Revisiting Scalpay and Hunkering Down in Stornoway

Sailing (or to be precise, motoring in a flat calm) back to Scalpay, the island off Tarbert, Harris, was a delight. The conditions gave us the opportunity to inspect the impressive Eilean Glas lighthouse at close quarters from the sea before we hiked back overland to it the following morning.

Approaching the lighthouse from the south

The view from land. We motored Maunie into this little bay and were tempted to tie up to the stone pier (built for bringing supplies to the lighthouse) just to say we'd done it. Sense kicked in but the hikers on the rock no doubt still captured some great photos.

Though the lighthouse is still owned and run by the Northern Lighthouse Board, the two keepers' cottages and the flat-roofed Engine House (which once housed the four diesel engines required to produce enough compressed air to feed the mighty foghorn) were sold and are now run by a trust. Their volunteers are fighting an uphill battle to keep the buildings from decaying and a very rudimentary self-service café was open for a welcome cup of tea and a chance to see a bit more of the site.

The Engine House open for teas and coffees, walls partly repainted

The work-in-progress café. The lady (who looked well into her 70's) looking after it said she'd seen us sail into the bay the previous day as she'd been up a ladder painting one of the external walls!

The disused foghorn with its rack and pinion which allowed it to be pointed in the direction of any fog bank

After a great day on Scalpay we moved into Tarbert for a night and it was good to once again catch up with Fred and Carolanne, who run the excellent little marina there. We'd liked to have stayed longer but the imminent gale made us head up to Stornoway where the inner harbour provides more shelter and the larger town offers a few more things to do on wet and windy days. Just as well, as the deep low pressure system that's the cause of the gale (and is the remnants of a Tropical Storm that hit the Caribbean) is moving slowly north east; the roar of wind in the rigging and the tug of the boat against her mooring lines will be inescapable for the best part of 2 days.

Wind gusts of just under 40 knots - we are very glad to be safely moored!

In these parts the sea state will probably take a day or two to calm down after such strong winds so we won't rush to cross to the mainland and on to Orkney. If we can manage it, we'll hire a little car here for a day on Sunday (still forecast to be windy but maybe a little less wet) to see the west and north coasts of Lewis then have a couple of nights at anchor in some interesting looking sea lochs just south of Stornoway. 

At the moment, the long term forecast looks good to set off for Kinlochbervie (just south of Cape Wrath, the NW corner of mainland Scotland) on Wednesday, then head off for Orkney (with a possible overnight in Lock Eriboll) the following day. Fingers crossed.

More amazing anchorages

 

Rodel anchorage, SE tip of Harris, a tricky anchorage

The short daily hops up the east side of North Uist, Benbecula and South Harris have been a little lacking in wind but we've been blessed with bright sunshine and some beautiful scenery. The settled weather has also continued to encourage us to explore some 'tricky' anchorages.

Barbara enjoying a brief period of perfect sailing

After our lunch-stop in the tiny Fhalaich Acairseid anchorage, our evening anchorage in Hanauray Sound brought us into a very new landscape of little low-lying islands on the north of Benbecula.

The following morning we motored a few miles north, suddenly shrouded in 50m visibility fog which thankfully cleared as we approached the south-east corner of South Harris. Our target was the tiny anchorage of Pol am Tighmhail, more commonly known as Rodel, which needs careful timing as you can only get through the narrow rocky entrance at high tide. 

Rodel. The main access is through the narrow entrance to the NW

As we moved slowly through the shallowest point the skipper was heard to mutter, "There's f*** all water under the keel!" and the depth sounder briefly read 1.8m. Maunie draws 1.8m so there really was only a few millimetres of clearance between boat and bottom!

The stress was worth it, though, because we had the anchorage to ourselves and enjoyed the bird life and a walk ashore.

We came through that channel! The west passage at low tide

Looking north east towards the second Sea Passage

The inner, drying harbour. The hotel has been closed for several years but is currently being rebuilt

The entrance at low water

The C16th St Clement's Church above the anchorage

Now a Historic Scotland site, the church is the final resting place of generations of the Macleod clan

Whilst waiting for high tide to allow us to leave the anchorage, we did a beach clean. There was, unfortunately, a lot of debris from the fishing industry so we collected discarded net, rope and pot markers and persuaded the builders at the hotel to let us put it in their skip.

From Rodel we've come north to familiar territory that we visited last year. First to the island of Scalpay, with its award-winning fish restaurant - North Harbour Bistro - and now into the ferry port of Tarbert. Our luck with the weather is about to change, however, and there's a gale coming in tomorrow. 

Tomorrow's forecast!

We are therefore heading up to Stornoway today to hunker down in their marina for a couple of days, while Barbara is hoping that the ferry crossing to Ullapool won't be too boisterous!

Then there were three - enjoying some amazing weather

Settled weather encouraging exploration of challenging anchorages!

We are delighted to be joined by old friend (and regular crew of several of our boats), Barbara who had an interestingly challenging journey by train, (emergency taxi thrown in when the train looked like it would fail to meet the ferry on time) and ferry from mid-Wales to Lochboisdale. She has certainly delivered some fantastic weather as we are enjoying bright sunshine and chilly but moderate NE winds for a relaxed cruise northwards up the eastern side of the island chain.

Our first overnight anchorage was a place we'd visited last summer, the Wizard Pool in Loch Skipport. This time with sunshine and absolute calm in the evening, we watched the sunset and, the following morning, hiked up a rocky hill overlooking the anchorage.

The Wizard Pool

Supper time view from the cockpit

Taken at about 11.15pm - the moon is visible but the sky is still too light for any stars

Looking north up towards North Uist

Looking west, over the Wizard Pool. Maunie is to the left

Di and Barbara loving the view

After the exertion and delight of the hill climb we set off on a gentle motor of only 7 miles up to a lunch stop in Loch Keiravagh.  We had time to fly the drone to get a different perspective of the Benbecula coast.

Looking south, across Loch a' Laip

Looking east, with Skye on the horizon. There's a huge fish farm in the entrance to the loch

Dianne the drone-catcher in action

Success, and all fingers intact!

Moving on, we were delighted that we'd been told about the fishing harbour of Kallin on Grimsay by Bob, the skipper of Tequila, the only other yacht sheltering with us from the gale in Castlebay marina last week. The harbour itself is focussed entirely on fishing so can't be described as attractive in any way but we found an excellent anchorage close by and dinghied ashore to experience the Namara seafood café, run by the wonderful Olga. 

Part fisherman's chandlery, part café, It doesn't look much but...

....Olga produced a delicious selection of locally-caught seafood for the three of us

This morning we waited for high tide to navigate the narrow rocky channels back out to sea and had a great sail only a few miles north to Flodday Sound, just south of North Uist. Acairseid Fhalaich (Hidden Harbour) is somewhere that you just have to visit if the weather is settled so we carefully nosed into the tiny entrance and anchored for lunch.

Not much room to swing on the anchor

The narrow entrance

Waves from the crew

This evening we are in a wild, remote anchorage in Haunaray Sound, with the rocky outcrop of a hill called Eaval. We have seals on the rocks and deer on the little island, all watching us with interest. The breeze is forecast to drop overnight so we should have a quiet night - Haggis, neaps and tatties followed by Scottish Plum Crumble is the on-board meal of the evening. 

The uninhabited islands and some amazing sea life

To the south of Barra and Vatersay (which was connected to Barra in 1991 via a causeway) lie several islands that were once sparsely populated by some very hardy people but are now uninhabited - except temporarily by the occasional group of equally hardy rock climbers and ornithologists who choose to wild camp on them for a few days in summer.

With the winds remaining fairly brisk from the N to NW, two of the islands, Pabbay and Sandray have open bays facing the south-east and, although they are described as ‘occasional anchorages for settled weather only’ in the pilot books, we decided to give them a try.

First up was Pabbay and the sandy beach looked fantastic as we nosed into shallow water, as close to the land as we dared, to gain shelter from the gusty breeze.

Clean, sandy seabed but you can see the slight swell rolling in

Perfect sandy beach

Although the anchor dug itself reassuringly deep into the sandy bottom, we never quite managed to get out of a rolling swell that seemed to be amplified for a couple of hours before high water and so we had a rather disturbed night. However, venturing ashore in the dinghy the following morning we met a group of very tough rock climbers who are camping on the island for 5 nights; they’d found the wind very irksome in the night so, without mobile phone signal on the island, they were extremely pleased when we relayed the latest weather forecast for a period of much more settled weather ahead.

We moved on to Sandray, just three miles or so to the north, motoring in the novelty of light wind.

The Meanish anchorage in Sandray - with Vatersay and Barra in the distance

About a mile from the beautiful anchorage we picked up a big pod of Bottlenose Dolphins who started to play in our bow wave so we kept our speed up as we came into the bay to see if they’d stay with us. Miraculously they did and, even better, they remained with us for about an hour after we’d dropped the anchor, frolicking around Maunie and giving us a tremendous show. A lone sea-kayaker called Nigel was on the beach when we arrived so he swiftly launched his canoe and had the delight of dolphins breaching all around him; the heavy rain was hardly noticed!

There’s a video of the action here – the only disappointment was the heavy rain when we flew the drone to capture some of it:

https://youtu.be/X4I4DZ0EMYY

With the wind continuing to drop throughout the evening, we both slept soundly and left at 07.00 the following morning for the 15nm passage to the island of Eriskay. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the water was mirror calm (this is very unusual for the Hebridean Sea!) so we could clearly see seabirds, seals and then something rather larger on the surface.

We killed the engine and drifted noiselessly to within a 100m of a slow-moving black fin and then had a mesmerising 30 minutes as a large (we’re guessing 22ft) basking shark swam in slow concentric circles around us, eventually passing down the length of the boat almost within touching distance.

Here’s a video of the shark: https://youtu.be/DzWU1uXf1Nc

So, as you’ll imagine, we are feeling pretty pleased with ourselves for taking the chance to head to the more remote islands and the excellent natural harbour of Acairsaid Mhor on the east side of Eriskay turned out to be a great overnight stop.

Looking west, with Fuday and the north tip of Barra to the left and
the southern edge of South Uist to the right

Looking east above the entrance to the harbour,
with the Cuillins on Skye visible in the morning sunshine

Once anchored, we walked into the little village and celebrated with an excellent lunch at the Am Politician, the only pub on the island. It’s named after the SS Politician which was wrecked on a reef near here in 1941; its cargo included 240,000 cases of whisky bound for Jamaica and the island’s population managed to ‘salvage’ about 10% before the police and customs officials arrived. A dim view was taken of the locals’ initiative, and several were fined and even imprisoned briefly but the story became the Ealing Comedy film ‘Whisky Galore’ which was re-made fairly recently.

The pitch was formally recognised by FIFA in 2015
as one of eight unique places to play the game in the world

Apart from the pub, the island (joined to its much larger neighbour, South Uist, by a causeway in 2001) has a small ferry terminal for passengers and a few cars coming from Barra so it’s on the Hebridean Way Cycle Route - from Vatersay all the way up to the Butt of Lewis. It also has an interestingly undulating football pitch which must give the home team a distinct advantage, as if the prevailing westerly winds weren’t enough of a challenge!

We rather fell in love with this wee holiday home, built inside the thick walls of the ruins of an old crofter’s cottage.

The view down to the little ferry terminal for the Barra - Eriskay ferry

Graham also thought that this place, overlooking the entrance to the harbour (you can see it in the bottom right of the first photo of this post), would be a good fixer-upper project.

Mainly because of the spectacular views across to the Cuillins on Skye on a clear day such as today.

The view from the front door

We  are now in Lochboisdale, South Uist, to re-stock, use the washing machines in the excellent little marina and, most importantly, to welcome a new crew member who arrives by ferry tomorrow evening.