Why Sailing Scotland is worth the weather | Sailing Florence Around Britain Ep. 192

Yeah, it's got pretty breezy. In this episode, Florence is challenged to a sailing race, and we battle the weather to visit some of the most scenic locks and castles Scotland has to offer. We have sailed over 50,000 miles on our 37-foot sailboat Florence, seeking out stunning tropical locations around the world. Now, we are looking for something different. Sailing north to explore the spectacular scenery and wildlife in colder waters. We are Matt and Amy, and this is Sailing Around Britain. Welcome to another beautiful summer's day in Scotland. Well, it is actually a really nice summer's day for up here because it's not actually raining and it's not blowing 30 knots. We actually currently have 15 knots of wind, which is perfect. So we just sailed underneath the Sky Bridge and we're sailing up through the narrow locks and we're going up to Eileen Donan Castle, which is somewhere that we visited way back before cruising when we came up here in a camper van. When we were there that time, we said to each other, wouldn't it be amazing if we had a boat and we could go and anchor just off the castle and get a picture of our boat in front of this castle? And so that is the entire reason that we're going up this lock to this castle, just to go and get a photo. But it's a beautiful place to sail. It's beautiful sailing in this flat water. So we've got just perfect wind. I haven't got any sun, but you know, it's Scotland. So we'll just have to imagine it's sunny. So here we are finally anchored in front of Eileen Donan Castle. Sounds like a bagpiper just starting up ashore. But oh, it's busy ashore here. This is a real tourist attraction here in Scotland. It's the last week of the Scottish school holidays. There are camper vans everywhere. The car park's full. There's coach loads of people being dropped off to go and look around the castle. But we're the only boat here. When the sun made a brief appearance, we quickly snapped our photos. Mission accomplished. On to the next challenge, Kyle Rear. So we just left the castle behind and we're now heading for Kyle Rear ahead, which is a really narrow gap between the island of Skye and the mainland. Now, the thing here is that the tide can run really strongly through here, up to eight knots at springs. Thankfully it's neaps, but we still need to be careful because when we come out the southern end of this, we'll have tide running strongly with us, but strong wind against it. So we've waited for a calm-ish day. There aren't very many calm days around at the moment. And we're hoping that when we get down to the end of this, it's going to be, we're timing it so it's the end of the tide coming out. So it's going to be fairly slack tide. So we shouldn't have too bad a situation with the wind against tide overfalls as we come out to the bottom of this narrow gap. we could see a line of whitewater in front of us. We'd been slightly faster than planned, so the tide wasn't yet slack. Thankfully, as we exited the sound, a line of calmer water appeared to the side of the whitewater, and we were able to dodge it and hoist the sails to beat south. Ready? Leaving the sound of Slate, we entered the calm waters of Loch Curran, which extends 10 miles into the Scottish hills and is often described as the most fjord-like of the Scottish sea lochs. So we've made it up to the very top of Loch Curran, which is a spectacular loch which runs into the mainland of Scotland. And to get up here, we had to go through four sets of narrows. And the very last set of narrows is so shallow that we needed the tide to come up before we could get in here. And now we're in, we're stuck until the tide comes up again and we can sail back down the loch. But it is an absolutely gorgeous place to be stuck. Medicail warnings. Rockall, Gale Force 8, backing south-westerly soon. Malan, Hebrides, Gale now ceased, but south-westerly, Gale Force 8 expected soon. Bailey, Fair Isle, Fair Oaks, south-easterly, Gale Force 8 expected soon. We sailed out of Loch Huron to the shouted anchorage of Ornsey on the south of Skye. And after listening to the weather forecast, we realised we wouldn't be going any further for a while. Having fun? Yeah, loads of fun. Sun is shining and we're using the opportunity that we've got a bit of a lull in the wind to sail a bit further south to what's supposed to be a beautiful area called Loch Moedat. But we are sailing in company and it's a Rustler 36, beautiful boat, but theoretically very similar speeds to Florence. So we're having a bit of a two-boat race on the way down there. Good fun. Seem pretty evenly matched at the moment. Yeah, we met these guys in Malay and we were both talking about sailing down to Loch Moedat next, just because it's a shouted place to go for the more bad weather that's coming. And then we're both about the same size so we got chatting, we had a few beers one night and agreed a time to set off this morning. So not only are we meeting a boat at some point, and that's always a race, this is definitely a race because we set off at exactly the same time. And they are about four boat lengths in front of us at the moment. So theoretically, Florence should be quicker, but we're giving them a chance. We've got a reef in the main because they're a little bit smaller and then we'll see how we go. They're both very competitive as well. So sometimes when you're racing a boat, you're like, we're racing this boat because you find them out on the ocean and for us, it's always a race. And you're never sure if they're racing you back, but we definitely know that these guys are racing back because Elliot was hiking off the side of the boat a minute ago to try and get a bit of extra speed. Yeah, okay, let's put this reef in, we need it. Well, it was an idyllic day for sailing. It's rapidly changed because it's Scotland, of course, so we've got rain clouds and squalls coming. And we went from one reef in to give a chance at the start and they were doing too well, so we shook that out. And now we've got two reefs back in and down to stay sail and they're just behind us, just turning up to put another reef in themselves. So yeah, it's got pretty breezy. And then all hell let loose. And instead of racing, we were just avoiding damage until the squall blew through. Well, that was a bit of a crazy squall to end our little race here to Loch Moedart. We had 27 knots at its peak and we just dropped the main sail and then kind of almost hoped to understay sail, just slowly going upwind understay sail, just waited until it blowed through. And that's just blown through now over Loch Moedart. Completely, everything disappeared. Visibility was really poor. And that's kind of blown through and revealed the loch before us as it goes on. And now behind us, we've got blue skies. But it's not challenge over because Loch Moedart has a difficult entrance. We've got to zigzag our way through the rocks. And it can be particularly challenging when you've got an ebb tide, a spring ebb tide and a westerly wind, because they work against each other. And today, right now, we've got the height of a spring ebb tide and a westerly wind, but it would have been challenging, I think at that 27 knots, but we've got just nine knots now it's dropped off and it doesn't look too bad. So we're gonna give it a go. So we did have a backup anchorage just a few miles over here, which is more sheltered if this looks like we didn't want to go through it, but it looks okay. So hopefully we'll be able to sail up the loch. We've come ashore to have a look at the castle and Florence was just here. But if you can probably see, she's now way over there in the distance. And that's because we anchored here when we first arrived, had a nice lunch, looked at the castle and put the drone up to get some pictures. But whilst we were flying the drone, the tide was absolutely ripping through this anchorage and we were getting 20 knot gusts, which is making Florence really sail around her anchor. And we're moving around so much, we got quite close to the rocks on the far side. So as soon as we got the drone down, we pulled the anchor up, moved out there where there is a lot more space to swing around and it's a little bit shallower. So, and I think it's a mud bottom. So it felt a lot better for holding for the anchor. So over there, we will be able to sleep for the night, I hope. Whereas in here, we definitely wouldn't have got any sleep tonight. Such an amazing location for a castle. This island is a tidal island. So there's a causeway that connects it to the mainland at low water. For the rest of the time, it's surrounded by the sea lock. It's thought the castle was from around the 13th century and it's now privately owned. And there were some plans to restore it at one point, but unfortunately that's all stopped and it's been declared a dangerous building. So you're no longer allowed to go inside it, but it's still an amazing place to visit. The views up the lock and of the surrounding area are just stunning. It's lovely Scottish weather. We're moving round. Absolutely grey, can't see a thing. And that was the story of the next week. Making the most of very short gaps in the bad weather to move Florence from sheltered anchorage to sheltered anchorage. Hoping against hope that the weather would turn and that we would have a late Indian summer to be able to finally visit the more exposed Scottish anchorages on our bucket list. During this time, many cruising boats gave up on the weather ever improving and used those small weather windows to escape south. We were beginning to wonder if we were foolish not to be following in their wakes. But then our luck turned. The weather here in Scotland looks like it's finally turned for the better. The last month has basically been gale warning after gale warning and we have just been seeking sheltered anchorages to kind of weather it out. But the next few days, there's actually sun on the forecast and light winds. So we're leaving our sheltered anchorage here on the Island of Rum and sailing back over to Skye to an anchorage which is untenable in strong winds because it gets such strong downdrafts. But with these lighter winds, we're hoping we will be able to safely anchor there and then we'll be able to go directly into the cooling mountains which are stunning on Skye and do some walking there. I'm so happy that we're getting the opportunity to sail in here. It is one of the most iconic places on the West Coast of Scotland to sail to. And up until a couple of days ago, we were thinking that we were just gonna have to sail on by and miss it. But even so, I'm a little bit apprehensive even with the light winds that we have today about the potential downdrafts or the katabatic winds that we're going to experience in the anchorage, especially because of what we had on the East Coast of Skye. But if we can anchor here and we can get up into the hills, then there's potentially one of the, what is supposed to be the best views in Britain of Florence at anchor. Incredible is this for an anchorage. I could quite happily sit on the boat all day and just admire the view. But we're gonna make the most of these light winds because we're both happy leaving Florence in these conditions. And we're gonna head into the hills because the views are supposed to be even better from further up. It's a really popular spot here because it is so beautiful. So there's lots of trip boats coming and dropping walkers off ashore. But later this evening, it should all quieten down and there should just hopefully be a couple of yachts in the anchorage and there's a, I can see a tent ashore and that'll be it. How's the temperature, Amy? It's coming straight off the mountains, that's for sure. Not content with just experiencing the coolings from low level, we gazed up at the peaks surrounding Florence and the anchorage. The southern of those looked to be scalable by walking rather than climbing and would give a good view of Florence. So we set off to see if we could reach the top. What a day. I'd honestly forgotten that days like this in the mountains existed. It's been so long just hiding away from weather and we haven't had a calm day like this at all. But I was expecting like, I don't know, half of August to be good like this, really. But this is stunning. It makes it all worthwhile waiting out those gales and hunkering down in all the bad weather to be able to climb a peak like this and have views like this. Stunning. I'm so happy we made it up here. How incredible is this view? What do you reckon? One of the best views in Britain? I think it's definitely one of the best that we've had on this trip and made even more so by the fact that we've been able to put Florence in it as well. Really love that boat. Any view with her in it is good for me. It's such big scale up here. It is difficult to take it all in. This is one of the shorter peaks in the area. We came up this one because it's close to the rest of the boat. It's still taken us a few hours to scramble up from sea level, but it gives us this view back over the whole of the coolant here. It's absolutely stunning on a day like today. There have been so many days recently where you just wouldn't have been able to see anything from up here because it would just be enveloped in cloud and rain. We haven't been able to have views like this for such a long time to be able to see to these peaks on the horizon. They've just been here like just looming behind the clouds. It's amazing to see them finally. It feels like such a remote spot this, but you can actually get a ferry to bring you in to where Florence is down below as a walker. We were speaking to the people that run that service before we came up, but they said that over the last month, we've actually only been able to run that ferry for four days, just because of how bad the weather has been. It's been a terrible summer for them, but what an amazing day we have got today. Wow. Next time, we decide that the time is now or never to sail Florence out to the most remote island in the British Isles. It is time to sail to St. Kilda. For extra updates in between these bi-weekly videos and to find out what we're up to in real time, head over to Patreon and join the crew. Of course, don't forget to subscribe to make sure that you don't miss the next episode here on YouTube. 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