Although I had an aviation RT licence for the radio for my plane, I didn’t have one for my handheld VHF waterproof marine radio for sailing and kayaking and the aviation licence didn’t cover it so it was time to go on a course in a North Berwick church. I parked in North Berwick and a woman parked beside me and then started to go on about the parking problem in North Berwick – as far as the eye could see were empty places in a car park a short distance from the High Street so I wasn’t too sure what the problem was.

The VHF instructor had just returned from Antarctica and there were three others on the course – a diver who had been off St Abbs the previous day; a geologist from British Geological Survey, just back from Antarctica too, and who was going on a purporse built ship to map a white ribbon of unsurveyed land off the British coast; and a taxi driver from Kelso who had bought a boat suffering from osmosis and wanted to learn to sail so he could winter it in the med.

The radios were all wired together and we bartered cockscrews for Golf November Tango (G’n'T) and we learned nuggets of information such as that all calls are made first on the distress channel 16 – what! – then changed to another channel to free up the distress channel. Fortunately with digital radios it is possible to make a call to a ship without going through the distress channel first. In addition Maydays come down to pressing a button and all your details including position from onboard GPS are sent out digitally – provided you haven’t sunk more than 35 nautical miles from the nearest station. The EPIRB rescue beacon used to operate on the aviation distress frequency of 121 decimal 5 MegaHertz – and that used to narrow down your location to 500 square miles of ocean! Now GPS gives it in metres… thankfully.

Lunch was in the North Berwick Fry fish and chip restaurant which had a flast screen telly with subtitles talking about breast enlargement as 40 Indian women were chatting about finding a husband.

We all sat our test in different rooms each with stained glass looking down upon us and over coffee we were all told we had passed and went through the questions we got way wrong!

I had dinner arranged later so had some time to kill so went for ice cream in Gullane and picked up some lovely cake from the German bakery there, drove along the coast to Edinburgh then down to meet Gordon making a greenhouse with Mike, who carves erotic phalluses (according to the local newspaper – he calls them mushrooms)

Because we stayed in Edinburgh I took the chance to get sailing gloves and a fog horn (testing it at 0530 every morning at the moment) from Port Edgar Chandelry and wandered around the modern art galleries (John Bellany’s paintings of Scottish fishing ports and Damian Hirst’s formaldehyded ewe) behind two hand holding men, I assumed they were an exhibit, when I stumbled across the Dean Cemetery – as there was a granite pyramid peeking over the cemetry wall just where I had parked my car.

The pyramid was only one of the delights in the graveyard though – exxotic monuments with birds standing on rams heads on top of winged lions, sleeping lions with owls watching over them and a monunment to John Irving from the Franklin Expedition (where they turned cannibal) with carved depiction of Erebus and Terror the two ships lost with all hands in the search for the North West Passage (where is Global Warning when you really need it). Delightful place to wander around on a very sunny day.

I got back home to find that I had scored 90% in my first celestial navigation exam so was very chuffed and celebrated with a chilled beer.

The plans were set when the weather was stunningly marvellous and the forecast was brilliant, fly to Colonsay and have a BBQ on the beach and fly back. Waking in the morning a cursory glance at the met forecast told a very different story – gusting 30 knots forecast for Islay (near Colonsay) and even the shipping forecast was for force 5 or 6 (in case we missed the island). We arrived at the airfield in glorious sunshine and our major worry was taking off with NO wind and a humid warm temperature (the gusting 30 knots seemed like a fairytale as we basked in the sun). We packed up snorkels, masks, fins, BBQ equipment and orange juice, programmed the GPS and all three planes backtracked 11 and took off once or twice on the grass and low over the concrete before clambering into the sky laden with Mike, Kim and BBQ equipment.

The flight over was uneventful skirting the south of the Edinburgh zone, over West Linton seeing a white plane below us and the shadow on the ground of a larger plane above us, crossed by the nuclear power station over to Bute then up and over to Jura to where I had swam a year ago. Down to Islay and crossing the sea to the island of Colonsay passing first over Oronsay the tidal island linked at low tide with Colonsay with a Priory and a now abandoned airfield. From there it was obvious that the Colonsay runway had been redone – a large welcoming tarmac runway was visible. Graeme landed first and on radio warned of bad turbulence on landing, followed by Richard who gave a ‘Wooooo ooooooo aaaarghhh’ on landing which wasn’t encouraging.

I was next – but had a problem actually getting the plane to drop – eventually after a few spirals over Oransay I joined crosswind, downwind then out to sea over the water crashing onto the reefs and turned for finals – as soon as I dropped below the hills the roughness started in the 30 knot gusting wind over the 300 foot hills surrounding the airfield and it was very difficult keeping the plane in any sense on track. The windsock was vertical across the runway so I was trying a diagonal approach and was over the runway too high and going sideways down it – looking like hitting the fence it was a goaround and climbing out way beyond the hills surrounding the airfield and made another approach with sweat running down my forehead.

This time it was as bad but felt more lined up, but wasn’t, lower this time though and went for it and helicopter landed and bounced onto the runway and ran along the runway. Taxied back in to be met by the others who definitely didn’t like the gusting wind landings (one guy was heading off to Coll and decided not to after the landing at Colonsay).

We tied the planes down and walked across the runway (no-one else was goingto be mad enough to land today) and over a rabbit hole covered dunescape to a deserted beach. The tide was going out and the beach was becoming more and more visible and as the others constructed the barbecue and food I donned my mask and snorkel and submerged myself on a sadly fruitless hunt for scallops. The water was surreal filled with parts of seaweed and it was difficult to tell the difference between the sand and the seaweed debris filled water. As I emerged from the deep with mask and snorkel it was heard that this was my ‘Daniel Craig moment’ – although the Wayne’s World NOT! seemed to be appended so I guess they just confused their movies. Besides although Mr Craig posseses and displays a 6 pack I am the proud owner of a firkin.

Sausages and chicken kebabs instead of scallops were a good compromise and cheesecake meant we were flying with most of the weight inside us now instead of in the hold.

Since there wasn’t any fuel on Colonsay so we had each brought a jerry can with 10 Litres of unleaded for each of us as an emergency ration. The plan was that when we reached Strathven, if we were heading south, or Glenrothes, if we were heading north, we coudl re-evaluate our fuel requirements and land and refuel at either airfield.

After Gordon Browns course on Skye and the Berwickshire Canoe Club pool sessions in Kelso and Ollie Jay’s adventure around Lindisfarne – I was desperate for more opportunities and found the Berwick Kayak Club based in Eyemouth.

With Ali learning to drive this was a good chance for both of us to go along to the training sessions in the Eyemouth Army Cadet Centre, with Ali driving and a great excuse to eat fish and chips. The cadet centre gave Bob a chance to lecture us on techniques and navigation (which was a great reminder as I was doing Day Skipper navigation at the time), to roll around on a swiss ball holding a broom and to watch canoeing videos in the red light of the heat lamps (not too sure what they thought we were doing with our women kayakers as the red lights went out there was the oohs and aaahs of the exercising.

The fun really started with Bob’s river trips – first from Norham down the Tweed to East Ord, where we were waltzing down the river in small kayaks until Bob pointed out that we can lower our skegs. Kim flew over us that day and took a piccie at 2,000 feet showing how invisible we were on the river in blue boats and even me with my bright yellow dry suit was hidden under my blue tilly hat. We had swans taking off over us and overall a wonderful time on the river. On stopping for lunch I almost ended up going down the fast water part but frantic thrashing of the paddle and being hauled in by the others saved the day. I had of course also forgotten to bring any lunch – Ali was getting used to the chaos that is a day out with Mike.

Moving on it was over the weir time – first Coldstream where we launched down the river bank under the water and bobbed up – that was when someone noticed that I was heading down the river with the back of my dry suit wide open – the ladies in an open canoe helpfully zipped me up. The weir saw Lizzie overturn and float down the river, Ali was next over the weir followed by a franticly thrashing of paddles the Yellow M was over and still upright. A gentle paddle downstream and then it was Milne Graden weir where everyone managed to get over fine and I got stuck on it, Bob came under and pulled me over his boat – we were a water circus act. Paddling down towards Norham we saw the damage caused by floods with trees jammed up against an island from them being swept down from the Till. At Norham Bridge a Kingfisher flew in front of us.

A trip down the Till from Ford bridge (which I almost hit) to Etal (where I almost went over the weir backwards) on a gorgeous day was delightful in an open canoe – over the weir at Heatherslaw and we were all still upright to punting down the river with a 6 foot kevlar pole in my bright yellow dry suit waving to the tourists on the Heatherslaw Railway. going over the weirs standing up balancing was fun and the while canoe experience was a lot of fun and relaxing although ard work with the wind pushing me sideways into trees. Flood damage could be seen with a hay bale up a tree.

My sailing meant I missed a lot of the other outings – however I made the rescue training in Eyemouth Harbour – where Ali found out his wetsuit didn’t really protect him from the cold. The doc was practising his low brace which failed and he ended up having to be rescued by our close knit team of trainees.

Berwick pool session with Ollie saw Helen from the river trips practicing rolling. She was allocated to rescue me as I went over and waited and waited – and had to bale out. Helen was a whitewater gal and wasn’t used to a sea kayaking and found herself stuck in the corner with its longer tail, desperately trying to turn it to rescue me. That was a good session although the pool didn’t turn on the wave machine which would have been fun in a kayak.

Finally my Feathercraft K1 arrived – a folding kayak from Canada via the Knoydart dealer in Cumbria. The low pound made it more painful than if I had just gone for it a year ago but hey Sybil, my crystal ball, didn’t point this out. Kim assembled it for me as I was busy with a project and noting all the problems in assembly. She was exhausted after 2 hours but had a complete kayak built – which we then had to disassemble as we were taking it up to Assynt that afternoon. The story continues there…

The boys of the Sandy Lee had a long sail planned north up to the Krka National Park – famous for its waterfalls. This took us up through a shipping channel and through a fort protected river entrance into the National Park with gorgeous sedimentary layers in cliffs. We weren’t too sure if we were going to fit under bridges (we did) and came across some odd looking buoys along the side of the river – these were mussel buoys leaning over depending on how large the mussels were. Shouting over and gesticulating wildly we encouraged a chap to come out with a bucket of 5 kilos of fresh mussels, taken off one of the buoys. We tied the bucket at the bathing deck and headed further up the river into a lake.

We needed more provisioning so stopped off at a small harbour where a gorgeous, heavily pierced, supermarket assistant helped us fill up our baskets. We munched on more delicious Croatian icecream whilst watching jellyfish and sea snakes slither through the water – discouraging us from swimming there. We motored up the narrowing river to the marina where we could pick up the tourist boat to go deeper into the waterfalls following a reed lined river with signets swimming with their parent swans. The first sight of the waterfalls is stunning – it is a set of waterfalls cascading down from quite some way and height.

There is a walk which we followed around and over the waterfall, a circular watchplatform built for the King and wooden platforms which take you over the top so you have the water flowing under you. A fantastic national park and a great way to spend an afternoon wandering through woods and over waterfalls.

On the boat back were a couple of tour guides, one who was the spitting image of Drew Barrymore. I wandered through the town at the marina and there was a church which had been bombed by the Serbs during the war and it was amazing to think that even here war had touched so deep in Croatia.

Time was marching on so we made our way back down the river and out across the Adriatic to an island with a small empty bay where we were to have our mussel dinner. The moon rose over the bay and it was a perfect spot – calamari and mussels with some Croatian wine and bread and olives – this was luxury. Then the other boats arrived and our solitude was gone. One anchored very close to us and on refusing to move we had to start singing filthy rugby songs and peeing over the side – they got the message and shifted.

We were now out of gin which recalls the tale of Sir Francis Chichester when returning to his port after circumnavigating the earth he was asked ‘When were your spirits at their lowest ebb?’ the obvious answer seemed to be, ‘When the gin gave out.’ “. Fortunately in our case there was my emergency bottle of 18 year old malt.

The full moon lit up the bay during the night and Kevin decided to sleep outside with his snoring drifting over the water as more boats came in overnight (it must have been some night navigation exercise on a regatta)

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Another beautiful day, another beautiful hangover. Still full from last nights dinner and gin I skipped brekkies and we set off intending to reach Milna for the evening to watch the EUFA cup semi final match between Man Utd and Arsenal.

It was a long and lonely sea journey so we took the chance to empty the holding tanks (for onboard toilets) so it was stern tubes away as the disgusting stomach churning sight and stench of strands of shite snaking away from us. What happened to that simple rule from the last long sail – no shiting on board and the desperate rush when the boat goes shore.

We found a lovely deserted bay, with deserted houses, recalling the advice do not venture near deserted houses as they may be booby trapped from the wars we snorkelled around the blue water bay watching fishes and urchins.

As much as I have told everyone how much hard work sailing was around Croatia the photographs tend to see a bunch of sunbathing or snorkelling guys – of course we didn’t take photographs whilst working hard! What cynics my family are.

Milna looked delightful as we sailed into the harbour – people idling on the harbourside bar tables as we reversed into the space allocated for us on the marina. We needed to sort out shopping, a visit to the beautiful church (had to sneak in as I was wearing shorts which were forbidden), get a pint, whilst watching a diver in the river, and sort out a telly for the football, as well as more delicious Croatian icecream. During the walk there the lens of my sunglasses fell out as a screw had fallen out, I was now without sunglasses so could blink with my clear lenses for the rest of the trip.

The bar was already filled with Croatian football fans and we all shouted supporting different teams – I felt like that IT Crowd episode when they pretend to be football supporters – but I did enjoy the game and Man Utd goal was a tremendous dispay of skill and teammanship – they were by far the better team. The bar bizarrely had a cabinet of curiosities of British objects. Handshakes all round at the end of the game and we retired to the local restaurant for lots of food and wormwood and the grappas – fortunately the gang plank was much shorter that we could leap on board to open the gin bottle and discuss the game and the forthcoming Barcelona one.

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