Fairwinds 2005

Day 5 - Lochinver - Kinlochbervie 27 miles

Got up at eight and by nine was off on the resumed quest for alternator guidance. The man in the shed up the road turned out to have gone to Barra for the week, so I tried the second recommendation, the lifeboat coxswain. He turned up in the middle of breakfast and removed the alternator, replacing it with the ‘new’ one - which didn’t work either. He assured me that the alternator was the problem, and that the other one must be knackered as well. A nice guy, and he wouldn’t take any money. I was not convinced that he was right however, and found yet another dodgy connection behind the switch panel. It was a big red lead plus an earth onto something that might have been an external diode pack, or it could have been a dilithium crystal for all I know. Anyway, after emery paper and spannering we are mysteriously charging again.

So - off we go just before midday, deciding we can’t be bothered going over to the fuel berth, finding the harbourmaster etc . . . destination Kinlochbervie. By one o’ clock a familiar story unfolds - the wind drops away and we are motorsailing at a breathtaking three and a half knots. Lunch is the mackerel Kathy caught the previous night coming into Lochinver, blended with a warm bean vinaigrette salad - delicious.

At Point of Stoer the wind picked up and we managed to kill the engine and sail for a couple of hours, then motored for a further hour to Handa Island where the wind picked up again and we had a good sail for another hour. Finally we knocked it on the head and motored into Kinlochbervie, arriving at an tying up alongside a couple of plastic dinghy things at the pontoon at the suggestion of the only resident yachtie. We could of course have chosen any berth along the acres of uninhabited harbour wall - Kinblochbervie is a ghost port now, built with EEC money during the boom years when first East Coast boats then the Spanish landed thousands of tonnes of fish weekly . . . but now only three boats fish out of it and it’s a bizarre industrial wasteland in the middle of some of Europe’s most spectacular scenery.

It was Friday night - we would be lucky to get any diesel before Monday, and planned to be off round Cape Wrath bound for Stromness, but luckily the resident yachtie sold us twenty litres of diesel so we were sorted - alternator still charging, tank full and the Kinlochbervie Hotel tempting us with the first meal out of the trip. Steak and ale pie and a couple of pints of Stella and we were ready for the turning point. (Norse meaning of Wrath apparently).