No wind. Again. We get all 8 sails up but we’re still only doing 1 knot or less. Heading for Ardnamurchan Point. When we get within half a mile engine goes on. At helm hard over to starboard but makes little difference.
1100 I fill in the logbook. Course 150 degrees. Sea 0 or still. Conditions overcast. Interrupted by Nikki who sets course. Can’t make her out.
We get the tender over to Ardnamurchan Ppint. Built by Alan Stevenson in 1849. Most Westerly point of mainland Britain. This feels so remote.
Simon ‘I’ve driven here and it takes hours and there’s nothing else here’
As we wait to get on our tender from the rocks being watched on by an old border collie a young Scottish woman makes her way down the rock staircase to join us
‘Is that Bessie Ellen (she’s half a mile out at sea)
I’ve worked on Irene and seen her before in Oban’
Shows how recognisable she is but also the small world of classic boats.
I follow Taylor to take down the jib sheets on the bow sprit.
Above Drumbuie the sea Loch winds it’s between tree and heather lined slopes. In midstream an almost island (Oronsay) splatters across the middle of the loch. Around the edge the grey rock has a black line – the high tide mark – then it’s beige. Below this the honey coloured seaweed ribbons it’s way round the bays and inlets. Drumbuie means Loch of the yellow hill.
The loch gets narrower like the upper Thames or Tay and disappears behind a craggy headland. Behind that a ridge rises up into the sky, the top lost in cloud. On the side of the ridge below the cloud, pale sunlight briefly lights the wall. It’s the only sunlight for all the miles and miles I can see.
Below it in the inlet the Bessie Ellen sits at Anchor. It’s like the scene in the film Master and Commander when Paul Bettany’s doctor spots the French naval ship moored off the island he is exploring in the Galapagos.
I am 14 again. I really feel like it. I am on the sleeper train with Dad listening to The Unforgettable Fire and dreaming of the mountains and the rivers where the Salmon lie.
I believe in God again and I see him in that sunlight. I want to be there.
I am sitting my GCSEs in the gym at school and dreaming of getting on a boat across to the Hebrides to Mull. To be free. To feel that feeling of communion that has always been there. And here I am 30 years later doing jus that.
Later I swim off the rocks with the sunlight still lighting the distant peaks. The water is still and cold. Again I can see clearly beneath the water. There are hundreds of mussel shells strewn across the bottom, no doubt picked apart and dropped by oystercatchers.
When I get back I am shaking and eat industrial quantities of chilli with salsa and sour cream with dill and cheese.
The Slow Walker 