WEST COAST WEATHER

Accompanied by our fifteen-month-old grand-daughter, we had a non-sailing holiday on the Scottish island of Skye in June 1999. Though tethered by her reins, I managed to amuse myself by working out where I would have launched a boat if I had had one.

We did take an inflatable, seduced by thoughts of rowing the baby gently along the shore, but we never had it out of the bag. When the weather did not sluice us with rain, it blew a good Force 5, and sometimes we had wind and rain together. ‘Skye’ is a transliteration of the Gaelic ‘Sgitheanach’ meaning ‘misty’. The Misty Island is well named.

My experience of the Scottish west coast over many years is that the weather is not significantly worse than in the English Lake District, but, to have a good chance of fair conditions, you have to go in the right months, May & June, and keep well clear of big mountains. We obeyed the first rule but not the second, because it is difficult to avoid the proximity of mountains on Skye. The Cuillin, rearing magnificently straight out of the sea to a height of 3257 feet, dominates the island, while on the mainland, just across the Sound of Sleat, the hills of Knoydart and Kintail are even higher.

It is a long way to Skye. If you started from London it would be 600 miles to the new bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh, and if you had chosen the island’s west coast it would be another 50 miles to Dunvegan. While giving you the bad news, I might as well add that the toll for a car & trailer on the Skye Bridge is a staggering £11.40 in each direction.

By the way, we had very little trouble from midges this time, though I did point out that it was windy.

LAUNCHING

Where to Launch Around the Coast lists slipways at Kyle of Lochalsh and Kyleakin, but I prefer to avoid those places, partly because the tides flow strongly through Kyle Akin (up to 4 knots, according to Martin Lawrence) and Sod’s Law dictates that the flow is always in the opposite direction from the one I want to take. Another problem is that Loch Alsh is dominated by the steep hills at the east end of the island, and they can churn the wind up unpleasantly.

A better bet is to cross the bridge on to the island and to drive the ten miles to Broadford (Landranger 32) where there are two perfectly practicable launching-sites. I guess that both are open to the public free of charge, as there was no sign at either of a notice inviting you to contact the harbourmaster, although I did see such notices at Poifree and Dunvegan.

The best place near Broadford is at Corry on the west side of Broadford Bay. To reach it, you turn north off the A87 immediately west of the bridge over the Broadford River, following the signpost to ‘An Acairseid’ (Gaelic for ‘the anchorage’). After a half a mile you reach a well-sheltered little harbour with two short piers and a concrete slipway. This was partly blocked by a grounded Baltic Schooner when I was there at about half tide, but there would have been no problem in launching a dinghy then, and probably not at low tide either.

The advantages of the harbour at Corry are:

• The slipway is broad at the top of the beach, narrower lower down but in good repair.

• The shore slopes steeply so the distance between the high and low tide marks is short.

The disadvantages of Corry are:

• Officially there is nowhere to park, and parking is prohibited on the road. I saw people parking on the larger of the piers, with no one to prevent them. Although this sounds unpromising, the great thing about Broadford was a lack of congestion, at least on weekdays.

• The slipway is rather steep where it opens onto the road. If you have no winch on your trailer, there could possibly be a danger of burning out your clutch.

If you cannot find room to park at Corry, I suggest you might try Broadford Old Pier, which is just off the A87 about 200 yards east of the Esso filling station in the middle of the village. The landmark is a brown heritage sign, which lists the Old Pier as well as various goodies like craft shops. A narrow lane leads north off the main road to the end of the pier, and there is a grassy slope down to the shore immediately to the west. The presence of debris here suggested that it was little used, and I estimate that there was parking for up to four cars with trailers, which should be quite enough, given the apparent lack of visitors.

The disadvantages of the Old Pier are:

• A need to manhandle a trolley over the beach could cause problems for people with heavy boats, though the ramp up to the road is not too steep.

• As the tide goes out about 200 yards at this point, these problems would be worse at low tide. Though the beach is reasonably firm near the high tide mark, I could not discover its nature further out.

WHY GO THERE?

Why should anyone want to take a boat to Skye? I can think of four reasons:

• The ruggedness of the environment deters the type of tourist who (I suppose) is uncongenial to most sailors.

• When you can see it, the scenery is superb. We saw the peaks of the Cuillin once but the hills on the mainland were visible more often.

• If you stay in the sounds between the island and the mainland, the water is sheltered, with little danger of big waves. On the other hand, whenever you approach mountains you get squalls. You probably need at least one more reef than you thought.

• The Inner Sound, on which Broadford stands, is less dominated by mountains than most water near Skye, and is sprinkled with islands. Such places have, for me, an endless fascination.

POSTSCRIPT

I suspect that Plockton, on the mainland north of Kyle of Lochalsh, might be even better than Broadford as a gateway to the Inner Sound, but I can not confirm this, as it is several years since I was there. Can anyone offer recent information?