Inner Hebrides

Tags: Mull Island (Isle) in Scotland, Michelin Platter restaurant in Gigha, whisky tour in Jura, swimming in North Atlantics, reaping tides, Isle of Staffa and the lost oar, magic connection with Mendelssohn, Tobermory harbour (The Dark Island song - used for this video), band Postmodern Jukebox


The video tells the story without words..

The route. Our roundtrip route for a 4-day journey was 165nm (305km) long. It was an intense sailing and motoring experience, as we spent more than 1 day at sea.

The boat. A beautiful 43ft "DS" Sun Odyssey boat ("DS"=Deck saloon). Bright and spacious inside, with light coming into the saloon all through the day.

Check-in. Checking-in with very detailed instructions (23 pages of text to read through before we could get going) - all men in the crew were listening carefully to the experienced boat owner. A leisure sailors should be able to replace some broken parts and identify problems in any of the boat systems by themselves. Generally north latitude sailing is more dangerous due to potentially difficult weather conditions, stronger tides, and the remoteness of the areas you are sailing in.

A poster. A historical poster in a marine shop: (Cat-o'Nine Tails) - a cruel punishment tool in from the Victorian period. It's an unusual example of combining of a different rare nautical knots.

Day 1. We set off as soon as we had finished the check-in procedure, as we didn't want to miss a minute of the glorious weather.

Going south towards Mull of Kintyre. It takes luck to go smoothly through the narrow straits in good weather with the ebb and flow of the tide - perfect visibility and no disruptive waves which might have been caused by the wind blowing against the tide. A skipper though has to stay focused, even if it looks sunny and safe - there are plenty of unmarked rocks and dangers around.

A small feast. We thought that strawberries and Prosecco were unnecessary for this kind of trip, but there was someone wise enough to buy these ingredients that we didn't notice.

Practice at sea. Alexey was more used to sailing on Laser-class smaller boats. Handling of our heavier boat with large sails area was like going to the gym every day.

A decent speed in a mild breeze

Day1 - evening. We happily arrived to the Isle of Gigha (from Norse Guðey or from Gud-øy, meaning either "good island" or "God island"). We moored quickly at the buoy and rushed to be in time for dinner. The only restaurant on the island it was always busy, probably because it had recently gained recognition from the Michelin Guide.

Day 2. On the second day we wanted to reach Port Ellen at Isle of Islay to visit famous Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg distilleries. But poor weather conditions adjusted our plans to reach a closer point on the map - Isle of Jura and it's well-known Jura distillery. The reward was an excellent tour with a guide, who perfectly knew the whole 210-year history of the company (and was very Scottish that we barely could understand him).

More photos from the whisky tour in Jura

The most interesting part of the tour - whisky tasting. We tried 7 types of whisky from Jura: 10 and 12 years old, the Journey, Seven Wood, the Sound, the Bay, and the Road.

Day 3. A passage to Fingal's cave and Tobermory
Sun rays were barely noticeable through the clouds and showed us the way to escape from the cyclone coming quickly from Ireland.

We reached Fingal's Cave on Staffa Island in the late afternoon. It's a historic and well-known place due to the hexagonal columns of basalt, shaped in neat six-sided pillars that make up its interior walls. The place visited many famous people like Queen Victoria, Matthew Barney, Jules Verne, and Pink Floyd. Even Mendelssohn confessed that he immediately jotted down the opening theme for the Hebrides overture after visiting the cave.
It was a challenge for us to get inside the cave due to easterly wind and waves rolling into the entrance . We lost a half of an oar while launching the dingy and the engine stopped working as it should. All the signs were against us and common sense won - we decided not to enter the cave on the dingy because of a high risk.