Glorious Skies

There is plenty of weather around at the moment and it leads to some dramatic skies.

Cromarty Firth Sunset

These beautiful views come associated with the low pressure system to the NW of us, so, once again, we are heading for the Caledonian Canal to avoid strong headwinds and those nasty waves.  In the canal there might be gentler headwinds and much smaller waves, although the Great Glen has its own reputation!

Our first port back on the Scottish mainland was Wick, an old favourite.  From there it was hard on the wind South to Cromarty.  Conditions varied from gentle motor-sailing to a stiff breeze and lumpy head seas.  Our 60 mile sail, beating South, took us 12 hours and we arrived before dusk.  We are not sailing as fast as I'd like at the moment.  The slime (and perhaps some animal life) is beginning to coat our hull.  Perhaps it's time to replace the Coppercoat with some slippery new paint.  A thought for the winter......

Tacking South

Cromarty is a pretty looking place, packed with history, and famous as an area in the shipping forecast, so it was a shame not to go ashore (again)!  We arrived late and had to catch the early tide to avoid future heavy weather.  Sometimes I wish that modern forecasting was not so good.  In the past we would have stayed, on the assumption that the future weather might be very different.

Cromarty Firth is one of those places that looks cosy on the chart (ignoring the scale) but is actually very large, swallowing up oil exploration platforms and wind-farm parts with ease.  The evening sunset was very beautiful.

Cromarty Sunset - Lit Oil Rig in Distance

Industry Opposite Cromarty Town

Cromarty - Morning Departure

And so on South to Inverness, motoring in flat seas.  It's lucky that we have a good engine because it is being used a lot at the moment.

Moray Firth - Flat Calm With End of Rainbow

Of course a brief squall blew up as we arrived at Clachnaharry Lock (lovely name!) at the entrance to the canal, with strong cross-winds.  The weather around here changes very quickly!

Safely Into Clachnaharry Lock

We've seen very few other yachts in the seas around here (strange with such lovely weather) but plenty have congregated in the canal.  There are many nationalities here such as Swedish, Norwegian, German, Belgian, French, Canadians, US and a few Brits.

Multinational Procession Through Muirtown Swingbridge

Loch Ness saw us meet the expected head-winds, gusting up to nearly gale force and kicking up a nasty sharp little chop.  Our speed was knocked back to about 3 knots under engine alone, so we put up a reefed mainsail and tacked, motor-sailing all the rest of the way, the 22 miles to Fort Augustus.  Here we tied up happily to a strong pontoon in a sheltered spot, to sit out the coming bad weather.  We rewarded ourselves with a Chinese takeaway, very tasty.