2021 Round GB Day 36 - 37 at Lochcarron

I arrived off  Lochcarron half an hour after another single handed sailor, I assumed he was also seeking shelter but he was more sanguine about it, not expecting severe winds inside of Skye, and he left early next morning.

Looking west from the anchorage.

Unusually the anchorage is protected by an extensive reef
(a central moraine from the last glaciers?) parallel with the shore.

The end of Loch Carron at high water, before the winds arrived.

After a quick shopping expedition it was a quite evening with a nice sunset.

Lochcarron village

The forecast on Thursday morning was a bit worse than previous with gale force winds expected.

The wind building after the arrival of a couple in their long
keeled cruiser. Edit: see comments.

My remaining 32 metres of chain should be more than adequate in 5 - 7 metres of water but with increasing winds and a poor forecast I decided to give the anchor a helping hand, one alternate was to use some of the nylon rope already spliced to the chain that has the advantage of being elastic but I decided to back the anchor with additional weight, this will help keep the anchor end of the chain closer to the seabed for two advantages.

1. The pull on the anchor will be closer to the horizontal reducing the chance of the anchor lifting then dragging.
2. The weight will help maintain a catenary curve on the chain which reduces "snatch" on the chain which can pull an anchor out, stress the chain and be very uncomfortable on board.

I used the weight intended for my Jordan Series drogue, a 3.2 Kg "Grapnel" folding anchor / grapple with 5 metres of 8mm chain plus some rope attached to one end. On the other end of the "Grapnel" is a large bow shackle running on the anchor chain. I let this down so the top end of the chain was under water and the grapnel just above the seabed when the boat was not pulling hard on the chain.

The rig working with over 20 knots of wind and therefore
under quite heavy load.

This worked very well, I have felt no snatch and the anchor has been rock steady with gusts up to 36 knots (F8) during the evening and judging from the sound and motion quite a bit more overnight.

The plot from the anchor alarm showing the boats position
at 09:11 on Friday (Blue dot) and the track for the previous
24 hours, The anchor shows the approximate position of the
anchor (it is probably c 5m closer to the boat than that). The
pair of lines off to the top right is a glitch caused by me
doing something else on the iPad.

At the time of writing (Friday afternoon) the wind is dropping but is still c 25 knots with rain, I should be able to move on tomorrow. The lunchtime forecast has introduced the possibility of a SE wind of F4 - 6 on Sunday so if I move it will need to be to another sheltered location and probably not down the Sound of Sleat. 

A few miles down Loch Carron to the facilities at Plockton might be a good idea but I will delay a decision until I download the weather maps this evening or early tomorrow although the models are seriously under estimating the wind here, the domestic forecast and inshore forecast has proved more realistic.

Slide show of all my pictures at Upper Loch Carron, page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen:

Click here for Day 38, Lochcarron to Plockton.

2021 Round GB Day 35. Raasay to Loch Carron.

The old pier on Rassay with Scalpay behind and Skye to the right. 

With strong northerly winds forecast for Thursday and Friday the aim on Wednesday was to find a good anchorage and hopefully have a good sail getting there. With my shortened chain I also preferred relatively shallow water, the problem round here is that a mountain to windward does not give much shelter and frequently they will generate sudden squalls and wind coming from different directions in quick succession, a good way to "unscrew" an anchor and drag.

I came up with upper Loch Carron, the anchorage off the village of Lochcarron is large, shallow and well sheltered from the north with mountains quite some distance away, shelter from the east is not as good but the fetch of water at high tide is about a mile and half a mile at low water. There is also a shop, garage, hotel and easy landing at a slip. So off I went.

Track from Churchton Bay to Upper Loch Carron

Not for the first time this cruise, after motoring out of the anchorage I continued with just the genoa, partly because the wind was likely to be gusty - I have sailed past Scalpay before - but also the narrow route into upper Loch Carron is twisty and, if the forecast panned out, likely to require a lot of gybing so as I had plenty of time and Sancerre sails very well under just the headsail, I took the easy option.

The wind was initially from the NE and I was hard on the wind past Scalpay to clear outlying rocks / Islets Sgeir Thraid &  Sgeir Dhearg then a peasant reach across the inner sound before coming to the wind again to enter Loch Carron. For about 20 minutes I put the engine on to pass through a narrow passage inside some rocks north of Plockton lighthouse which coincided with a drop in the wind as it swung round to the southwest, good timing for going up the narrows to the upper Loch. 

Sgeir Bhuidhe (left) and Sgair Goloach Islets in Loch Carron
as you go south towards Plockton

The entrance to upper Loch Carron through Strome Narrows.

My actual track both ways through Strome Narrows, I was
using the autopilot on a planned track which is as accurate as
GPS so the outbound track overlays the inbound and both are
dead straight.

That is a spectacular section passing within a few boat lengths of rocks and high cliffs, even more impressive than the pictures imply.

Bogha Dubh Sgeir about 3/4 mile NE of Plockton

Eilean a' Bhata on the other side of the channel.

 A very pleasant sail that would have been excellent but for the still cold wind.

23 miles over the ground in 6 hours.

Slide show of all my pictures from Raasay to Upper Loch Carron, page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen:

More on Lochcarron and a windy night in my next post.

2021 Round GB Day 34. Shieldaig to Raasay.

I sailed up the "Inner Sound" (east of Raasay) last year and the AUTEC submarine / underwater weapons systems range along there was likely to be active so I decided to take the slightly longer route south west of Rona and Raasay.

Early morning in Loch Shieldaig.

Leaving in a dead calm with the wake (some created by the
dinghy I was towing) reaching to each side of the Loch.

Approaching the outer Loch.

Moving into the outer loch, the shore is very steep too, here
I was in 134 metres of water (just visible on the instrument on
the right) and that continues to well less than 100 yards of the shore.

The water around Raasay and Rona is incredibly deep close to
shore, just north of Rona my echo sounder could not find the
bottom which the chart says is 265 metres down.

It was a day of fluky, generally light winds and when coming down the sound it took me 4 hours to cover just under 10 miles with no significant current and 6.5 hours to cover the 30 miles to Churchton Bay at the south end of Raasay. 

Approaching Rona moving from 250 metres of water to 50 or so.

Beating down the Sound of Rassay.

I chose to anchor south of the small harbour to avoid disturbance from the ferry and anchored in front of Raasay House, now a hotel but a private house when Boswell & Johnson visited in 1773.

Churchton Bay, Raasay. Raasay House on the left.

The Isle of Skye from the anchorage.

Slide show of all my pictures from Shieldaig to Raasay, page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen:

  Click here for day 35, Rassay to Loch Carron.

2021 Round GB Day 33. Loch Ewe to Shieldaig.

Last year going north I skipped going into Loch Torridon as the weather was so dismal, this time I decided to give it a go and to go into the middle section known as Loch Shieldaig.

I left at 07:20 and after motoring out of the Loch I picked up a light breeze that lasted until about 09:30 when it dropped to less than 2 knots so on went the engine to get round Rusha Reidh. The wind came up shortly after and I was able to sail down to Red Point at the entrance to the Loch and a good way into it before the wind went again,.

I went to a very sheltered anchorage off of Shieldaig, close to the shore and behind a heavily wooded island. 

Out came the dinghy for a quick shopping trip and later for a meal at the local hotel, good food, adequate wine but expensive, the later stupidly so. That put a bit of a blight on what was otherwise a pleasant day.

Rubha (Point) Reidh lighthouse.

Even though I was within 10 miles of the centre of repeated
GPS jamming / spoofing trials with a "danger" area of 30 miles I
did not see any effects which must be very local and / or subtle
but this on radar looks suspiciously like jamming or interference
from one of the many grey painted ships in the area.

Approaching the entrance to the middle section of the Loch,
behind the black line with the block showing at the bottom.
I'll put more pics of this impressive entrance in the next post,
although the number may be limited by poor upload speeds,

 

Moving from Loch Torridon into Loch Shieldaig.

Just short of the anchorage, the passage into the upper loch is
just right of centre. it was the 17th May and there were still a few
patches of snow visible.

 

The island side of the anchorage. The isolated rock is part of a
reef blocking passage between the island and mainland to 
another anchorage on the other side.

The north side of the anchorage.

Sancerre from the beach.

33.3 miles over the ground in 7.5 hours.

Slide show of all my pictures from Loch Ewe to Shieldaig, page through by clicking the arrows or click in the centre of the pic to view from Flickr in a new window or full screen:

 

Click here for Day 34, Shieldaig to Raasay.

2021 Round GB Day 32. On from Stornoway.

Beating south from Stornoway,

After a good nights sleep and a shower I found that on Sundays the Stornoway Co-op and other shops were closed (unlike in Stromness), that the forecast was reasonable through Wednesday but iffy from some time on Thursday and that the tide was good to get past the Shiant Islands where tides are significant, during the early afternoon.

So with some wind and more forecast I abandoned my planned rest day and at 10:30 headed out with the possibility of getting down the east coast with time to cross the Sea of the Hebrides to the mainland before the bad weather arrived.

That proved optimistic.

Almost as soon as I cleared the harbour the wind dropped and changed from an excellent north easterly to a dead beat. Then it started to drizzle, I was not happy.

By 14:15 I managed to get 3 miles from the harbour boundary covering all of 11 miles over the ground since leaving the marina. Also the latest forecast was not good. The chance of following "Plan B" was greatly diminished and there was a strong possibility of getting stuck at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides for an extended period - the crossing from there to the mainland crosses some difficult seas with strong tides and needs good weather.

I therefore decided to bail out to the mainland coast so that I could get to the sheltered waters behind the Isle of Skye, on went the engine and I headed for Loch Ewe the closest good anchorage.

"Plan C" as executed - Stornoway to Loch Ewe.

The Polish guided missile frigate ORP General K. Pulaski. A German
oiler behind. Ships of other nationalities including Dutch, French
and British were in the area.

I arrived at the Aultbea anchorage at 19:20 having covered 38 miles over the ground in 9 hours. 

The entrance to Loch Ewe (centre)

The anchorage at 23:00, still over a month from the longest day.

Click here for day 32, Loch Ewe to Shieldaig.