CAUGHT OUT by a GALE | Sailing Florence Around Britain - Ep.191

Strong wind warning, 20-foot-air forecast. Southwest five to seven. Occasionally gale eight at first. 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. It's been really wet and windy here for the last couple of days, typical Scottish summer weather, but we've been attached to the dock in Scalpe which has been really sheltered and a beautiful place to be. But there is a slight chance that we might get some sunshine and lighter winds this afternoon, so we're going to head over and try and sail to Skye. It's about 25 miles over there and an absolutely spectacular island. So hopefully, if the weather allows, we might even tight little harbour. We're going to just come out under staysail so we've got a bit more control and we can put the mainsail up once we get out into clear water. It's hard to tell what it's going to be like out there because it's so sheltered in here, but the forecast is saying that we could still have gusts of around 30 knots out in the minch. So it'll be a bit of a sporty Absolutely gorgeous day for sailing out here and we're obviously not the only ones to think so because there's another couple of boats that we're heading out ahead of us. So three boats, always a bit of a race. This one's a Halbergrasse 37, so fairly good competition. And then the next one ahead, I'm not entirely sure what that is. Hopefully, we'll get a little closer and be able to have a look. Should be a fun sail over to Skye. It's beautiful sailing out here, but the breeze is starting to drop off a bit, so we're just going to put the staysail away and shift over to the larger genoa to get us back up to speed. It is super easy now that the staysail is on a furler. Unfortunately, the other boats were headed for a different destination, so we left them behind and sailed on towards the northern tip of Skye. We're now just approaching the coast of Skye. It's really dramatic. It's absolutely spectacular. first time that we're seeing it from the water and I think it's even more spectacular. This particular peninsula, the Trotternish Peninsula, is supposed to be amongst the most dramatic scenery in the whole of Britain. I'm really looking forward to not just anchoring Florence at the base of it, but hopefully leaving the boat and getting up into the hills. It's not just a beautiful coastline. We're actually now sailing into flat waters with plenty of breeze. We're under full sail and Florence is just steaming along. It's absolutely a perfect sailing day around here. We're sailing around to a place called Staffin Bay, which is supposed to have dinosaur footprints in the beach at low tide. Then from there, we should hopefully be able to get up into the hills. It's just absolutely gorgeous, even just sailing down here now. The coastline is so green and jagged. I love it. days of the forecast this week. There's stunning scenery up here, but when it's this windy, wherever you are, when you're away from the boat, you do always worry about the boat. Even though we completely trust our anchor and we've been anchored in some really strong winds, you always worry. From this point on the walk, we can actually see Florence down in the bay so that we know she's okay, which is always a relief when it's gusting and blowing you over we got back, the wind has really picked up and that front has come through with a whole load of rain. It's gusting to 35 knots even here in the bay. It's quite flat water because we're not too far off the coast, so that's fine. We're really glad that we did look carefully at the weather forecast before going for a walk and managed to get back in time. It's forecast to be like this for the next couple of days unfortunately. We're on the east coast of Skye and we've got westleys or southwestleys, so it's going to be blowing across the island of Skye. It shouldn't be too bad. That's why we've come down this side of the island, so it should be a bit more shouted, but as you can see we're blowing around right now. It'll be pretty difficult to actually get off the boat and get ashore, so we're just going to hunker down. It's going to blow all through the night like this I think and tomorrow and then hopefully in a couple of days time it's going to calm down and we get one day of nice weather and then it's going to blow like this again. We're in Staffen Bay. It's not too bad but there's not many other options to shelter that's much better in this direction, so hopefully we'll be okay here tonight. Well you can probably see from our faces this morning that we haven't had a lot of sleep. That's actually two nights without sleep because that wind was howling for all afternoon, all night, all the following day and all last night. It didn't actually stop or calm down a bit until four o'clock this morning, but despite the fact we haven't slept we're up early because at the moment it's still got quite a lot of west in the wind. It's forecast to go around to the south later but we need to go south, so we're up at dawn to make the most of what's left of the westerly slant of the breeze before it goes dead on the nose against us to get south down to Portree. So today we're going to sail 17 miles down to Portree, but the trouble is that today is the good day of this week, so although it would be okay to be in Portree it's not hugely sheltered there and tonight the wind is due to come back in to gusting sort of 38 knots again, so we're probably going to have to leave Portree and go and find somewhere a little bit more sheltered, and then it's going to be like this for the next, well, good day today and the next two days are going to be seriously windy again. Then hopefully after that it'll go nice, fingers crossed. morning, it's turned out to be a really nice sail. We've got flat water because we're sheltered by and the scenery along here is just stunning. The landscape just kind of falls into the sea in this really dramatic cliffs all along the coast, and unfortunately we're currently passing one of the most iconic landscapes on Skye, the Old Man of Storr, but it is fully in the cloud, you can't see anything. We'll have to miss the Old Man of Storr this time, but the town of Portree the place where we're going to get gas, but the biggest challenge with provisioning on the boat is actually just carrying everything back, so we're taking the bikes to help us carry the load on the way back. Always wondering whether or not it's worth having the bikes on board, we don't use them that often, but when it comes to something like this they are really useful, it's just not that often that we're in a situation where it's easy to get them ashore and they're useful ashore. But it's always a balance because it's how much time does it take to dig them out of the cockpit locker and put them back versus doing maybe like two trips to the shop on foot, yeah. Now we need to get all of this stuff back to the boat. We always say that we're not going to ride the bikes back, we're just going to push them and then we end up riding them. I It is a very touristy place here and we're in the middle of summer holidays so it is absolutely packed. One of the really good things about coming to touristy places is ice cream and here they've got whiskey ice cream which is a very good idea. Trouble is they also have midges, we haven't had much of a problem with midges so far but they're definitely biting today I think there's no wind and it's kind of dull damp conditions. I think today has been a very successful day in terms of managing Scottish weather. We were up at dawn to make the best of the weather, we had a beautiful sail down here, managed to get gas, food, a bit of a wander around the town but now it's five o'clock in the evening and we can just see the rain on the front edge of the next batch of bad weather approaching. So I think we made the most of this good weather and now I think it's time to head back to the boat, hunker down and weather out the next strong wind section. This is where we made a mistake. The weather was not as bad as forecast so we chose to remain in the anchorage at Portree, hoping to get ashore for a walk in the morning. However this calm weather quickly deteriorated. We had a backup anchorage on the other side of the bay so we decided to move there but that was untenable due to the fierce down drafts so we made the decision to move five miles down the coast to a more sheltered location, thinking we'd be able to make headway under engine and the flat water along the shore but we weren't prepared for what came next. This is gusting to 45 knots. We are motoring as it is too windy for our stay sail and we did not have our storm jib prepared. Even though there are no waves this close to the protection of sky, the wind is making it difficult to keep Florence on course. It was only a couple of hours to the next anchorage which provided great protection but this time was not pleasant. If we had the storm jib ready we would have been able to make better progress under sail than the engine but as it was we had to rely on the engine alone to inch our way forwards and hope it didn't get worse. Once we reached the anchorage with further bad weather forecast we prepared the storm jib and lashed it down on deck. We'd made it without any damage but we learned our lesson and have a renewed respect for the weather. We were a little on edge after that experience and with a forecast for the next week warning of 40 knot gusts more days than not, we used a slight break in the weather to move to the secure and sheltered anchorage of Plockton. This is not the right weather to be out cruising and exploring exposed of the UK since we left Wick on the northeast tip of Scotland a couple of months ago now and we found out where all the other boats are suddenly. They all seem to be here. It's a really sheltered anchorage. It's a really safe place to leave your boat on a mooring if you want to go off and explore inland or go home for a period and of course as normal which seems like we've been doing for most of the last few weeks here in Scotland we've been sheltering here from bad weather. Last night and yesterday it was forecast to gust to 48 knots. Now thankfully we didn't actually see 48 knots in here but there are reports from not far away in less sheltered places where they did see up to 50 knots which is pretty scary really. It's not what you really want to have when you're on a boat. So we've been sheltering here but today is actually a nice day so we're hoping to get out and explore a little around here. Now this is a sign of the changing season. Wild raspberries. The blackberries are around but they're not quite ready yet but these raspberries are. Oh they're really good. We've walked up the peak that overlooks Florence and the village of Plockton and the views from here are absolutely gorgeous. It's also really nice to be able to see Florence because the wind is starting to pick up up here so from here I can see that she is perfectly okay. A little bit gusty down there but yeah absolutely gorgeous views of Plockton and the surrounding area but we can also see a lot more of the sky from up here and there are some very clear signs that we have got some more strong winds and rain on the way. So this layering of cloud that you can see behind me we've got some beautiful blue skies and then this building of layers and particularly the high wind clouds the wispy mare's tails that are right at the top are a real sign that a front is coming. Up to Windward you can see that the cloud is lowering and also building so it's becoming much thicker and that is the next phase of the front approaching. There's also been like a weird halo around the sun all day despite the fact that it's been quite a nice morning and that is another indication that it's going to get windy. Caused by ice crystals and thin layers of cloud higher up. Here we're on the mainland of the UK but behind me you can see the island of Skye which is what we sailed down and that's linked by a bridge across a very narrow piece of water. Just behind me here is a lock but just beyond that you can just see a sliver of water which is that narrow passage between Skye and the mainland and that's where we want to go next. We want to sail around underneath the bridge and through that narrow channel that goes all the way round to the south of Skye when it comes back out into the open sea again. But we've got a couple of problems there. One this wind, this weather, it's been blowing from the southwest forecast to be gusting over 30 knots for the last week and for the next week coming. So that's going to be blowing against us through that channel but also that channel has tides, springs that can run up to eight knots. So normally you'd say okay well we'll have the tide going with us through that channel and that'll be great that'll help us but if you've got 30 knots of wind going across against eight knots of tide that is going to set up horrendous overfalls and that actually would be really dangerous. So it's going to be really tricky to plot our way around the next section of this coastline. Next time Florence is challenged to a sailing race as we battle the Scottish summer weather to reach some of the mainland's most scenic locks and castles. Yeah it's got pretty breezy. 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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