Scalpay, Harris - 15 July 2006 (day 56)

Yacht Gothik

At Anchor

North Harbour

Scalpay

Harris

Outer Hebrides

12 July 2006

Click here to see a map.

Logged distance: 30.5M

Chart distance: 29M

Time under way: 5h 45m

Saturday 15 July 2006

We set off this morning at more or less high tide. This and the bright sunshine made it a little more difficult to navigate through the rocky channel. The notes I made yesterday (on the chart when arriving from the other direction) came in very handy. Only a few of yesterdays features were visible. Out of the loch we hoisted full sail in a steady force 4 from the south. Since we were heading north east the wind was more or less behind us and the sun felt warm. By the afternoon the sun was veiled by thin high cloud, portentous of stiff weather tomorrow but strangely none was forecast.

The harbour we'd chosen to pull into today, North Harbour, is at the north west end of the island of Scalpay. The island is 2 or 3 miles long and sits in the entrance to a large loch between North and South Harris. I suppose it is arguable whether Scalpay is still an island since the ferry service was replaced by a large road bridge to Harris in 1998. For such a small place it is quite densely populated, mostly crofters but also a large number of fisherman.

North Harbour is an interesting place sheltered from all sea and wind directions. A narrow (and shallow) entrance opens out into a circular pool 200m across, with a pier and safe anchorage for a small number of boats. It took us three attempts to anchor, the bottom is very soft mud, but once it had held and the engine was off we began to look around. We were surrounded on all sides by houses, each house facing the centre of the pool. It was an odd feeling, no peeing off the side of the boat here then. The teenage hang out was on the pier. The boy racers were driving fast dingys instead of Ford Fiesta's and would courteously wave to us as they went past.

Other users of the pool were the usual gulls and terns. There were also a few Great Black Backed Gulls and this was the first time we'd seen them close-up. At around 75cm (30 inches) from beak to tail they are the largest gulls in Europe. In the pool itself were plenty of small silvery fish and from time to time we would be witness to a feeding frenzy; terns would dive from about 5m above the water, guillemots would calmly swim into the fracas and disappear under the surface while the gulls would fight noisily, threatening one another with open beaks and loud screeching. This would continue for five minutes until the terns and guillemots had eaten all the fish. It is easy to see now why gulls scavenge chips from passers by and raid rubbish tips - they are useless at fishing.

The evening was still. The sky was full of interesting clouds, some of which were lenticular (lentil shaped). Stornoway coastguard were still issuing reports of fair weather on the VHF radio.