a lunch time anchoring and afternoon on the treshnish, sail past Fingals Cave and through the sound or outside the sound of Iona to over night one or two nights in Tinker's Hole as the highlight of many a summer's cruise from the 1950s to 1980 when he passed away, sailing season under belt. I had the pleasure of glimsing the said wee bolt hole over a shoulder as I either steered or sheeted spinnaker on the Round Mull race 2001 or 02- My dad would have approved. What was once an unfathomly distant and daring place to get to, a real challenge sans GPS and with a plumb line for soundings, has become if not mundane, certainly the kind of tick of list of things to "bag" for the average, competant sailor en route Caledonian.
The same fate of popular by it's own mythology has befallen the first decent anchorage north towards the Lorne, Polldohrain. The pool of Dohrain is synonymous with a wee gandering gait over the hill to the Tigh An Truish - the hoose o' the troosers. Quite an amazing bit of history, an Inn where a heelaner from the Gaeltach could pawn his kilt and pay a small hire fee for a pair of legged apparell doon to his ankles. Wonderful bit of folklore, historical fact after the first major '45, not the 45% of folk in Scotland who voted to tear away from the ever generous and best kenning westminster. Most born Scots voted yes btw. No voters abound in this anchorage as there are often a dozen Boyd Tunnock look alikes quaffing chablis abord if you don't get there in time to drop the wee hook. The other attraction beside the said ancient kilt pawn shop is the 'bridge over the atlantic' which is a nice bit of architecture from the 18th C. The oban lifeboat has steamed under while en route to some life or death incident in a storm with adverse tide the longer way round btw. Not a passage for the masted fraternity though!
Having chosen north, then it is really just to plough on up towards the Lorne and catch the tide up, or sneek up the sound of Kerrera as the ebb tide begins to set. In the Lorne you can actually see the fall in the water like a great river race in the middle and it is quite entertaining to sail through, in the firm knowledge of many tens if not hundeds of\ meters under the keel in all directions. Oban has now some pontoons which saves getting your rubber dinghy stabbed by neds who've been fishing on the north peir as you leave it ashore for one too long and good an extra libation. Kerrera is a nice alternative to pontoon up or anchor, because Oban bay can get choppy and the damn Mull ferry is out early in the summer months. There is a wee passenger ferry boat over to the toon from Kerrera which is a peachy wee tour to get 'yer messages', all being it a long walk to the big Tescos in the toon. Anchoring off the club is a good move for keeping your dinghy intact and perhaps the Manor House restaurant beside the Northern Lights HQ is still doing a mean three courser with aperitifs served in the conservatory. Just perhaps some traditions never die out. Oban has various bars full of confused looking tourists and loud yatties, but roll your troosers doon over your wellies and wander into the Lorne Bar up a back street if it is still on the go - great choice of beer and often good banter in the snug there. Oban bar staff hate yatties btw, more than any other town bar perhaps campbelltown, who hate anyone who is not a cousin by brother-sister consumation.
As part of a fantasy cruise, there maybe is a bit of exploring to be done around the wee isles north of the Coran halls and that, with time spent at the restaurant and pub of Appin. Round Lismore is a waste of time, and I haven't noted it on the WHW itineray for several years. It is a bore and get the side wrong anti clockwise on the way back,and you stuff your many hours racing in the course of a single one second decision, left or right. One fantasy thing though on that side, would be to go up Loch Etive on the early or late flood tide and drift up to take nice photties of the Ben Cruachan range, and other hills of Morvern, Etive, Mull and the highest peaks of Glen Coe even. Coming back on the ebb,after maybe some bite to eat at Taynuilt on the slack alice, would result in a passage over the falls of Etive which are quite a sight as the 20 mile odd long loch empties its excessive binge drinking out again through the 100 yard wide mooth. I wonder if it is actually dooable or if you risk smacking the sides in a back eddy? the Center current looks like a river rapids out of Deliverance, but would you end up squealling like a piggy as the boat veers off to one side and finds terra firma? Maybe a pure flight of fantasy, certainly it is an infamous drift dive on the flood where they approach it 12 m down or so at 7 knts and then are wheeched up and often break the surface. Do they not get bends, or do you have to be in oxygen narcosis to attempt such tidal dives in the first place?
Fort Bill is no place for sailors really- they have Solings, satan's revenge on the physique of regatta junkies who like pain and the idea it was once the olympic pinacle of sailing. So the Lorne stops to be interesting once you are passed the light of Lorne or escaped over to Duart castle to proceed north up the blessed sound of mull. Where the firth and Sound meet is one of the most photogenic and awe inspiring places I have ever been, and I have really only ever cruised it once, another dozen times being absorbed by racing and just snatching glimpses of its beauty as a drowning man gulps for air every so often. The sound has one over riding issue - the wind really doesnt like to blow both ways up and down it, yet the prevailing south westerlies are usually split by the Ben More massif, which means they can fight each other an annullerate the pressure gradient in a nasty whole Duart-CraigNure to Aline given the general wind is veering a little. Later on the wind will decide to either beat you up the sound on a favoured tack as far as Salen, or give you a nice spinnaker run. Beyond salen and green Isle the true wind can blow over Mull again an asert a different direction, often veering wildly as you come out of the effect of ben More and the funnel of the sound in those confines. Occaisionally the wind will actually blow BOTH up and doon the sound, with a large neutral patch in the middle channel which I have seen on one occaision over the course of the race in that area, while also it can do this a shorter time, before flicking back. Some say God was a Morvern mad, hence go right but there is more tide to ride mid to left, and more back eddys to exploit far left given you are then fighting an ebb tide.
Loch Aline is a favourite of some I have no real experience and it draws a blank as far as fantasy cruise goes. Perhaps it is a spot to dash into and get groceries given you got that far and the tide was due to change, or you hear Tob' was chocka wi' idjits anchoring and pontooning up the place. Please leave a comment if you are of differentage to my opinion of the wee creek east of the sound.
Tobermory is the place I would next aim for, with the perhaps a virgin passage up calf island, although I suspect we took that route in the cruise return from the Tobermory race 1995. You can sneek a hook off the wooded shore there, but it is deep watter. There is no sea possible there I believe so a quiet, if midgey night can be had with a relatively short row to the pontoon on the south side of the harbour. Tob just has to be done, for old times sake and for now times sake, with a bottle of the really rather fine Malt bought after the tour of the distillery.
Oban, Jura and not in the least Islay boast fine distilleries and tours there of. However I don't feel I quite have enough grey hair for the Classic Malt's Cruise, but you never know, by the time I can afford this cruise I may be ancient enough to fit right in. Afloat I am more a port drinker, but will hae a dram when offered.
The small isles however, given clement weather are well worth exploring along with perhaps a dash up to Talisker destillery, although I leave Skye for part III by in large. Rhum has hills, eigg has sometthign or other worth while, and canna and muick are maybe worth being a land lubber for a laber hour or two. Last time I should have cruised these isles was post west highland week in 2001, when of course, me having the time to do both for once and once only, it blew up force 8 and we dashed round Ardnamurchan before it came in and were storm bound there two nights. We then dashed over to Coll, and were there two nights too, wating for a better wind. The sea was the biggest I have sailed on, and of course beam to which lead to some interesting moments when I flung the helm down in order to ride the odd green mountain rather than it rolling us. We saw on the way that ex Colonsay ferry which jackie Stewart had hired for his seventieth brithday. Big Tam the Milk man, aka Sean Connery, was on board and allegedly sea sick. Three nights later and the ship was tucked away up Loch Linnhe in a bay (perhaps somewhere worth going) on the Morvern Shore just north of Loch Coe. We did Coll to Loch Coe in a long day and were very pleased to have a Nelson launch join us for the homecoming into N.Ballachuilish basin.
Our little venture out of the kindergarten which is Clyde sailing is now coming to its natural end before we move onto part III., terra Nova: Mallaig North, via St Kilda to Spitzbergen.....However Part II has indeed its highlights of the most breathtaking sailing yet to be done. If Tob is a bavaria bedlam, a Hanse Hades, then I would pop over for a chill out with the quiet crowd who choose Loch Na Droma Bhuide, the Drambuie lock as I once overheard a sasenach call it. It is a place of my family folklore and one of the few wild places I have anchored in while actuaklly cruising.
Treshnish and a landing on the old whaling station and pinching some tiles from the old floor mosaic has been an ambition of mine since I first heard discussion of it, and got some of the tiles as a keep sake for one of my dads cruises when I was too wee and moaney to be taken. Perhaps before the approach to Fingals cave I would choose to go up the "Coll Creek" again, manhandling the rubber dinghy up the road from the old pier, getting pished and then drifting back down the inlet to the moored or anchored GRP home from home nearer its mouth. In the hope that you dont blow passed it and become a statistic that is! Fingals cave would be ropunded off with Bunessan Hotel and some seafood washed doon wi dlute alcohol solution of a light and dry concoction.
Bull's hole is a nice and often very sheltered alternaitve to Tinkers hole given a SSW swell, which can make the famous hole less welcoming for a good sleep than a tramp's sock. Iona would need some explored and a lunch time swim at anchor with a beach barbeque or picnic accomplished as a kind of very chilled reminder that we are immersed in a grand bit of holiday. Iona done or ahead, the nose would be into Tinkers hole a few times at opportune occiasions of tide for yachts to leave the place, or upon sighting a flotilla of masts exiting stage right there from. Popular too were the first star wars films from the 70s, and Tinker's hole must be held in both reverance and pilgrimmage to the post war life and freedoms of my father and his crews and companion skippers, many of whom have sailed over the known horizon so to speak. Some are still very much alive and either active yachties or perhaps interested in retracing his steps with me. By my age he was a consumate west coast cruiser, who knew many of the passages, sea states and anchorages like the back of his hand. Me, I know a lot about spinnakers.
All good things come to an end. Unlike some events in life, the last sail of the cruise, or the sail back from the last finish line to Oban, is often full of joy and you are not sad to end your journey, rather you are pleased to have travelled. You revell every time in a little more experience under your belt, a bit more confidence and local pilot knowledge, and yes to have ticked off the itineray and gone the whole hog.
In part three though, we continue the fantasy but it will have to wait until I do some more research into possible interesting anchorages with licensed premises. Perhaps part three will be the tour to For now though, we have hit our crescendo of the Treshnish isles and Tinker's hole, paid our dues to the old warriors of WWII who often sought solace in those few precious weeks of cruising up the west coast during the new found liberty and prosperity of the post war years, where an educated gentleman from the humblest beginnings, could have enough money for a decent hoose over the weans heids and a boh-wat to go sailing on with his pals on such western isles adventures. Not so now. You need to be big in property, a harley street doctor or a city trader to afford a roof over your head and a thirty foot yacht these days. In our borrowed Hunter Sonata of Comfort 30 then, we merry band of newly bonded siblings turn our bow to the long stretch o'watter back to the Lorne or Luing from the sound of Iona. This is a bloody long sail and void of many features once the bogas mor is behind you, while the mainland and inner isles are still rather distant blue grey masses. Now it is time to reflect and start to prepare mentally for the return to the rat race. It is good then to have a 'waddin' (wedding) or some other rather joyous excuse so as to tie the yacht up to a short term pontoon at Dunstaffanage, Croabh or maybe Ardfern. This then leaves a tantalising long weekend in August to retrace our steps over the genius short cut from Crinan., with the memories of the tour earlier in the summer wafting back into our thoughts and dreams as we savour one last wee sip of the summer uisge beatha. Or perhaps we decide to keep the wee boat for the "good stuff" west of Crinan, and let her fester and rest a winter awaiting our return for a cruise to the Minches and beyond.
See you in part III
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What shape Part III ?
Well I have decided that the natural progression is actually to make for a more ambitious clyde to the far NW, and follow in the footsteps of my father's second last year in wooden boats, with the ambitous itinery from Clyde to Loch Torridon. In previous days he also made the skip north to the Summer Isles and I think that was his aim too in 1976, he maybe came as far north as Gareloch.
That cruise included upper Loch Hourn, and to balance out the 'Devil's Loch' I would also dip into Loch Nevis and wander up Larbhein or another munro. Actrually distillieries and Munro & Corbett bagging are a bit of a distraction a nd could lead to rest days. This trip would be the marathon it was, with the Summer Isles and Ullapool as destination.
I can't resist the challenge of retracing my fathers wake, and also enjoying each stage almost as a race , a personal endurance for team and boat, skills of weather forecasting and boat speed and strategic positioning rather than the luxury of givccing up, donkey on and dropping the hook. In fact the allure of going fast means that I could consider the first half of this ambitious run as in the midst of the racing Rabble, entering the Tobermory Race. Experienced yatties in front and behind you are the best wind arrows and tide pointers you can possible get to help disclose the riddle of tide and wind and make for fast passaging.
Now though, the route in two weeks entails a race home again or to a pontooned western hold up. It is less about exploring the small rather than traverisng the greater passages and immersing yourself in the greater picture as each stage unfolds, each tide is caught, each best wind direction exploited and each sail change taken wisely.
So fantasy cruising requires a part IV then! This would be a true fantasy cruise on Aqua Nova so to speak for youyrs truly, of the outer Hebrides.
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