In which Sid and Doris solve a three reef problem and share Lochmaddy with a large but strangely welcome ferry.
Last night we were not quite on Skye, hanging off a mooring which had the unusual ability to head butt the boat which should be pushed away from the buoy by wind and tide. The good news about leaving a buoy is you just throw the strop back onto the can and zoom off. No bringing in the fenders or tidying the ropes. In this case just the long run up Loch Harport and around Wiay island. (Pretend you are in Newcastle, go on, say it. You know you want to.)
We haul out reef three as we go past MacLeod’s Maidens. I don’t think much of yours, says Sid like Relic from the 1970s.
The coastline looks just like one of those diagrams from a Physical Geography lesson. “See, class, how the hills drain into the river and the river then runs down into the sea. The river has cut the valley into the rock.”
We are then out into The Little Minch. Lochmaddy is the other side, on North Uist. It is dreich and we keep our spirits up singing “Go Uist in the open air, go Uist where the skies are blue, go Uist that’s what we’re gonna do” very loudly. Sid and Doris seem to have cleared the seas. Perhaps we will have more company when we reach the traffic separation zone so necessary to keep the north bound and southbound freighters apart. “TOGETHER. We will sail the seas. TOGETHER. It’s just you and me.”
We have set off in full foulies and life jackets. While the weather forecast was fairly benign the recent run of form means we are unsurprised as the cold wind builds, the sea state worsens and the rain showers mingle with the salty splashes from the slamming bows. This plays havoc with Sid’s skin care regime.
Soon we are fighting the single line system to get back to the third reef. Wind is now regularly 25 knots with gusts to 30 and we have about as much headsail as would make a bandana for a beaver. This is a 35 foot boat and we are making seven knots through sea state moderate to rough steering every wave. The good news is that wind is steadily from the north so it is a kind point of sail but it still makes for a busy afternoon. We are sailing on a quartering sea, and please do not ask us if there is also a three-quartering sea because we don’t know and Mr Google is disobligingly out of range. And to non-sailors: eight miles an hour may not sound really exciting and you might be right.
We did see a mighty vessel near the separation zone, we saw a few fishing boats but we are not racing any other yachts for the last pontoon in Lochmaddy. Life is peaceful there (to save you looking up this learned literary allusion, it’s the last line of Go West).
But not that peaceful. To quote Welcome Anchorages “‘the pontoons are located beside the Lochmaddy to Uig car ferry terminal and provide instant access to two hotels, groceries, cafe, post office, bank, museum, art gallery, gift shop …” All in all it sounds very like Portofino but with longer evenings.
We get through the very bouncy entry to the harbour, the crashmaster general puts Flyer ll onto the only deep keel slot with no more adrenaline running than you’d find in a trainee trapeze artist and the wind nails us there for the next 18 hours. The wind makes the noise that accompanies documentaries about life on the Antarctic Survey stations, except we can’t fade the wind noise when it is time to do the voiceover with serious things about cold and solitude. We are in the middle of low marshes and the wind comes in straight off the sea.
We eagerly unwind the hose to take on fresh water. Last night we thought we had run dry, which is odd for S and D who have been known on Epic Journeys for minging and not minding. In Morocco once we shared a litre of water with Tim and Sarah for four flannel washes. Sarah was not impressed to have the turn after Sid, but they are still friends.
Anyway the pontoon water system is broken. Doris asks people working on the ferry dock how to turn the water on and we take jerries to a tap above the fountaining leak. We get 80 litres into the tanks and put twenty in the lockers [to be clear: in jerries in the lockers – D]. With no real expectations we unwind the serpentine shore power lead and watch as the tell tale on the switch panel shows … no shore power.
Once we have forced all the fenders into place between gusts we head off to find the fleshpots. At the top of the pontoons two JCBs are jack hammering a car park into hardcore. The groceries, cafe, post office, bank, museum, art gallery and gift shop all turn out to be in the same small building, which is shut. We seek for further entertainment and find the only open but eerily deserted hotel to ask about paying for the pontoon and where are the showers?
They don’t quite tell us that the whole marina project has had its problems with the contractors going bust and all the temporary buildings with the marina facilities having been taken away. There is no wifi and indeed no mobile phone reception. There is no radio reception. We thumb hastily through the bit of the almanac you never read to find that the coastguard broadcasts weather information at 19:10 and 07:10 – and that is tonight’s entertainment.
At nine o’clock the Hebrides comes into dock, a ferry which appears to be larger than, well, larger than the Hebrides. They tie up, 30 vehicles disembark. They put the ramp away, shut the bow door, begin to shut the boat down and we have the gift of a colossal wind break. The sound engineer fades off the wind noise.
