Heading for the Shiants

 I got back to Robinetta on Monday evening, after visiting the Tall Ships in Aberdeen at the weekend. Julian told me all about his lovely day on the water, which surprised me as the weather had been wet all the way to Ullapool.

We paid, filled up the water tanks and the food supplies, and cast off from the pontoon in Stornoway marina just after noon. We were heading for the fuel berth to complete our reprovisioning. As we approached we could see a yacht already moored up there, but it came away before Robinetta reached them, leaving the fuel attendant on the pier, all ready to catch our lines. We were not quite as ready as that, as we needed ten metre lines to throw, but Julian got them ready quickly, and we were soon tied up against the pier. This is set on wooden pilings, spaced quite far apart, but at low water there is a wooden cross bar at just below pontoon height, which our fenders found very convenient.

The hose had a wide nozzle, but the fuel is not at high pressure. Unfortunately the wide nozzle totally blocked the fillers, so we could not see when to stop pumping. After a bit of experimentation, and the loan of a funnel, we took 30 litres of fuel into our cans and tanks.

Once we were clear of the harbour we went head to wind to raise sail, and after half an hour of motor sailing we stopped the engine and had a happy half hour under full main and no 1 jib. It was all a bit exciting for me, and I felt slightly sick, but once we reefed down, and changed to the no 2 jib the sail became much more fun.

By 15:30 we had shaken out the reef (although we left the no 2 jib in place), and half an hour later the engine went back on as the wind died completely. Visibility was very poor, and the Shiants were invisible from 5nm away. The wind did come back, and we motor sailed for a while, then as we approached the Shiants, and were able to see them, it got strong enough to turn the engine off again for another 20 minutes. We could have sailed longer, but we could not make the course to sail though the north entrance into the Shiant anchorage, so the engine went back on.

There was a French yacht at anchor, rolling slightly in the swell, but plenty of space to drop our own hook, and after a stooge around looking for a place with as little swell as possible we followed the Antaries chart suggestion, and anchored in 15.5m. This is way deeper than we usually choose, but there is little option as the cliffs are very steep too. We were at the top of the tide, so did not need to make allowances for that, but we decided that 40m of chain would be a good idea.

Julian laid it out, and dropped it, then decided to bring some more on deck in case the anchor did not hold. There was only another 10 or so metres left in the chain locker, so we had actually put down 50m of chain. That should hold us!

It looked as though we were under a puffin motorway, with the occasional cormorant, guillemot and razorbill HGV in the mix. We had read up on the anchorage, and expected a messy deck in the morning but this evening it did not seem too bad. The swell flattened out at 22:00, about 2 hours before high water, and we settled down to sleep in peace.