Boatyard life

Tonight will be our last night in the marina boatyard on board Cirrus before we depart for our winter home. Sleep might not, however, come easily as we are currently in the grip of the fiercest storm in our experience here. Gusts are whipping across the island and even tucked in behind the raised bank in a corner of the yard our boat is shaking and vibrating beneath us. Our mast pokes up above the bank into the full strength of the wind making the rigging howl and whine, the pitch varying with the wind strength and in the squalls there is a low humming noise as well, as if the mast is being played like a violin string. Leaves torn from the young trees above us flash past our windows, smaller broken pieces of debris settling on our wet deck briefly then flying off again.

As I write the sun shines brightly from a patch of blue sky, as if defying the storm. But every few minutes a rain squall drops from the racing clouds, water accelerates in the fast-moving air and thrashes against us, penetrating every weakness, invading everything it can. All day yesterday the barometer needle swung anticlockwise as the pressure dropped steadily. By evening the wind had reached gale force, the noise rising with it, disturbing our sleep. This morning the air pressure had reached its lowest point and started to climb back up, the barometer needle now moving rapidly. The wind continued to increase in strength; 75 mph gusts are now flashing past us, diving down the slope to the sea behind us then hurtling across Oban Bay, whipping up spray which is driven away into the town. Little is moving. No ferries are leaving port. The population is hunkered down for the duration.

We count our blessings that Cirrus was lifted out some days ago. The marina, still full of yachts, is sheltered by the island but masts are swaying about wildly just the same. We think we are through the worst now; if the forecast is right, the wind will diminish overnight so our journey across to the mainland tomorrow is not likely to be affected.

A boatyard is a strange place to be living, hardly to be recommended. We have mains electrical power here but for the toilet and showers we have to cross the open yard, negotiating puddles and other debris. There are few lights and at night you forget the torch at your peril. Even with this there are hazards, like the sheepdog from the nearby farm who wandered into the yard and tried to round up Kate on her way back to the boat the other night, getting quite cross and nipping at her heels when she would not stay in one place.

On our last brief walk around the island several days ago we found this deserted beach where we added our footprints in the sand to those of the otters who live here. A truly magical place this, the pebbles carried here from a thousand different headlands all with stories to tell of their journeys.

So today we are packing - one large suitcase and one large shopping trolley - ready for our travels. Somehow, possibly with the assistance of a few ropes, we'll manoeuvre our luggage from deck to ground then across the yard and along the pontoon to the ferry. For the next week we have a complicated schedule, a minor surgical operation, and many miles of our own journeying to undertake.

From sea to shore

It was all over in a matter of minutes. One moment we were manoeuvring Cirrus stern-first towards the marina slip, a delicate operation best done with no distractions and with total sang-froid, next we were no longer afloat, our home had grown wheels and was trundling (there is really no other word for it) across the boatyard to her allotted winter home.

An estate agent might say that this is a tasteful location. From our companionway door we now have a view across the bay - plenty going on here, Calmac ferries coming and going from remote islands, the seaplane landing and taking off just below us, all this on our doorstep - with the early morning sun, when it arrives, sweeping across our stern. Cirrus is tucked in behind an earth bank topped by young trees which will serve us well in the coming months by deflecting the worst of the westerly gales. Trees, as everyone knows, can break wind for some distance 😉 and Cirrus has a sleek young neighbour in the shape of 'Footprint', the catamaran of our friends Kyle and Maryanne.

The two boats will keep each other company through the long winter nights ahead and who knows what the result of that will be!

Thankfully the lift-out experience was a good one for us and we have time on board now to potter about getting some little niggling jobs done, fixing some annoying leaks, cleaning and tidying, things only boaty people would understand. There is an unwritten law that says any hand tool used on the deck of a floating yacht will, if dropped, always bounce into the water and disappear from sight for ever. On land, of course, the result is a ribald expletive but at least my toolkit is safe.

I had rather thought that my engagement with the Scottish health authorities might be drawing to a close about now but having been told one date, sadly when written confirmation came I was to find the operation moved back by five days, thus upsetting many of our carefully planned post-op travel arrangements. I apologise to those friends who we shall not now be meeting and I curse the Lorn and Islands Hospital for doing this to me. If I wasn't now the relaxed person I am I might complain bitterly for this treatment. Instead I seize it as the opportunity it is to spend more time in this beautiful part of the world.

Take me away though, as soon as you can! For while the rest of you throughout the UK have been sweltering in the heat under clear skies (including Aberdeen, of all places) here in Oban we have day after day of overcast and a damp westerly breeze. This is hardly fair is it. Even the locals are beginning to tire of it, common though it may be, and the word they have for it - dreich - is on their lips just a little too often for my liking.

Taking off for Winter

In a few weeks time we will leave Cirrus Cat far behind us, leaving her (for in English writing, boats are always feminine) to the tender mercies of Oban Marina and whatever weather the Western Isles can throw at her. We are wrapping her up as best we can, unbending the sails, winterising the engine, protecting things inside that we cannot take with us (bedding and clothing will be vacuum-packed) but the day of our departure will be a sad one. For 12 months now we have lived inside this hull, which has seen us through storm and frost, snow and sunshine.

Cirrus has splashed along the length of England and most of Scotland, sashayed between salt and fresh water in various canals, nudged up to countless pontoons or hung suspended from the end of her anchor chain at the mercy of the elements. Her sails have curved to the winds, her mast always standing upright and firm, her red hulls have skimmed past headlands, crested and dipped through countless waves, overfalls and races but our boat must now lie quiet and lonely until Spring; alone but not forgotten.

We have been long enough in Oban to have almost become part of the scenery and whilst here we have made many friends on and off the water. To mention just a few, this week we waved a sad farewell to Jan and Carin who returned to Holland after spending their summer on 'Helle3' and also Kyle and Maryanne who have sailed many miles on 'Footprint' before ending the season in Oban. Here is the account of their rather fraught departure yesterday: Leaving Footprint Behind.

Soon we too will be away. My internal boat refurbishment work is now complete but Kate decided that she needed to keep herself busy too and as I write she is serving drinks in the tiny restaurant/bar attached to the marina here. Her customers mostly come across on the free ferry from Oban, attracted by the novelty of sitting under a marquee eating oysters and drinking highly over-priced alcohol, but they are always friendly and willing to stop and chat. Even this will come to an end as the bar closes for the Winter at the end of this month.

So after an orgy of Internet-ing, during which the wireless broadband rays glowed red as we booked train and plane tickets with wild abandon, we now have a plan to take us through the coming Winter. It will be a wrench for us but... we are moving to Italy!

A chance chat with my retired brother, who took the plunge some years ago and departed our shores for slightly warmer climes, has secured us an apartment in his own tiny Italian village home where we hope to spend the colder months. We are exchanging Scottish mountains for alpine peaks, albeit lesser ones, and whisky for chianti or whatever it is they drink there.

It will be a strange experience for us in many ways as we lack the language and have no knowledge of the customs and habits of the Italian nation. This will be almost as much of a venture into the unknown as our original trip has been and it will take us far out of the zone of comfort we have felt since we arrived in Scotland. Off we go, into the unknown, for 'nothing is more damaging to an adventurous spirit than a secure future'. My hope is that the scheduled hernia repair will have gone well enough for me to be bounding up the steep valleys of the Ligurian Alps when we arrive there. Kate is a little more circumspect and will no doubt do her best to make sure I fully recuperate first.

The blog, of course, will continue.

Isle of Kerrera

The island on which we now reside is about 9 miles long and 4 across, just about the right size for an energetic day's walk on decent footpaths but sadly with a hernia nagging at me this sort of walking is well out of bounds. Curiously, however, sitting astride a bicycle and pushing the pedals deploys muscles that are not affected by my condition and I am able to ride comfortably for many miles in complete comfort. So it was with this in mind that Kate and I set off on our foldies to try to reach the southern end of the island where Gylen Castle hangs precipitously over the bay to which it gives its name.

Kerrera is a fertile place but the steep hillsides speak of a violent volcanic past and a land sculpted by glaciers which retreated to leave ancient beaches raised many metres above the current sea level. Ancient sea cliffs jut out from the landscape and goats roam wild sharing the rough grazing with sheep, cattle, grouse, even a flock of pink-footed geese. The forty or so human residents are widely scattered around the island and in the past would have used boats to move about.

Today there are connecting roads, if this word can be used, which twist their way across the landscape, but motorised vehicles are few; the rocks and potholes they encounter probably ensure that cars have a short lifespan here and quad bikes seem to be the most popular things to get around on. The absence of proper roads means that Kerrera is one of the few places in the UK where vehicles can still be driven unlicensed and untaxed, always assuming you can get past the local regulations which prevent you bringing your vehicle here in the first place.

It was the current warm, dry spell, our long-awaited Indian Summer, that had tempted us out on our folding bicycles, Grace and Jet. Striking out along the rough track leading south from the marina we soon found this deteriorating from hard packed stone to, well whatever the highland cattle decided it ought to be. We found ourselves weaving from side to side dodging wheel-wrecking obstacles as well as the living obstructions who wandered casually out of our way as we came close. Despite their fierce looking horns these creatures have brains that seem to react slower than a retreating glacier giving the impression, at least, of a docile nature. They are, of course, very beautiful animals with shaggy coats the colour of sunlit teak and always the fringe which completely hides their large eyes.

Our route dips across to the west side of the island following the shore so as to circumvent the impassable heights of several steep-sided peaks and the track's condition deteriorates sharply. We find ourselves fording streams flowing freely across the road as our wheels skid and jump over loose boulders. We have to divert on foot across soft ground on being confronted by a brown lake of uncertain depth into which the track dives innocently but soon we are moving inland steeply rising through fields full of sheep who stare and chew thoughtfully as we pass. Many years ago my first encounter with sheep whilst cycling (me that is, not the sheep) led me to the conclusion that a sheep may not be able to recognise the human form so long as it is astride a bike but the moment the rider steps to the ground, it becomes recognisable and they will run away. I was interested to test this hypothesis here in Scotland and can now reveal that on Kerrera at least, the sheep are of a much higher order of intelligence. They moved graciously to the side even whilst I was mounted on the bike, seemed to give a little nod and a wink then calmly went back to their lunch.

Of course by this time my leg muscles were burning from pumping the pedals up the steep slope so I may have imagined all this. The track improved as we crested a summit on the spine of the island and we began our descent towards the public ferry on the east side. Here the green clad hills rolled away from us as we picked up speed to bump and bounce our way towards the better roads that encircle the southern end of the island. There is a farm at Lower Gylen converted to a small café which sells soup with homemade bread and tempting carrot cake with a pot of tea of your choice, a refreshment treasure trove after our efforts and one of the few commercial enterprises on the entire island.

All day the sun shone powerfully giving us a memorable day out. Our legs and the foldie-bikes had held up well although now having sampled the roads here we are unlikely to repeat the adventure. This place is really a walker's paradise with a landscape rich in history and natural beauty, views to die for on a clear day and a real sense of isolation despite its proximity to the mainland.

Humanity

If you sit long enough contemplating the rain streaming down the windows whilst listening to the noise of a thousand drops a second hammering on the deck above, with the howl of the wind in the rigging and the movement of the boat as the gusts jerk us to the end of our mooring lines and we bob about in what little turbulence makes its way into the marina, the mind begins to wander over the events of the six months that we have spent travelling with no home but the boat that floats around us.

Throughout my working life, and indeed even before this, I have always lived close to or within a city or other substantial conurbation, this being largely for the convenience of either my own employment or that of my parents. Finally, for the three years immediately prior to retirement I was living and working in central London and the people I worked with, had everyday contact with, people I met in the street, were all a product of that same urban environment. I recognise that my experience of life has been tainted by this but what I had not realised before was just how different my behaviour might have been.

Walk down a street in London, as in many other cities, and you will pass many people without your presence being acknowledged. This behaviour is expected and is mutual - I would do the same. People in the street are passing shapes that require subtle evaluation for threat but which are then ignored, eye contact avoided if at all possible. Enter a shop and likely as not you will also be ignored until you have chosen your purchase and the need to make a payment arises. All such behaviour is so taken for granted that we think nothing of it in that setting. But move outside that environment and human behaviour is vastly different.

I might leave our boat now and wander along the pontoon to take the ferry across the bay to Oban. To each person I pass I will express a greeting, 'Good morning' or 'Good evening' as appropriate and the responses are quite likely to draw me into a conversation which could develop into a deep friendship or may just pleasantly pass the time. The ferryman may well recognise me by now and a cheery greeting is expected but I would also expect any passenger near me to engage me in conversation, or me him, just as if we were resuming a conversation from the day before, but when in fact this might be a complete stranger.

Ah, I hear you say, but the marina ferry serves a closed community of boaty people (or 'yotties' as we might like to be known) who will recognise you as someone with similar interests and experiences and quite naturally engage you in conversation. In this you would be right - conversation is easy in this setting - but in so many of the places we have visited, generally small ports, towns and villages, this same behaviour appears in the wider community too. Enter a shop or a pub in Northumberland or in a Scottish village and it would be considered rude not to greet the owner and any other customers who happened to be in there with a cheery 'Good morning'. In any quiet village street it is simply good manners to say hello to people you pass, irrespective of whether or not you know them. Strangely, for me, in the space of only a few short months I too have acquired such habits and now find them second nature notwithstanding the fact that this is behaviour I would never have even thought of before. Indeed it occurs to me to wonder what the reaction might be were I to try this in some parts of the London; probably not very advisable, I'd say.

In many ways it is sad to think that we have come to this. Urbanisation and the behaviours associated with living in such environments are certainly not the norm and indeed they may well be a relatively recent phenomenon. Somewhere and somehow city dwellers have come to lose the habits of exchanging pleasantries with neighbours, the desire to stop and chat with people simply because they are human and you are too. I have now made time for this behaviour that I didn't have before, time for all the little gestures of welcome and warmth that make our lives here in the Western Isles so different from our lives in London. It is a feeling of warmth and trust that I had neither expected nor, were I to be honest, would I have thought myself capable of emerging so far from my own urban cocoon of distrust in so short a period. I might have expected, when leaving my urban landscape behind me, to be treated like an alien in a foreign land but instead I am surprised to find myself like a butterfly spreading my wings into a new world of niceness, a world where there are different rules and few barriers to conversation with strangers. Every day I see this attitude reflected all around me and I marvel at how I could have lived without the experience for so long.

Curiously, alongside my own thoughts on this subject I found myself reading other views that mirrored my own. Back in 1937 Neil Gunn took to a small boat with his wife for a voyage around the Western Isles and wrote about his experience in "Off in a Boat" which was first published the following year. It still makes a good read. He writes "The more I see of life the more I am convinced that there is a primordial goodness in man, a natural generosity." After describing how acquisitiveness and greed can crush such behaviour he then goes on to describe a mechanism for re-kindling the same. "And of all elements for quickening the free primordial spirit of man, what can surpass the sea, with its thrill of life over the near presence of death." And who can argue with that on a day like today.

Time for decorating

Confined to the marina though we are, nothing at all (and certainly not the weather) can prevent us carrying out some home improvement work on board. When we had our acrylic cabin windows replaced a year or so back the internal trim suffered badly from the experience and has been hanging on loosely ever since. It was always on our agenda to repair or replace as soon as we could but just as for you house-dwellers, everyday living generally takes priority and is the best excuse in the world for not decorating a living space. On board Cirrus we have limited space and Kate's patience with the mess I created when ripping off ancient foam-backed plastic and scraping glue-remains from the fibreglass of our coach roof has no bounds, so long as the results are worth it. The before and after pictures below means anyone can judge for themselves. (And you thought you'd had enough of cookery and decorating programmes on TV.) 

Careful observers may spot other features in these shots. On the left Kate is caught using a measuring jug whilst preparing some culinary masterpiece in our galley. On a boat this apparently simple task is not as straightforward as one might think because, as I have mentioned before, gravity misbehaves and creates its own waves in liquids used in a world that is itself floating on them. Kate's technique here is one that could be usefully copied in other gravity-deviant conditions, for example whilst flying, or perhaps in earthquake zones.

The really keen-eyed may identify something else here - evidence of how our diet has changed. Tucked away bottom right of each shot is a box of our current breakfast cereal and in the space of less than 6 months, the evidence is clear, we have migrated from Special K to Scott's Original Porage Oats. Kate's insistence on this particular brand, and here I am about to reveal a forbidden secret, has nothing to do with the vest-clad Scottish shot-putter who disports himself on the box. Kate tells me his name is Ruaraidh (Rory), by the way.

Many of those reading this will not appreciate what an atrocious weather hand we have been dealt of late here in the Western Isles. I am not going to dwell on it but I do worry about how all those living elsewhere are coping with the drought and the heat I have been reading about in the news. It must be pretty tough for you.

Rain and wind

The last 24 hour period, and particularly last night, was particularly scary here in the Western Isles. Or to be more accurate it would have been a scary one for anyone not confident in their anchoring skills or caught in an exposed position.

During the day this cruise ship which normally would have anchored out in deeper water, came into Oban Bay for shelter from the elements. With nightfall the weather came in hard. It was just so noisy. Cirrus was blown this way and that, straining and jerking at her mooring ropes with the wind screaming through the rigging and few in the marina here would have slept soundly.

We have been chatting today with a couple, another set of early-retirees, who went through and survived a terrifying ordeal in their yacht at anchor just south of us in Pulldobhrain. This is normally one of the safest and most secure anchorages and it is very popular for just this reason. We visited the place ourselves some weeks back in more pacific weather and found ourselves in a beautifully sheltered pool, just large enough to take about 12 yachts at anchor.

But changes in wind direction can easily create problems when one boat drifts too close to another and the anchorage is open to the north, that is to say a northerly wind will blow waves into the anchorage rather like water blown into a bottle. For a while last night the wind did howl in from the north before veering suddenly and dramatically through 90 degrees and this would have been enough to turn a safe spot into something of a nightmare. The wind strengthened, veered alarmingly then gusted and whirled about at close to gale force. Some yachts can start to swerve about from side to side under these conditions and the strain this puts on ground tackle can become just too much. Several yachts inside the anchorage began to drag their anchors, one being blown sideways until it actually came into contact with the surrounding rocks and became stuck there.

The skipper calmly put in a radio call to the coastguard to say his crew were abandoning the boat before they made the short step, via the dinghy, to the shore and safety but we have yet to hear the sequel on what damage the boat sustained. This picture was taken at low tide the following morning.

Crews on those boats that did come through the night unscathed would have slept little, watching and listening for the scraping sound transmitted along a taught anchor chain that might foretell a slight movement of the anchor through the mud or sand in which it is embedded. Nights like this are what every yachtsman does his best to avoid. It is the secret dread of all of us and gives rise to smug satisfaction when such a night is endured safely.

Island life

The evening clouds boil over distant Mull, all of which augers rain and wind for the days ahead. Well it is August, statistically the wettest month, and I guess the rain has to fall somewhere.

Oban marina is, as everyone should know, not in Oban itself but is attached to the island one looks out at from the Oban shore, across the bay - the Isle of Kerrera. Few marinas have such beautiful surroundings (unless of course they are also located in the Western Isles) but island life brings its complications. There was a time, for instance, when Kerrera was a transit station between the Island of Mull and the mainland and cattle made the final leg of their journey to the mainland from Rhu Cruidh (Cow Point) at Ardantrive - the place of the swimming. Oh for a good boat then! Many a cow would have been surprised to discover for the first time in its life that it had an innate ability to swim, something it shares with most other animals, although sadly not with humans.

Goods delivered to the marina today are placed in the blue box on the north pier in Oban. (I felt a picture was rather wasted but imagine a roadside sandbox in navy blue and you have it.) The ferryman picks up any package placed in or near the box then acts as postman, a system that relies on honesty and local knowledge and now having put it to the test, I can confirm that it does actually work. Since pulling on ropes of any sort is now forbidden to me, something I have in common, incidentally, with one seventh of the seamen in Nelson's navy who would have been found wearing support trusses to provide comfort from their own hernias, I am engaged in some refurbishment work inside Cirrus, removing moribund plastic headlining and replacing with cork tiles. It was the tiles that found their way here via the blue box.

Marina life is endlessly fascinating, watching boats come and go - berthing attempts are always entertaining, newcomers staggering about on sea legs after many days on board, chatting with our new neighbours across the pontoon or else on the ferry to the shops on the mainland. We slowly come to be regarded as fixtures in a world of transients, something permanent, always there when you come by.

Just three boats along on our pontoon lies Shafa, Dave's modest craft. Dave lives aboard with his cat, Sukie, and uses his cameras to take dramatic pictures of some of the boats sailing around these waters. This is one of his. He has a good eye for a shot.

When he insisted on pointing his lens my way, then suggested that a bucket of cold water thrown my way would add to the drama I felt things might have gone too far. Fortunately I managed to dissuade him.

Like our fellow marina dwellers, tonight we batten the hatches securely as there is a gale coming our way. The weather whisks in rapidly from the Atlantic, touches us briefly then moves on. When there is rain, which is often, it never seems to linger and no matter how heavy it falls it always runs away safely. The sea we float on never seems to overflow, which is nice.