May 24, 2019
Well, we finally got our taste of a true Scottish summer day - grey, cold and rainy. Dreich, as the Scottish would call it (I love words like that, that so perfectly encapsulate an environment and a feeling). Stephen and I had been threatening to wake up early and go for a run, but so far it had eluded us. Too bloody tired! So we decided that we really needed to stop crying wolf and just get it done. While keeping this boat moving all day everyday certainly entails a lot of exercise, sometimes you really do need to stretch your legs, and my poor gams were begging for it. In typical boat fashion, everything is a bit more of an effort, and going for a run is not as simple as putting on your trainers and walking out your front door. We dinghied ashore with our lifejackets and wet weather gear on, and once ashore did our best to stuff them into an enormous rucksack which poor Stephen would have to haul on his back. We then proceeded to go on a lovely run up a steep hill, through some side streets, back down to the little village, and then on a wooded path along the cliffs of the island out to a stunning lighthouse that looked very dramatic against a brooding sky.
Back on the boat, still pissing with rain, it seemed like the weather was telling us it would be a good day to tackle the chore of de-pickling the water maker ("pickling" it is the process by which you decommission the system for long periods of disuse) and getting it back up and running again. This proved to not be an easy task, as it apparently hadn't been pickled properly before, and when we took the old filters out, the entire boat filled with a thick smell of rotten eggs. Yikes - I guess that’s what rotting sea creatures and algae that have been stuck in pipes for several months smell like - yum! After some messy work (isn't boat life glamourous?), we did successfully de-pickle and recommission the system and got it up and running. A watermaker is an extremely nifty and essential piece of kit on any ocean-going vessel. It is able, through a very high-pressured filtering system, to create fresh, drinkable water out of seawater. Our watermaker was now creating about 200 litres of fresh water straight from ocean water in an hour. This thing is ACE and really increases our self-sufficiency and freedom - no need to stop ashore to get water, as long as she is working. We also did some weather planning for the week ahead to figure out where we could reasonably sail over the next 8 days and still make it back to Dublin in time to fly to our friends wedding in Puglia on the 3rd of June. The weather will not be quite as nice as we’ve had it, with flukey winds, lot of rain, and some quite big seas, so we started to mentally prepare ourselves for a more difficult week ahead sailing around the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
Finally around 6 PM, jobs done, and seeing no sign of the weather improving , we decided to suck it up and get going. We slipped the lines to sail for the small isles of Canaan, Muck, Eagg, and Rhum (yes, those are the islands' real names). It was still bucketing with rain and bloody freezing, so wasn't exactly the sunset sail we might have hoped for. I was at the helm, gripping the steering wheel with my poor fingers that had stiffened and turned bright white. We also had to beat into the wind and tack several times as we attempted to angle around the small islands towards our destination. We made it past Ardnamurchan Point, which is apparently the point beyond which you are considered to be really in the remote area of the Hebrides - bye bye civilisation!. A 4-hour trying sail got us safely into the large and completely empty harbour on the Isle of Rhum just before 10 PM. Despite the cold and damp, Stephen and I executed another perfect anchorage into the wind, me at helm, him weighing out the anchor (we are getting good at this I think!) Then we thankfully retreated below deck in an attempt to get dry, get warm, and get some sleep.
We awoke the next morning after what was probably the best night’s sleep I’ve gotten in years. I don’t know what it is about sleeping on this boat on anchor - maybe it has something to do with the gentle rocking motion, or maybe to do with being away from the intense professional and social pressure of city life. For the past several years, I have been a troubled sleeper and just could not turn my brain off at the end of the day. I would lie in bed with it racing for hours, going over everything that happened that day and everything I needed to get done the next. The first and last thing I would do each day upon waking or trying to fall asleep was to doggedly check my work email, and as a result sleep was always something I struggled with. Out here, away from all that, I finish a day's work cold and exhausted, but with a strange sense of peace, as if out here I am somehow more in control of my own destiny, rather than being constantly at the beck and call of other people, be it a boss, a friend, etc. Ironically, I feel far less comfortable tackling the tasks assigned to me each day out here than I did in my London life, as out here the tasks are all unfamiliar and potentially dangerous to my safety and the safety of the crew and boat if I don't get them right. Yet I am finding comfort in the agency I have out here - I control whether I succeed or fail. Back in New York and London, I would often let my speculations about what other people thought of me and of my work cripple me to the point where I was so worried about what other people thought, I had little scope to appreciate my experiences as they were unfolding. This experience has been very different, and in that sense quite rewarding. It's certainly not as if once I stepped aboard this boat, a light switch went off that totally changed my perspective. Far from it. I still struggle each day and am very much out of my comfort zone, and not just with the sailing, boat management and engineering aspects, but with the lifestyle adjustment as well. I find myself in an enclosed, small space with 2 men all day every day and have zero privacy, zero alone time, zero time to even brush my hair most days. I'm also cold and wet most of the time, and I know Stephen and I are both regretting not having allotted any down time for the two of us post wedding and foregoing a honeymoon to plow full steam ahead with finalising the boat plan and getting aboard. So it's definitely a process adjusting to this new way of life, and with that adjustment comes new metrics on which to evaluate yourself. What you look like, how much money you make, and who you know? Limited Value. But can you tighten the V-Belt on your diesel engine? Can you park a 55' foot sailboat in reverse on a crowded pontoon? Can you helm effectively in strong winds? These are all new challenges over which Stephen and I have some degree of control, and it is equal parts scary and empowering. OK, introspective rant over :)
We spent the morning having an in-depth 4-hour class on heavy weather sailing strategies and on engine maintenance. Back to school indeed! The pupils had their pencils sharpened and were alert - although for this class, the stakes are not an A or a B, it could be life or death. If we don’t recognise the telltale characteristics of clouds that indicate an approaching convective weather system, we could be caught unawares in the middle of a violent storm - so yeah, there was a strong imperative to pay attention! When brains were sufficiently fried, we took Rum Jumby ashore to check out Rhum, which is a weird and wonderful island that is very sparsely populated, mostly wilderness, and that it seems as if time has forgotten. We took a tour of one of the only buildings on the island, a place called Kinloch Castle, which proved to be an extremely interesting and voyeuristic peek into the bourgeois excesses of the Victorian era. Is a late Victorian mansion built as a private residence for Sir George Bullough, the grandson of a textile tycoon from Lancashire whose father bought the island of Rhum as his summer residence and shooting estate. The grandson may not have played a part in making the family fortune, but boy did he know how to spend it. This castle and its extensive grounds were used mainly by Sir George and his wife to throw extravagant and reportedly wild parties for their socialite friends, included many member so the British aristocracy. The castle is now deserted and falling down and hasn’t really been touched since it fell out of use, which I find remarkable. There is an eerie sensation you get walking around it, in that it feels like one day, the band just stopped playing and everyone up and left, taking nothing with them, leaving behind millions of pounds of artwork, a world-renowned one-of-a-kind musical instrument, rooms on rooms filled with gorgeous though now rotting furniture and fabrics - now all just empty!
And it's never been looted for its valuables, despite not being guarded or even locked, or privately bought and turned into a fancy home or hotel. It's currently owned by the Scottish Natural Heritage Society, but they are struggling to find the funds to restore the home to its former glory. As we walked through the castle, you could almost hear the tinkling of crystal and the debaucherous laughter echoing through these now empty halls. It was wonderfully creepy and like no museum I have ever been to, a truly immersive experience and well-worth a visit. Our tour guide was also brilliant, clearly fascinated by the place, and his thick Glaswegian accent made his descriptions of the scandals that had unfolded within these walls (think BDSM parties for the rich and famous) seem all the more tantalising. The tour guide seemed a good example of the type of people who live on this island: there are only about 50 of them, and you get the sense they are all hiding from something. Given the rugged beauty of the island, I frankly would struggle to think of a better place to hide.
Post tour, Stephen and I went on a hike up the cliffs of the island. It was really wild and wooly, and the additional effort it takes to hike up hill in heavy wet weather gear and lifejackets is not to be underestimated. Once at the top, we had a beautiful view of Florence, the only boat in the huge anchorage. It was really a sight to see. I cant imagine this will happen to us much in the Med! We hiked back down and got back aboard Flo. We decided to stay the night in the anchorage rather than press on to our next destination in the approaching darkness, as it was calm and lovely and we fancied a bit of relaxation before venturing forth. I can definitely recommend Rhum as a remote, wild and strange island not to be missed if you find yourself in the Hebrides. And remote as it is, you don't have to have our own sailboat to venture there, there is a daily ferry service from the mainland, so don't miss it.
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