I needed a pair of dry trousers, I had done for some time but with the annual weeks camping trip coming up I really needed to get my act together.

Sea Kayak Oban had some I liked but I wasn’t sure about the size, so it was going to mean a trip to Oban. Well that’s too far to drive just to buy trousers so I checked the tides to see if the Falls of Lora would be running. They would, at a difference that should be OK for sea kayaks but the wave would be too shallow and fast for playboats so I posted a note on the forum to see if anyone was going. No response (well some to say they couldn’t). I had another reason to paddle – I had fitted a new seat in my boat on my last paddle my knees had not been well braced so I had added more padding and wanted to give a test run before heading to Skye for a week.

Now I may crazy but I’m not daft, I wasn’t going to paddle the Falls alone (I swam there once you know) especially in my sea boat which I can’t recall capsizing (99.9% sure I never have) – but it must surely be worth arriving at the right time to see if anyone is there unannounced, and if not maybe I could do a trip round Kerrera or something.

As it happened I was the only kayaker sat watching the Falls build so, after a bit I went to the shop found the trousers fitted nicely (a bit tight on the calf if I pull them right up but my legs are shorter than my waist so I don’t need to do that) and was soon back in the car thinking about what to do. Kerrera is nice, but it’s a 20km round trip and I was heading off on the camping trip in a couple of days so probably ought to do something a bit shorter. I decided in the end to go back to Connel, launch below the Falls and use the tailrace to whisk me out past Dunstaffnage before turning south towards Oban. I have no real destination in mind but a couple of hours paddling seemed like a good idea.

The tailrace carried me along past Dunstaffnage at around 18km/h, where I decided to go round the north side of Eilean Mor, partly because I haven’t before, and partly because I remember from sailing out of Dunstaffnage that the yachts use the south channel (there actually weren’t any at that time). I quickly crossed the channel and landed below Dunstaffnage castle (hidden in trees) for relief before continuing on down the coast.

I noticed that if I passed close to the mini headlands there was a significant tidal flow going my way so pootled along quite comfortably for a few km to Ganavan. As I crossed Ganavan bay I remembered a conversation with Douglas a year earlier about how bad it was that beautiful places like this were being built on. At the time it was a building site and we both agreed that we would have preferred it to remain a campsite. I was interested to see how it looked one year, and I must say that apart from one block still under construction the architecture of the new houses is fairly sympathetic to their surroundings, but not as sympathetic as building them elsewhere would have been. I realise that prime building land is at a premium in the UK, but I’m fairly sure that around Oban there must be plenty of other places to hide houses – that of course is not the point, beautiful waterside properties like this will be worth a fortune, lets hope the money does the area some good. Mixed feelings, but of course I’m envious of them too!

I continued on my way eventually stopping at Camas Ban for a bite to eat and to take some photos. The ferries were busy going in and out and I had no more reasons really to head into Oban so decided to just nip around Maiden island and then head back with the wind and possibly the tide (although it should have started to flood earlier when it was obviously still ebbing).

As I approached Maiden island I could see the water looked rougher on the weather side, but still pretty tame in the overall scheme of things so I went round from south to north and then had great fun trying to pick up waves to surf back towards Rubha Garbh and Dunstaffnage bay. This was working quite well, I have no idea what the tide was doing but I was clipping along nicely with the wind and waves.

This time I ducked in through the south channel trying to remember what Dave from Alba sailing had told us about the tides in Dunstaffnage. The eddy always works in the same direction no matter whether flood or ebb, except very occasionally when it apparently randomly changes and runs the other way for a bit. But which direction, clockwise or anticlockwise? I’ve driven a big yacht onto a berth and used the tide perfectly but which way? must have been clockwise thinking about how we manoeuvred? It hardly mattered, all the yachts were well clear and I was in a kayak heading for an eddy behind Eilean Mor for a photo up towards Connel bridge.

Now at this point it is worth understanding the complexities of the tidal regime at Connel.
The constriction and ledge under Connel bridge are a major impediment to the tidal flow in and out of the vast Loch Etive. The Loch is about 25km long and generally more then 1km wide, yet at the bridge it narrows to about 200m and a rock step makes it very shallow at the same time.
A flood tide struggles to get through the gap and over the ledge and builds up to seaward rushing in forming a series of whirlpools, even after the tide turns there is still a slight difference in levels so the inland side continues to rise although the tide outside is falling. About 3 hours after HW the to seaward has fallen enough that the level inland is higher and a river like current starts to flow out to sea quickly building a massive standing wave where the water flows over the ledge on the north side. This wave (and lets not beat around the bush, under some conditions it forms a meaty hole) is a legendary kayaking playspot, although the legends of late focus on the difficulty of predicting perfect levels for short playboats! Around about low water the height difference is at it’s biggest, the waves, holes and whirlpools forming along the eddylines are at their biggest and munchiest, but it will soon start to ease off as the tide begins to flood. What doesn’t ease for some time is that flow to seaward, the level inland is still higher although falling all the time, the seaward level is rising reducing the pressure head but the result is that there is still a stream flowing down the middle of the firth whilst the flood tide flows up it.

Considering that it was now a bit after LW I had no idea if there was still a flow to seaward or not, but I reckoned from what I have seen before that if there was it should be more or less down the middle or north side, so I should be able to find upstream flow, or eddies, on the south side. As I paddled eastwards I used my GPS to monitor my speed, combined with trying to read the boils and eddylines I was able to manouevre and keep on water that was flowing in the direction I wanted to go. As I moved up each bay there were more and buoys and moored yachts to use as indicators of the current direction by the time I approached the slipway the yachts were laying fairy parallel showing the flow going northeastwards, not quite parallel to the bank but slightly away from it. I therefore stopped and reversed at a ferry angle to the current allowing my stern to swing so I could nudge cosily alongside the edge of the slipway on the inland side.

A nice little trip, and my padding was just fine, so I returned home triumphant with the boat nicely adjusted and a new pair of dry trousers.

Phil and David were a little disappointed when they arrived in Dunure and noticed that I had my Sea King and not the Taran they had heard tell of me paddling of late, but it was fantastic day so we decided to head down past Culzean castle to Turnberry, and the return the same way to the pub.

Dunure is a lovely little harbour and a great place to start a trip, a bit busy in the summer but the guys like to drive onto the beach and unload the boats – when in Rome….

There was a light breeze blowing, nothing difficult but promising for the journey home. We paddled along in company chatting as we went passing under Culzean castle and heading for a brief stop at the little beach just beyond. David’s back wasn’t behaving too well today and we had no particular goals.

After a cuppa we continued on our way past Maidens and down to Turnberry which is a Stevenson lighthouse (as so many are around Scotland) and explored in amongst the rocks for a while before stopping for a bite to eat.

On the way home we kept slightly out to sea and Phil and I amused ourselves by trying to pick up waves which would surf us in more or less the right direction, but always towards the shore, making us turn around and paddle back again. This was a great game, we got to wear ourselves out messing in the waves, and David was able to keep up at a more leisurely pace by going in a straight line – a bit like when you take a dog for a walk and keep throwing sticks to make it run miles further than you want to!

Another nice day out with great company and great weather – the Ayrshire coast has a lot to offer and is definitely overlooked by a lot of people.

Having decided I probably should buy a Taran, I got to thinking that I should see how well it paddles fully loaded as if going on a week trip or something.

I contacted Richard to borrow his boat again, and contacted Douglas suggesting a nice coastal paddle with plenty of places to land in case I got the weight distribution seriously wrong. Douglas was still buzzing from a recent trip out to the giant curling stane in the Clyde and keen to go again – well you know how it is, it’s been on my list of places to visit for a while so the sensible coastal trip was binned, and the boat was tested on a 14km open crossing (and back) instead!

I had roughly assembled what I judged to be around a weeks worth of kit and food and water – an amount that would normally take me about 2 hours to pack into the Sea king and I would have had to leave stuff behind. It went into the Taran easily, all of it – we launched an hour after arriving in the car park. So that’s a BIG TICK in the box for ‘is it easier to pack than the Sea King?’. John Willacy had advised that the boat was designed to be light in the bow, and in fact he prefers it loaded a bit at the head because they got a little more than intended, this fact was considered during loading but not in any particularly measurable way.

We set off from Lendalfoot in South Ayrshire, the closest point to the island with a light headwind. Douglas in day loaded Nordkapp LV was doing normal pace, around 7km/h, maybe a shade under on account of the wind. In the Taran I was easily able to maintain the same pace without tiring. Of course I didn’t just paddle along with the rudder down matching Douglas the whole way over, I tried different things: rudder up, rudder down, increasing the pace a little, sprinting ahead. As I noted when paddling the Taran empty I could go very fast for short stints but my natural rhythm is about 7km/h and that is where I was most comfortable with it. I have to say that fully loaded I’m usually doing well to maintain 7km/h in the Sea King, whilst in the Taran it was easy.

In about 2 hours we started drawing close and stopped to take photos.

Before working our way north past the lighthouse to near the jetty (disused with warning signs) followed by the Grey Seal bulls.

Where we landed and carefully carried the boats to above the hight water mark before changing into land clothes.

A cup of tea and bite to eat later we were ready to explore. From the jetty we climbed the inclined railway which would have hauled supplies from the landing up to the lighthouse and gasworks, and maybe take the quarried stone away.

We looked around the ruined Tacksman’s house but didn’t enter.

We identified the winch gear for the railway and peered through the (missing) window of the winch engine house.

The gasometers are long since gone and the pits have been filled with all the trash from the dereliction of the small community that once used to live here, the rails can be seen leading into the yard outside the gasworks with the castle high on the hill above.

Initially we passed the lighthouse and continued around to the old Quarryman’s cottage, now used as a residence by the RSPB warden, when one is in residence – apparently not this day.

Adjacent to the house are the ruins of the workshops – great big buildings built out of granite. Douglas remembers from his stay here in the ’70′s that these building were much more intact and full of workshop equipment. In the quest to extract a little more stone from the Craig (all the best curling stones are made from it) it seems the workshop walls became an easy source of ready quarried, pre-cut stone.

A little further along a couple of big hollows in the bouldery beach could easily be mistaken as random natural features, but are in fact ancient fisherman’s shelters. If caught in a storm near the island fishermen would beach their boats and carry the spars and sails up the beach to spread across the hollows to form a crude shelter in which to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Having spent 3 nights on Staffa with modern equipment doing much the same thing but without hollows to get out of the wind, I can imagine what it must have been like – not pleasant, but the hollows would have been life savers.

From here the path south began to climb a little under the towering ramparts of, well Basalt I think, certainly something of volcanic extraction with similar colour and pattern to basalt. The bluebells were starting to come out, the birds were busy wheeling above carrying nest material and although it was early April there was at least one butterfly flapping around.

Eventually the path ended at the south foghorn. A truly comical looking structure, like a giant salt cellar with a horn on the roof. The doors to the building had fallen (or been kicked) in so it was possible to see the manifolds and valves that somehow allowed the horn to make a loud booming noise from the gas made on the island (note: or so we thought, other foghorns seem to have used compressed air, so maybe the gas was actually fuelling a compressor and the cylinders outside were air receivers not gas tanks).

To continue from here would have meant a rough climb down which would have been no good for Douglas’ knee so we returned along the shore to the light house.

The lighthouse would have been a small community. Lighthouses had 3 keepers at any one time and the accommodation at Ailsa Craig looks as though it would have housed their families too. Unfortunately the main accommodation block was sold off by NLB some years ago to an entrepreneur aiming to convert it to holiday homes. To this end some trenches have been dug through the concrete yard for drains, and the project has fallen by the wayside. The NLB maintains the main lighthouse building (which contains generators and equipment with the tower built on to of it) and clearly whitewashes it annually, there is a clear line where the buildings become privately owned and the whitewash has not been renewed, the woodwork not painted and allowed to rot away giving less scrupulous visitors the chance to break in and explore. On one block the door was open so we carefully entered to see what the accommodation might have been like – surprisingly a lot of stuff is clearly left over by the last keepers, the new owners don’t appear to have even cleared the buildings ready to renovate, just smashed up the yard…. In many ways it is a shame because it would make a nice retreat if only it had been completed.

Exploration finished with we had a paddle around the island before leaving. The seals at the swine cave were noisy and inquisitive.

As we turned the corner to the even steeper west coast the scene was dominated by the birds – thousands or millions of them wheeling above locating their nest sites on the cliffs or whatever it it seabirds are doing when they wheel like that.

In my book Basalt is kind of dark grey, Granite is pinkish, Schist is black and so on – rocks have single colour associated with them. The cliffs of Ailsa Craig are a mosaic of greys and blues and pinks and whites, yet all apparently of the same rock in different shades – they are a truly wonderful sight and not at all what I was expecting from the island I have previously seen from a distance as a dark lump out in the middle of the firth.

Circumnavigation complete it was time to head back to the mainland. The nice breeze we headed into on the way out had dropped to nothing, so no sailing for Douglas and no chance for me to test the Taran in following or quartering seas, but it hardly mattered the sun was out and it was a great day. As we headed across the firth a ship appeared on the horizon heading our way, as we closed on it we got to that point where it was hard to determine if we would pass in front of or behind it. We opted for the photo stop and to cut behind after it passed a few hundred metres or so away from us.

At this point I wanted to be on the opposite side of the wake so I said see you later to Douglas and increased my stroke rate by a lot. I ploughed over the oncoming wake – no issues with stability under full power, I crossed the flat water beyond and finally caught the dissipating wake going my way, unfortunately when I got there the waves had died down too much to actually surf, but my GPS had recorded a speed of 18.9 km/h – something I usually need to go with a strong tide to achieve. I gave up, pushed the rudder pedal and looped back to meet Douglas before heading back to the shore at our comfortable 7km/h.

One of those truly memorable days out and a fair test for the Taran – I think I’ll have to get me one of them!

Seaquest is a fun water based orienteering type event. Most entrants use sea kayaks but at Ravenglass any human powered boat is welcome, although in practise that seems to mean river kayaks, canoes and the odd racing ski, but predominantly sea kayaks.

John Willacy had been working on getting me to try a Taran for some time, and the event seemed like a good place to give it a go, so I contacted Richard Cree and borrowed his. I have to say I was very impressed with it, plenty of stability, easy to paddle (translates as fast if you are) and absolutely loads of storage space. I have always shied away from rudders and skegs on the basis that if you break them, you might end up with a dog, the Taran seems to handle OK without it’s rudder (I didn’t have properly tricky conditions for a trial though) but is definitely faster with it. Anyway more about the boat later, first the event.

The event is obviously based at Ravenglass in Cumbria, which is the confluence of and estuary for 3 rivers, the Esk, the Mite and the Irt. This creates a pretty big tidal playground with relative shelter (and a good view from start/finish along the channel out to sea), each river having quite different characteristics and challenges, which change depending on the tide height. To prevent people working out bombproof strategies from year to year, the start time is varied slightly with respect to high water, although high water will always be within the time frame because some checkpoints are only accessible near HW. All of which said the few who will make it to all checkpoints can usually do so by a couple of different strategies.

Overall the ‘course’ covers around 24km of waterways (although it does depend on whether all the planned controls can be set) – these are not straight and there are checkpoints on either bank so you are bound to do more than the straight line distance to collect them all. For most people the first strategic choice is which river, followed by whether or not to zig zag up it and paddle fast down, or go up one bank and down the other. The final strategic decision is when to turn round on any given river and abandon the checkpoints upstream to preserve the points you have. Perhaps I forgot to mention, the time limit is 3 hours, if you are late you start losing points at an increasing rate and beyond 15 minutes late you lose all points.

So what should my strategy be?

I headed down on the Friday aiming to have a bit of a paddle around and get the feel of the rivers, it was blowing hooligans – I was slowed so much driving in the wind that I missed the tide by a long way, and the wind was too strong to think of paddling anyway. This caused the organisers a headache, so they spoke to the Met office who did some detailed forecasting for them and predicted a high chance of winds just too strong for the event on the Saturday, but a better outlook for Sunday. The only option was to postpone it by a day. Fortunately the wind on Saturday was not as strong as forecast so quite a few of us went for a paddle up the Esk which helped a little with strategy, although I may still not have got it right.

The photos were all taken on the Saturday.

Looking at the time for HW and wanting to make sure I got to the Mite around HW, I decided to do the Irt first followed by the Mite and then the Esk last of all – the reason being that HW was pretty much half way through and the Esk (or Irt plus Mite) is almost exactly half the distance, so if I was on time I would be starting up the Esk as the tide turned, if I was early I would have a little assistance. If I went the other way round, I would still be heading up the Irt longer after HW than I was heading up the Esk. In retrospect the Esk is probably more powerful so I probably would have gained more using the tide for the Esk. Maybe – I don’t really know!

Of course you don’t your map until you register on the day of the event, so when I got it did the checkpoints work out? Well yes, and Annette had organised the checkpoints in such a way that the checkpoints furthest away were not worth the most points – meaning that slower paddlers could use tactics to get close to the faster paddlers aiming for a full house! It was brilliant for me, I had discovered that it takes about 40 minutes to paddle down the Esk against the wind so assume I could save up to 5 (it was still quite windy, actually got windier through the event – doh!), and allow a further 5 for collecting checkpoints assuming up one side and down the other (some would involve getting out) – I needed to turn around in the Esk after 2:15 to finish on time with as many points as possible – the Irt and the Mite didn’t really matter, I would definitely clear up on them but had to get the high scores on the up side of the Esk before 2:15 had elapsed, then turn and collect the others and head for home.

And then the pre-race banter started and the doubts set in. With a whole bunch of people expected to go quite fast positioned at the Irt side of the start line John Willacy was uncharacteristically psyched out enough to cover us and was seen jogging with his boat to the same end of the start line with a couple of minutes to go….

We started, well everyone else did. Mistake number 1, when you let other people try your boat the day before a race, reset the footrest before you load it back on the car…… Fortunately the footrest adjustment in the Taran is very easy so I was on the water within a minute – in fact I probably wasn’t last away! Most of the fleet turned south, I was following some faster people north, but not not all of them. John Willacy streaked ahead, followed by John Bunyan, Kate Duffus and I presume Simon Milligan was the chap in the Nordkapp LV. I had overtaken a few people by the first checkpoint but some others were proving much harder to catch, including a plywood canoe, which to surprise stopped at the nearby checkpoints when they may have had a chance for collecting them all. Some people were zig-zagging some up one side and down the other – I soon lost track of many of them although I am fairly sure most of them didn’t go right up the Irt because I didn’t pass them as I was heading down again. I did pass Glen Parry which was a surprise to me, in fact he decided to try a completely different strategy and did the Mite first.

Spent a bit of time finding one checkpoint near the bottom of the Irt – I had the right patch of gorse, but it’s a big patch of gorse! Then I got out too early for the next one on a fence post leaving a bit of walk/jog and then realising that the bank cut in again right by the checkpoint and I could have paddled much closer before getting out. The Mite didn’t go all my own way either, first checkpoint was a buoy in the middle, no problem the second on a fence where the river meanders – I went to the wrong side and had to check the map again and spot it was the fence on the other side (both in the water at high tide so no running about in the place).

From there my finding skills increased up to the viaduct on the Esk where Glen caught up with me (but was zigzagging so had a couple more checkpoints) and then left me again as we battled to get to the tree under the powerline – we stopped short and had to run further than we should. After that Glen continued zig-zagging so I got briefly ahead working up the Esk. At the second most upstream checkpoint I was arriving as Glen was leaving, but 2:15 had elapsed. Glen was going up – red mist came down and I followed like an idiot.

That upstream checkpoint was only a 10 pointer and with the bends in the river, and the flow, and then the wind heading downstream, it took me 18 minutes from when I left the previous checkpoint to when I passed it again – I couldn’t do it! I powered on downstream heading for a 30 pointer up a creek and starting to estimate my finish time and trying to calculate which checkpoints were worth more points than the cost in lost points for stopping for them. I continued downstream, the wind was now blowing strongly upwind – probably more win than the event would have been started in so progress was slow. As I passed under the viaduct I started looking for the checkpoint – on a wooden post. There was a line of obvious wooden posts but no red/white tape, but wait on the map wasn’t it shown near the corner of a fence – yes and that is a couple of hundred metres further downstream, and there is the correct post next to it – not much time lost because I realised quickly, I think a lot of people spent a while looking for this not using all the clues on the map. Unfortunately the bank here is the muddiest mud hole you can imagine and the post is well back. I had to get out carefully, haul my boat up safe and proceed gingerly up the bank, punch the card, proceed gingerly back and eventually get back it. I was now 3 minutes over time – oops. The one remaining 10 point checkpoint would have to be ignored!

Eventually I made it back to the control 14 minutes late, on the verge of losing all my points, in fact if I have worked it out right, that penultimate checkpoint cost me all the points I collected there, but had it been less slippery I could have made 5 points off it, maybe 10. So I had all but one checkpoint, a 10 pointer. Had I not tried for the top checkpoint I would have had 4 more minutes to collect that other checkpoint and would have scored the same but got back on time and lost nothing – DOH!
The really gutting thing about it, is that because Glen accidentally missed a 10 pointer near the Mite bridge and lost a little time when some careless competitor’s wash made his boat float away, I would have finished ahead of him on the same points (All things being equal, he would have had full score and got back before me). A fantastic event even though I threw a 4th place away through not following my well worked out plan I had a lot of fun and will try again next year!

As for the results – there are so many different classes that it is difficult to remember!
Chris McSweeny was overall winner on a racing Ski, John Willacy was top mens kayak followed by John Bunyan and Simon Milligan. Top Lady was Kate Duffus followed by Pascale Eichenmueller and then Debra Shepard & Liz Cowell drew for third. There were doubles and teams and canoes and generations and juniors and all sorts of other classes so lots of people picked up prizes and good fun was had by all.

And back to the boat, well it was faultless. Stable enough to put full power on in the chop (wind against current) heading down the Esk, point and go paddling with the rudder, and well lets just say I’m sure I couldn’t have sustained that pace for 3 hours in my Sea King – over 1/2 hour, no problem. Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned is that a fast boat will only go as fast as you paddle it, I have been paddling the sea King for so long now that my fast cruising speed is as fast as it will comfortably go, but this cruising speed is in my muscle memory, when I get in a faster boat like the Taran sure I can sprint it up to an impressive speed, but for the longer term I can only paddle it at the speed my body paddles at, but remain much more comfortable doing it. So why is John Willacy so much faster than me – quite simply his body is trained to go at about twice the stroke rate that mine is. I presume over time with a faster boat I will be able to re-train my body to make more use of it’s potential, let’s hope so.

Watch this space for what the Taran is like to paddle loaded….

This trip seems like a long time ago now.

Douglas had originally been thinking about a trip out to the Scare Islands in Luce bay (I’m sure that’s a variation on Sgeir, the Gaelic for Skerry), but when we got to Port William there was just enough breeze coupled with the low (January) temperature to deter us from making the open crossing, particularly as there was no certainty of being able to land on arrival. No matter, there are always alternatives!

In this case the obvious alternative (and I should mention that Douglas had considered the tides such that it would be a viable alternative) was to head down and around Burrow Head. The only question was whether to finish at Isle of Whithorn or continue to Garlieston – kind of an important decision since we needed to shuttle a car. In the end Garlieston won.

Not much to report about the trip really, Douglas timed the tides just perfectly for calm water on the inside passage round the head, we discovered the low arch known as Devils Bridge (it must be submerged on a lot of tides hence Douglas not spotting it before), there were interesting cliffs and well the photos will tell it better than I can….

Unfortunately between here and the Isle of Whithorn I had some camera troubles.

The forecast was good and the spring tides were just right for a trip around Luing (pronounced Ling) so Douglas planned some options and invited us along. Apart from Phil and Douglas who I have paddled with quite a few times now it was good to meet Jennifer and David for the first time.

Douglas’ preferred launch point based on the tides was Easdale which suited me, there is something about the place… My car was off the road waiting for a brake caliper so Douglas picked me up on the way past.

Leaving Ellenbach on Seil (Easdale is actually the island opposite) we had great weather and the last of the ebb to carry us down towards and between the lighthouses that guard the northern entrance to the sound of Luing.

In almost no time we had reached Fladda lighthouse and floated past with minimal effort in the fast moving tide stream which was starting to boil like a high volume river.

We moved closer to Lunga on the west side of the sound and in no time at all we reached the end of the passage between Lunga and Scarba, the famous “Grey dogs” tide race.

I put my helmet cam on but the angle was poor so I didn’t get any useful footage. I worked my way up against the current and round the top of the mid-current islands before waiting for Douglas. We then ran the rapid and returned round the wee island to our start point. After that I headed back up and paddled a figure of 8 route weaving between the wee islands. The others were a little more cautious (it was January after all) and worked on their ferry glides in the tail race.

We now had to make a choice, either paddle out through the grey dogs and visit the black isles before returning with the flood to Easdale, mooch around in the sound of Luing paddling back up the East side looking for Otters, or the original plan, around the bottom of Luing up the east side of the island (sound of Shuna?) and then through the Cuan sound at mid tide. We opted for the latter so headed round Luing for a lunch stop.

After lunch we headed up the sound of Shuna which still quite serene despite a light breeze picking up for part of the time. We took a minor detour into Tobernochy harbour where the quay walls are made from slates built up in unusual patterns.

Before too long we were rounding the island of Torsa and heading into the mouth of the Cuan sound. Douglas assured the team that there wouldn’t be any whirlpools and I gave some tips on reading and running whitewater, since at mid flood the sound is more akin to a white water river than a piece of sea. Unfortunately Douglas’ quite reasonable definition of ‘not a whirlpool’ and Phil’s differed slightly (personally I just saw it as a large eddyline, but I have run a lot of rivers, including some quite big ones like the Colorado) but Phil managed to stay focussed on a downstream vee and missed the ‘not a whirlpool’ by a good margin.

As the flow of the Cuan sound eased slightly and it became clear that conditions were back within everyone’s comfort zone Douglas and I spotted the effects of wind against tide further from the shore so broke away to head out for a play in the waves before using the much calmer but still significantly helpful tide stream to carry us back to Easdale/Ellenbach whilst watching the sun preparing to set over the Garvellachs.

Another fantastic day out in great company, with fine weather and nice playful tide races to add a little bit of spice and fun.

Post script: Cuan sound does have some very fast currents and large whitewater features at full flood but it is technically very easy (would perhaps rate a grade 3 in WW classification, maybe only grade 2) and flushes one along the shoreline rather than out to sea. It should not be underestimated, but is perhaps a good spot to practise paddling tide races since it is more benign than many others in the area which flush paddlers out to sea for some considerable distance offshore before they release their grip.

Today we went for a quick trip on Loch Ewe. Original plan was to go round the Isle of Ewe, down to Poolewe and then back to Aultbea, but due to persistently dreach conditions we changed the route a bit and went for lunch in Loch Thurnaig instead.

Difficult to say it was a wonderful paddle since the cloudbase was only a few hundred metres and visibility rarely more than 2km, but the north end of the Isle of Ewe looks like it would be fun to investigate further, as does the coastline from Loch Thurnaig to the NATO jetty. One to try again in better conditions.

I did manage a few photos when it wasn’t raining:

Isle of Ewe on the left is 30m high, the cloud is about the same height….