Out of the Harbour and Turn Left

By Howard and Mary Williams

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Preface

 Aberdour -Stromness Stromness - Gairloch
Gairloch - Portree Portree - Soay Soay - Loch Creran Appendices

Introduction

This is the narrative log of the vessel Megstone’s voyage around the north of Scotland, a journey covering 798.8 nautical miles.  

We started on Monday 4th June and returned home on Wednesday, 25th July, and excluding a short trip home at the end of June we on board for 47 days. This log provides a short description of every on board day. For statistic lovers the facts are all in the appendices.

Thanks to … 

We met a huge number of people along the way, far to many to list here. For those that gave us useful local information, help and assistance we would like to take this opportunity to thank them all, but special mention must be made to: 

  • Dave Woodall, ABC, who loaned us a selection of his UK waters admiralty charts;
  • Fraserburgh Cricket Club for welcoming us into their club, feeding and watering us and then trusting us to score the oppositions innings. We had a great day.
  • The Harbourmaster at Fraserburgh and the diesel engineer he identified when we had engine problems.
  • All the people who stopped to give us lifts in their cars at Scapa, Kinlochbervie and Badachro
  • The Harbourmaster at Flowerdale harbour (Gairloch) for taking me in his car to the local Calor Gas merchant for a refill
  • The RNLI at Portree for securing our dinghy in their loft whilst we were away.
  • To Halyard Marine for their old-fashioned telephone answering service (a human being) and their engineering support staff that were absolutely first rate when it came to helping me with an onboard problem with Megstone’s drive shaft seal.

Notes on the voyage 

Our original plan was to circumnavigate the north in June and July and return to Aberdour via the Caledonian Canal during the first week of August. However, the trip up the East coast was so dire (cold, fog, NE winds, lumpy seas) and the west coast so sunny, warm and interesting that we decided to skip the return voyage and stay on the west coast for the next year.

We started our trip on the 4th June, just a few days after Mary’s return from Croatia. Too soon, as it transpired, because we both realised later that Mary really should have spent more time at home adjusting to Scotland again. It was one of the reasons why we spent 5 days at home after 5 weeks at sea.

Navigation and Planning

We used the same basic methods as last year when it came to navigation – our chart plotting software on a laptop – but this year there were a few changes. First was a spare laptop as we realised we used the system so much that it had become a tool that we could not do without. Second, we managed to find a way to link the boats GPS to the chart plotter so we could use it for position and also download waypoints directly to it. This was a useful in that it cut down a lot of time in inputting waypoints but eliminated the need for a written record of the waypoints should all systems fail. Although we started out manually recording the waypoints sad to say it didn’t last

This didn’t mean that we didn’t spend as much time planning our routes. Indeed, there is a greater need to plan properly in Scotland than in the English Channel because of tides, rocky, unmarked areas and less Yottie traffic.

This year, as last year, all our stages were carefully planned taking account of all information available to us. This was derived from:

  • Entire chart coverage for Scotland
  • Pilots for all areas – we used Martin Lawrence and Clyde Cruising Club pilots of mixed vintage with updates from the web. Our views on these can be found in the appendices
  • The 2006 Reeds for the UK with the 2007 PBO small craft update. This was a mistake – in future we’ll buy a new Reeds Almanac every year.
  • Our two laptops (only one was used at any one time) loaded with chart plotter software and connected to the ships GPS
  • Megstone’s own standalone GPS, a Garmin 152, a mouse-style GPS if the Garmin ships GPS should go down and a hand held Garmin as total backup..
  • A GPS repeater fitted in the cockpit

In all cases we carefully planned our passages generally the night before we set out. We took account of pilot information and Reeds to ensure we understood the local situation, we marked up the tidal flows with tide times, chart information from the plotter and, of course, weather information from the coastguard. Every day we sailed we updated in pencil the Reeds tidal flow diagrams with HW Dover and HW local and marked up the tidal flows so we always knew the state of the tide.

When we had planned in rough what we wanted to do we then planned the course using the chart plotter, which gave us GPS coordinates and it also confirmed for us the best time to start for the fastest voyage. Our aim was to write down all coordinates the log but the ability to load waypoints directly into the GPS made this a bit redundant, and the practice soon ceased.  

However, in most cases we did have the course in two different pieces of kit before we started out and we did on occasionally plot the course on the chart, which was always available for ready reference. The main point behind this was security of information and ease of use as the chart plotter could go down without affecting our course or the GPS could go down and we could still plot where we were going (with our mouse style GPS). Finally, we still had paper and the handheld GPS. In many ways this was paranoia but safe and if we planned it all the night before we could concentrate on the day on getting away without worrying where we were going. We also carried on with the practice we started last year of navigating out of harbours, bays and estuaries using the pilot information, rather than the chart plotter or GPS. 

Our own passage rules … 

There were the same as last year: 

  • Life jackets in the cockpit and on deck at all times
  • No mast, anchor or sail adjustment without a harness
  • Lifejacket and harness when steering alone and in moderate or rough seas
  • No night time sailing
  • No setting out in F6 and above

This year we did not have any need to break the rules, and we didn’t.

Log information … 

The distance covered on a daily basis was derived from the GPS as the mechanical log failed us early on in the trip. This means that the recorded distance is that over the ground, with any reference to speed being the Speed over the Ground.

Statistics. 

Overall statistics costs, mooring information and loads more can be found in the appendices.

 

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