Petestack Blog

Cearcal a’ chuain
Gu bràth bidh i a’ tionndadh
Leam gu machair geal an iar
Far an do thòisich an là.

[C Macdonald/R Macdonald, Cearcal a’ Chuain]

Yes, I’m always drawn west, but hadn’t been for a while, so wanted to get out there and cover some ground (water?) with Fly and did, logging some 330 sea miles over the ten days from Saturday 9 to Monday 18 August…

While this singlehanded cruise had a false start on that windy first Saturday with Fly retreating from just north of Shuna for the Glencoe Boat Club ‘Lismore’ muster that finally happened a few days later at Castlebay (!), much good sailing was subsequently enjoyed with fog, sun and generally decreasing breezes all playing more than bit parts. We made Loch na Droma Buidhe (Drumbuie) on the Sunday, with a single-reefed, tide-assisted beat down Loch Linnhe that became more of a fetch up the Sound of Mull, then set off in fog for Canna on the Monday on a reach that became a run west of Rùm with the reef finally shaken out two or three hours after I’d first considered it. And, speaking of my fellow GBC voyagers (all starting like me afresh from Glencoe), Gregor and Lorraine also made Canna that day in Tina Louise but chose to anchor the other side of the Sanday bridge whereas Mark just made Drumbuie in Mingming II then Canna the following day.

So I sailed for South Uist and one of my favourite anchorages in Tuesday fog (again), but it’s all so much simpler since since I first came this way 31 years ago, with modern chartplotters largely supplanting the paper navigation with handbearing compass, charts and estimated positions that was all we had (no GPS) back then excluding RDF etc. that I didn’t use. And it was another good day’s sailing, although that was about to change with increasing engine usage as the wind became increasingly intermittent over the next few days…

Now I love Loch Skipport and the Wizard Pool, having been twice before with Magic III in 1994 and Wyvern in 1996, but hadn’t remembered the mud which had me digging out a pair of gloves to haul the anchor chain and was still messing up the decks at Vatersay after not getting fully sloshed away! And, with the morning fog so thick I couldn’t see the shore, have to say I simply wouldn’t have left when I did in the old days of paper-only navigation, but was soon rewarded with things clearing for a scenic near-calm, battery-charging motor the length of South Uist before finding enough breeze to sail from Eriskay to the south end of Barra. And here I was heading for my first ‘new’ anchorage of the trip in Vatersay Bay, where I also experienced a first in failed anchor setting with the sunken fence post you see in the fourth photo below (and quite a load to haul by hand) the culprit!

More thick, can’t-see-the-shore fog (spot the theme emerging here?) on Thursday morning, so what to do? I’d been hoping to take a sail down Barra Head way but that seemed pointless when its main purpose was to see. The Wednesday fog had cleared, but would Thursday’s? (Answer: partially, yes, and certainly the can’t-see-the-shore worst of it, but never completely.) So I opted for the short trip round to Castlebay where I could buy red diesel etc., found Mark there with Mingming II, and had to trundle a trolley from the marina (new since my previous visit) several hundred metres each way round the village to get the diesel. Then Mark and I took a walk up Heabhal and its continuing ridge to Hartabhal before descending via Brevig and finding Gregor and Louise at Castlebay with Tina Louise when we got back. Hence the ‘muster’, with a convivial meet in the Castlebay Bar proving that GBC social sailing’s alive and well!

And so to Barra Head, which was absolutely the heart of this trip for me; I wanted to see these spectacular southern islands close-up and could also have visited one or two in the low-swell conditions but, really needing to be home four days hence, chose to simply sail by and round this time. It was a somewhat foggy start if no way comparable to the pea soup of the previous two days, but clearing nicely to sun by the time I made Pabbay under sail and absolutely clear as I completed my windless circumnavigation of that island under engine. So why right round Pabbay when it cost me some 80 minutes on an already long, long day bound ultimately for Tiree? Quite simply because I wanted to see the Great Arch, which already had me heading back north up its west side, and completing the circle just seemed right as well as giving these stunning rocky coasts time to emerge from relative murk to the crystal clarity I also enjoyed down the west side of Mingulay and Berneray to Barra Head.

So what more to say about this memorable day? Having enjoyed so much good sailing, I’d have been disappointed to be forced into motoring from Pabbay to Tiree, with that frustration finally tempting me to set the spinnaker (a long-contemplated singlehanded first after so many years of owning this boat!) to make best use of what breeze I started to pick up not quite halfway across the Sea of the Hebrides. And that was good, with two knots of boat speed turning to four then six before prudence saw me take it down again, and sailing basically achieved to the Gunna Sound, where I spotted Mingming II’s dark sail (Mark having sailed direct from Castlebay) some distance ahead of me before eventually motoring into Gott Bay in the dark to play ‘locate and pick up the mooring you can’t see’!

With Mark heading south-east first thing in the morning, I also got going quite early and was able to overhaul him and sail as far as Iona with some brief, almost-too-late, spinnaker assistance before the wind basically dropped completely. And here our paths for the day split, with Fly‘s superior engine speed and fuel capacity taking me to the occasional anchorage of Eileach an Naoimh in the Garvellachs and Mingming II‘s more limited outboard performance causing Mark to settle for the equally occasional option of Carsaig Bay on the south coast of Mull. But did I expect either the spectacular dolphin visitation I got lucky in filming after being too slow with the camera on several other half chances this trip or to be sharing the Eileach an Naoimh anchorage with six other boats (there’s a Hunter Liberty you can’t see moored right in by the rocks)? Not at all, but I was lucky in arriving soon enough to get third choice of the spots towards its head where a further three ‘latecomers’ had to anchor progressively further down.

Now, while I’ve sailed past the Garvellachs many times and raced round them, I’d never landed before and can’t leave Eileach an Naoimh without mentioning both St Brendan’s Monastery (see photos) and the seriously rough terrain that makes exploration beyond the (literally) ‘beaten path’ really quite awkward. But what a beautiful and interesting place!

So… two days to get home from the Garvellachs with relatively short distances left to cover: could I hope to sail most of this with an ever lighter, more fitful wind forecast? The fortunate answer was ‘yes’, covering all but the last couple of miles up to the Creags off Lismore (where I met Alison Chadwick on Hot Toddy and Mark later turned up) under sail as well as the bulk of my final day from there to north of Cuil Bay before needing a couple of hours of engine to get home to Glencoe. And that’s that apart from another first in the wee bird who spent quite a while perched on my windex off Shuna that last day, giving me time for multiple attempts at photographing him/her with perfectly-streaming telltales. Might just add that Mark covered about three-quarters of the ground I did in his smaller, slower boat (taking me back to when I used to do this stuff in even smaller boats!) and, at the time of writing, Gregor and Lorraine are still out there and believed currently at Lochboisdale. There’s another video combining some sailing clips I haven’t finished editing yet and might link here when it’s done, but in the meantime I just want to get this up so here it is!

[Video added 25 August 2025]