…on the wings of the morn, over the sea to Skye, tra la.
Like so many people, Sid and Doris have used some of the lockdown downtime to make extraordinary fantasy plans for our post-lockdown escape. And one of the questions we keep asking is: is it time to own a boat again?
We used to have Eric, a 28′ Etap yacht, who was our delight and a pleasure to sail and to be on. There is a joke that the two best times when you own a boat are when you buy it and when you sell it – never the case for Eric, we were often rubbish at sailing him but Eric was eternally patient and supportive.
Copies of Yachting Monthly continue to pile up at Bonkers Towers, and each one contains stories of a different couple who are having Epic Adventures cruising round the Solent, the UK, Europe, the globe. A bit of clicky clicky on the internet and adverts for the newest most marvellous liveaboard-friendly boats pop up every time you log on. 28′ long? Phooey!! 35′ is the minimum. Or 40′. Or 45′. Doris sits there drinking in the propaganda, Sid sits there trying not to look like he is raining on her parade.
Over the winter a round-the-UK trip was sketched out and a hire boat found… and then we realised that the itinerary contained long stretches of boring stuff with difficult overnight passages and shallow coastlines (the east coast) to get to bits that looked really interesting (the west coast of Scotland, the west coast of England). Which we would have to leave far too early so that we had enough flexibility to return the hire boat in time whatever the weather threw at us.
So instead, we are going to hire a boat from Oban for two weeks and go round the Inner and Outer Hebrides – a higher resolution picture of the chart is here. It’s an extraordinary landscape, with so many places to sail to, or – if the winds are against you – to walk up.
We did a Skipper Refresher course in Portugal last October in the narrow gap between lockdowns, so we can vaguely remember how to do this. Let’s now find out if we still like sailing or whether sitting in a damp triangular-shaped space at 30′ to the vertical is no longer our definition of a great day out.
The boat is Flyer II, a Sun Odyssey 35 from Alba Sailing. There’s more information here if you are interested.
The chart suggests you will be alert. “Breaks Heavily.” “Dangerous overfalls.” “SUBMARINE EXERCISE AREA (See Note A).” “Incomplete Surveys.” None of these is reassuring. Many of the rocks have people’s last names, and perhaps their last day? It is reassuring that nearly everywhere is quite deep, unless you need to anchor. Enjoy!
Hmm. We are discovering that anchoring is the norm in this area. The boat is equipped with multiple anchors, tripping lines, briefings on the different sorts of sea floors etc. We have never been confident anchorers but it increasingly looks like we will have to choose between long passages or uneasy and nervous nights. Hopefully our memorial will not be the newly renamed Bonkers Rock.