Time for the annual flying club outing to Plockton which yet again saw no-one flying there from East Fortune (one intrepid soul had left for Gigha the day before and managed to reach Plockton up the west coast) due to very low cloud over the munro height mountains. George had been up there for a few days before and took the chance to get 5 engine failures, one over the unforgiving heather and rocks of Applecross, before retiring to the hanger to take his engine to pieces and find a piece of rubber in the carburettor.
Kim and I drove up via the Real Food cafe at Tyndrum for lunch and wild swimming in the whisky coloured water of the River Etive. Kim shivered on the rocks as I lowered myself into the strong current – she had checked I was fully insured and asked me to swim down the waterfall – I declined her kind encouragement. Swimming in the pool felt great once the cold wore off. It felt great getting out finally after swimming in whisky.
Cake and beer at the Cluanie Inn and Plockton arrived soon enough for an evening of beer and wine and seafood at the Plockton Shores then back to the Plockton Inn for a bucketful of alcohol until we were all asked to leave the bar. Yes we were back in Plockton.
The weather was still bad the next day – I stayed in the hanger to erect my kayak as the rest spread themselves around parts of Skye. The kayak construction which in the sales literature takes 30 minutes – at Achiltibuie took 2 hours and in the hanger on the concrete floor took 6 hours and was squint (possibly causing the additional delays). But hey I worked through various strategies on construction so was a step forward and had an assembled kayak ready to launch. The hanger was rocking in the wind – the weather was no better.
I walked down from the airfield to the water – it did not look far on Google Earth but in reality it was over the runway, through a locked gate down a field of cows and a windey narrow stony path through gorse bushes to the stony beach. Taking a 16.5 foot long and quite a wide kayak that way was not going to be fun so I decided to abandon todays launch and attach it to the car and take it to Plockton harbour for a 10am launch. Unfortunately I let this be known over a few drinks to the rest of the club.
Everyone appeared at 10 on Plockton shoreline – laden with photographic equipment and cheers of encouragement. There was a paddle crisis solved by Kim as I dressed in a bright yellow dry suit, put my booties and gloves on and now PFD enhanced strode down with my constructed paddle to the shoreline. My bright red chariot awaited – but I wasn’t going to simply get in and paddle.
I had made this thing up and it was squint I had no idea of its ability to float or steer in a straight line or if I could get out when it inevitably capsized. So it was easy does it and I sat on top and tried some paddling measures.
It was surprisingly stable – with me on top and legs dangling over the side i could rock from side to side without it tipping excessively. Paddling forward and back revealed a turn to the right probably from the squint.
I lifted my legs up to slip them in and the resultant instability tipped me into the drink and the kayak was upside down. It’s sea sock meant there was minimal water in the kayak and it was easy to dump the water from the seasock out. Back to shore and this time getting in properly. This time it really did feel stable and I paddled around the island – until I discovered that as the tide was going out towards low tide the island was quite shallow in lots of parts and wasn’t entirely circumnavigable without portage. So I returned to shore to cries of “deploy your rudder’ – pulled the white rope and to shrieks of laughter my rudder flopped into the water – the only moving part of the boat and it worked!
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