Boat – Joshua Slocum W1038,  Helm – Tim Robertson, Crew – Andy Peter

Dates – Saturday 20^th June to Friday 26^th June

Kit list:

3.3 Mariner outboard and mounting block, 10 litres of 50:1 fuel, spare 2-stroke oil

Two piece oars and paddles x2

Long lines x3, large danforth anchor, chain and rope

First Aid kit, Mini flares, Sharp knife, Throw bag, VHF handheld & aquapac, mobile phones x2, chargers, binoculars, whistle, Polaroid wrap-around sunglasses

Waterproof barrels x3, Waterproof stuff sacks x2, roll of bin bags

Boom tent (Mk1) and boom crutch

Sleeping bags x2, Self inflating mattress x2, Vango back-packing tent

Gas stove and spare cartridges x2

Saucepan, frying pan, kettle, plastic bowls/plates/mugs, cutlery

Cool bag and cool box for food

Bailers x2, collapsible bucket, spongy cloth

Washing up bowl, J cloth, washing up liquid, tea towel

Spare genoa halyard, tool kit, spare trailer wheel, tyre pump

Skin so Soft oil spray, DEET 50% midge repellent, head net, insect bite cream

Drysuit, thermal suit, sailing gloves, woolly/sun hats, cag, salopettes, sailing boots

Disposable Kodak cameras x2, digital camera and charger

Very large fenders / boat rollers x2 set up with long rope tails

Food stocks:

Tins – Rice pudding, mandarins, peaches, beef curry, chicken in creamy sauce, tuna

Noodles, couscous, pasta

Readybrek, breakfast cereal, tea, coffee, sugar, UHT milk, Fruit juice, eggs x12

Marmalade, chutney, margarine, squirty honey

Bread, soreen loaf, golden syrup cake, mars bars, flapjacks, oat bars, nuts / raisins / dates / dried apricots

Saturday: Up the M6 to Loch Lomond

Andy and I met at my sister’s near Birmingham to move all his kit into my car and park his in a quiet safe place out of the way.

Setting off up the M5/6 at about 10:30 we made very good progress north, stopping at West Moreland services for a late lunch at around 14:00, and pulled into the Camping Club site at Luss on the shore of Loch Lomond at around 17:00. A very relaxed start to our adventure.

The head nets, Skin-so-soft oil and DEET were immediately put to the test as midges descended on us in clouds as the evening cooled. Luss campsite was quiet, clean and had good hot showers.

Two pints in the Inverbeg Inn (£3.50 each ouch) just down the road accompanied by live fiddly diddly music and line dancing (!) rounded off the day.

Sunday: Loch Lomond to Corpach

More midge clouds accompanied a quick breakdown of the camp in the morning, and sorting of the food and equipment we had both brought, to try and ensure the boat would at least float!

Then back on the A82 heading north via Glencoe to Fort William. 2 hours had us pulling into Lochaber Yacht club just to the South West of Fort William. I had contacted the Honorary Secretary via their website (http://www.lochaber-yacht-club.co.uk ) previously and they made us very welcome amongst their racing fleet with plenty of interest in the Wanderer (They are a Wayfarer club). More clean showers / toilets were made use of and there was plenty of room to rig and pack the boat. Once ready to launch, Andy and I went round in the car to Corpach sea loch to arrange our canal license and discuss when we might lock through into Corpach basin.

 

This was our first encounter with Waterways staff and they couldn’t have been more helpful, arranging for one of their number to run me back to Lochaber to collect the car once we had sailed across. License for 8 days on the canal for a Wanderer cost £64, which made my eyes water, but the facilities and staff were all excellent and it represented value for money in the end. They issue you with a key for all the toilets and showers en route, to be returned at the end of your voyage as well as a useful guide to the canal.

Driving back to the yacht club, we changed into salopettes and cags before launching, making sail, forgetting to pull the boom down onto the gooseneck, sailing downwind the mile or so across the sea loch with a very floppy mainsail and tying up to the waiting pontoon outside Corpach sea lock.

Andy was left to lock the boat into the basin and put up his tent on the smart lawns nearby, while I jumped into a waterways pick up and was driven back to Lochaber to deliver the car and trailer to Inverness. Having read a tip on towing unloaded trailers the previous week, I let the tyres on the trailer down from their normal 50psi to below 20psi, which helped to reduce bouncing. I also had lots of bungy available to firmly attach the light board to the trailer.

It takes about an hour and 45 minutes to drive the 65 miles through the Great Glen to Inverness. I parked the car and the trailer (with a hitch lock) at the car park immediately above the old ferry slipway at North Kessock. After enjoying a cup of tea at Kessock Lifeboat station with a colleague, I was then driven back across the imposing Kessock suspension bridge to Inverness bus station to catch the 919 Inverness to Fort William service (£11.60 single). The last Sunday service runs at 18:45 and had me back in Fort William by 20:30. A somewhat damp walk in the misty rain round the bay to Corpach, past the sizzling steam locomotive used for the West Highland Line ‘Jacobite’ rail service to Mallaig (Ex LNER K1 mogul 62005 ‘Lord of the Isles’) resting in a siding beside the path, had me re-united with my crew in Corpach basin who had by then erected my boom tent for me and spent the afternoon being plied with tea and chatted up by the lock keeper. Noodles and tinned chicken in creamy sauce followed by rice pudding with mandarins, accompanied by a can of beer sorted us out for food and we retired to our beds, despite it still being light, at about 23:30.

Monday – Corpach to Laggan

Up early (07:00) for our appointment to lock up through Banavie staircase at 08:15. Weather was dry and reasonably bright with a steady SW wind blowing that promised an easy day running up the Great Glen.

Our company through the first flight at Banavie was to be a small fishing boat and a 40’ Danish Ferro-cement yacht, heading home after two years in the Caribbean. The routine we developed was to rig our massive fenders on our port side and hold onto the rail of the yacht as he motored through from lock to lock. A good chat with the Danish family, who plied us with hot water from their galley for coffee, soon had us emerge at the top of the flight and saying our goodbyes to the Danes (who were tying up to take a trip on the steam train to Mallaig – which made a very atmospheric departure over the swing bridge at the bottom of the Banavie staircase as we passed).

We motored a short distance from the lock before turning up wind and raising sail. With the wind channelled down the canal between the trees we ran dead downwind towards Moy swing bridge, gybing frequently a la Norfolk Broads. The canal is lined with large and unforgiving boulders rather than the soft reeds and mud of the broads so the banks are unforgiving if you stray too close to the shore, something we learnt almost straight away, as, trying to stow the large fenders in the cockpit next to the aft locker, the tiller became jammed and we met a large boulder with something of a crunch. No water flooded in through the floor happily and we decided from then on to stow the fenders on the foredeck out of the way. Moy is a tiny picturesque swing bridge operated by hand-crank and we were able to save the bridge keeper some effort by squeezing through a partially opened bridge.

Gairlochy is a more serious affair with a swing bridge and two locks to raise us to the level of Loch Lochy. As the Loch was not very high at the time the bottom lock was left entirely open, but we tied up below to wait out the lock keepers lunchtime and for two Navy patrol boats to come down from the loch.

By about 14:30 we were released into the short channel into Loch Lochy, a large expanse of water that would carry us all the way to Laggan, our planned overnight stop. The SW wind meant we had an easy run before a building wind which, by the time we arrived at Laggan, had us making good progress on a slight chop with a noisy ‘bone in our teeth’. The approaches to Laggan are somewhat circuitous, but well marked, and we investigated the possibility of wild camping in the sheltered but boggy and midge infested shallow area at the foot of the lake, before locking up into Laggan basin where we planned to stay the night. Andy got chatted up again by a local boat owner who suggested we camp further up the cut, so despite having the boom tent rigged, we cast off and motored 200 metres down the canal from Laggan to find a secluded ‘beach’ at the side of the canal where the boulders had been disturbed, allowing us to haul the boat ashore, prop it upright on fenders and ‘wild camp’ among the pine trees. Andy rigged his tent while I lit a small camp fire to subdue the midges, followed by beef curry on rice and golden syrup cake for pudding, washed down with cider and beer. A short trot down the Great Glen way footpath had us back at the Laggan facilities before bed in the half light at around midnight.

Tuesday: Laggan to Invermoriston

A beautiful blue sky and gentle SW wind met us on Tuesday morning, so we packed up in a leisurely way and headed off down wind again towards Loch Oich. Laggan swing bridge halted the traffic on the main Inverness road for us and swung to release us into the beautiful Loch Oich, the summit of the canal at something like 100’ above sea level. A very gentle run through the islands, past a touring open canoe who we had met first at Banavie on Sunday, then again at Laggan and through the Cullochy swing bridge saw us arrive at Cullochy lock, a very isolated and peaceful spot where we began our descent towards Inverness.

After Cullochy Lock there is a decent length of sheltered canal to Kytra Lock, again very isolated and picturesque. Here we passed TS Royalist, the Sea Cadet sail training ship which was locking up towards Loch Oich as we arrived. Beyond Kytra there is a short run until you arrive at the top of the Fort Augustus flight of locks that carry you down to Loch Ness. The weather here was glorious, as were the facilities, so Andy enjoyed a shower at the top while we waited to Lock down, and I had a shower at the bottom, 45 minutes later. As the weather was so settled and the gentle SW continued to blow, Andy and I decided to modify our plan, which had originally suggested staying at Fort Augustus for the night. We chose to top up our beer and food supplies and then push on into the Loch towards either Invermoriston or Drumnadrochit (15 miles away) making the best of the fair wind, ideal conditions and long evenings. I prepared the spinnaker for the anticipated gentle run up the loch and we motored out of the channel onto the wide expanse of Loch Ness….

‘What’s that?’, ‘Where?’, ‘That line on the water up the loch…’, ‘Looks like wind’. And by golly wasn’t it just. Within 500 yards of the channel to fort Augustus our gentle SW breeze was overtaken by a smart North Easterly, picking up a decent sea and trying to blow us back into Fort Augustus. After an hour we pulled ashore and reefed, togging up in our full waterproofs and extra layers to keep warm. Flogging on for a further two and a half hours against winds that frequently must have blown at a good F5, we saw some boats moored in the estuary of a little river to port, well sheltered from both directions and made for the shore….rather too early it turned out, as the entrance to the river at Invermoriston is very shallow and we touched bottom frequently before finding the deep water channel close by the northern shore. The river offered us very good shelter, and with the help of the fenders employed as boat rollers we got the boat largely out of the water and Andy found a good spot for his tent nearby. Friendly dog walking locals confirmed we were OK to stay the night there, so we boiled up some couscous with tuna, had some more rice pudding and fruit and then adjourned to the Glenmoriston Arms for beer and to re-charge VHF, camera and phones. Back to the camp at about midnight with plenty of light to see our way, and quickly to sleep after a busy day.

Wednesday – Invermoriston to Drumnadrochit

The wind had moderated slightly in the morning, with the Loch looking more hospitable, but considerably lower – Hydro electric schemes can cause significant changes in water height and we were left high and dry in the morning, having to roll the boat back into the water on fenders. We reefed again, and dressed up in our drysuits, having more respect for the Loch after our wild beat the night before. Getting away at about 11:00 we began a long beat, sometimes staying close to the shore when it blew harder, and sometimes making long boards right across from one side to the other. We pulled ashore once, inside a cute little estuary, to add more layers of clothing and have a snack, before pushing on northwards, often taking (brown) water straight over the foredeck.

We eventually passed Castle Urquhart prominent on the headland of Urquhart bay to port and sailed into the tiny Drumnadrochit harbour at around 15:30, with water over the floorboards and very tired thighs from hiking hard since 11:00 in the morning. A colleague from Drumnadrochit popped down to welcome us, we quickly rigged the boat tent and then decamped to her house for showers, hot food, good conversation with her family and some young French B&B tourists, and a comfortable night in a caravan in her garden.

Thursday – Drumnadrochit to Blandford Forum

Thursday dawned with more blue skies and sunshine, but a very much moderated NE wind. A slow breakfast of porridge and a lift down to the harbour to de-tent and bail out yesterday’s flooding, had us away again at about 10:30, motoring hard up the loch to try and get the last of the water out through the self-bailers. After half an hour of this we got fed up with the noise and made sail for a gentle beat up to Loch End. On the point at Loch End we passed an abandoned lighthouse building in a most commanding position at the head of the loch and stowed sail, started the engine and made our way across the pretty Loch Dochfour before entering the last run of canal at Dochgarroch.

After the very shallow descent at Dochgarroch of only about 12”, the canal meanders through much less mountainous scenery towards Inverness. Motoring gently to arrive at Tomnahurich after the waterways staff lunch hour, we ate a rather good picnic ‘on the hoof’ and tried to keep out of the way of the massive and speedy Jacobite Cruiser that is based at Tomnahurich. Once through the bridge at Tomnahurich we were paired up with a couple of (very smelly but friendly) fishing boats for the final descent to the Beauly Firth, once again hanging on to the side of a larger craft in the locks and being carried through from lock to lock. Eventually, at about 15:30, bang on high water, we emerged from Clachnaharry sea lock into salt water for the first time since Corpach on the West Coast. A quick mutual congratulation and handshake for completing the crossing of Scotland, then the short buzz across the firth to North Kessock ferry slipway to recover the boat onto the trailer and throw stuff in the car.

We had planned to stay the night locally and drive back the next day, but as we were earlier than planned, wanted to save money on Hotels charges and were feeling good after the comfy night in the caravan in Drumnadrochit, we decided to make a break for home, leaving North Kessock at about 16:30.

Traffic was good, but many services were closed on the M6, so we didn’t get supper until somewhere near Manchester at about 11:00. We must have been in Birmingham to drop Andy’s stuff into his car at about 12:30, and I fell into my bed in Dorset at about 04:30, 12 hours after leaving North Kessock.

Summary:

Report and photos by Tim Robertson.