Into Loch Duich

Back of Cat Island

After a very peaceful night on the mooring we left under engine at half past eight. There was so little wind that it took us an hour to think about raising the stay sail, but the cloud base was higher than yesterday morning, with occasional glimpses of blue. Since we were close to the top of the tide we cut through behind Cat Island with its disused light house and stayed close inshore all the way to the Skye bridge, making use of the half knot of tide in our favour. Julian took photos and wrote up yesterday’s Blog, while I helmed.

By 10:15 we were under the Skye Bridge and heading into Loch Aish. It began to drizzle gently, but a little Easterly wind came with the rain so Julian unfurled the job and I turned off the engine. We discovered that there was enough wind to make headway, and decided the main sail should go up too. We did this under sail, as Julian’s practice yesterday taking the reef out of the sail had confirmed that such a thing was possible! The wind only lasted 20 minutes, so the jib was furled away and the engine went on again. A group of at least 3 harbour porpoises went past, ignoring Robinetta as is always the way of harbour porpoises!

Twenty minutes later we had a northerly breeze, so off went the engine and out came the jib. This time the wind took us up Loch Aish to the channel north of Glas Eilean before dying just by the Racoon Rock channel buoy. Back on went the engine! The next hour was spent alternately sailing slowly and motoring gently. Julian put his fishing line out, but we did not really want to catch anything so did not mind when the only mackerel to take a hook freed itself before we could haul it on board.

We got the main sail down just west of Eileen Donnan and nosed carefully into the east side of the Totaig anchorage where we dropped anchor in 6m. We only put out 16m of chain (on a rising tide!) but this was just a lunch stop and it held us nicely for the hour we were there.

Totaig was a perfect place to be. The view of Eileen Donnan and up Loch Long were incidental. What enthralled us were the seals hauled out on the island in the middle of Totaig Bay. Some were obviously very young, and we made sure Robinetta did not get too close. They looked at us, and we looked at them, but they were obviously relaxed about our presence, and made no moves.

After a bread and cheese lunch we raised anchor and headed to explore Loch Duich under sail. We had occasional glipses of blue sky above, while clouds wreathed the mountains at the head of the loch. Sailing at 1½ – 2 knots is not something to do on passage, but this afternoon we were just out for a sail. Julian got a good shot of a heron on the hunt, and there were several seals on the hunt making fish jump.

Eventually even that amount of wind failed, and the engine went on to take us to the head of Loch Duich where we anchored for the night in 5m in Rattigan Bay.