This trip was organised by Phil Burgess who was eventually joined by Ruaridh MacAlister and Gerry Mulligan after a number of others gradually dropped out as the day approached. Our plan originally was to paddle from Colintravie around Bute and over to Skipness point, the area had been recommended to us by Alice McInnes as it is close, very beautiful with many wild camping spots but sheltered with lots of options if the weather changes for the worse. This is exactly what happened, we saw that there was a burst of westerly F4/F5 wind due to hit on the Saturday afternoon, which would have been when we were heading east to west from Bute to Skipness on the open channel on the original plan, so we changed the plan on Friday morning and took advantage of the calm weather to head down the west Kyle rather than the east.
Eventually, we paddled from Colintravie all the way down the east kyles across the bottom of Ardlamont point and all the way to Tarbert for a first-day total of 30km with the tide against us in the kyles. This was a good start as we all seemed to be evenly matched in speed and were getting on well, the conditions were so calm we overtook a yacht running on engines much to our amusement. We camped just outside the town on the north shore. Once Ruaridh stopped complaining about camping, rather than staying in the hotel in town, we were able to have a good evening on the beach.
The next day we made our way into Tarbert for an excellent breakfast in the key side cafe, on the walls hung paintings by Ruaridh’s father and, apparently, his clan were in charge of the castle there until getting kicked out by the Campbells, so lots of good history lessons kept us going as we made our way to Skipness point, it was a bit bouncy on the headlands down the lee shore but the forecast wind whipped up significant white horses further out – we allowed ourselves a certain planning smugness.
As we rounded into the last bay before Skipness we encountered our mermaids, three young ladies on paddleboards were playing around close to the beach sheltered from the wind. Just to be friendly we paddled over and let them know that conditions outside the bay were a bit dangerous, In the course of the chat I mentioned we were hoping to visit the famous seafood shack that evening, only to find that they were the staff and it was closed for that night only! back to pack rations then and no mermaid chat for us!
We had managed only 15km that day but conditions out in the channel precluded any further crossing. After a good walk around the castle, we built a nice fire on the beach and watched a rider exercise her horse on the beach as the sun set at the end of another good day.
The third day opened with lovely calm weather, the gust had passed exactly as forecast, so we headed over to Arran our target the sandwich shop at Lochranza which did have excellent sandwiches ad coffee. Suitably fortified we set off around Arran to Millstone point where we pointed our bows to the 11km distant Dunagoil bay on Bute and set off on our two hour open water crossing. We stopped midway for a snack and to check our bearings as a light fog occasionally obscured the land. In this circumstance, our phone nav systems (Navionics and OS mapping) were used to supplement our charts and bearings with GPS actual locations, improving our confidence.
We had made good time in the calm conditions and made our way up the west side of Bute to Ichmarnock island where we landed right on the high tide at our campsite on the west side of this uninhabited island at the end of the 36km day. The sunset was lovely and the campsite great once we had got the fire going to deter the small number of midges that were trying to spoil an idyllic spot we even had sight of the Waverly steaming past.
However, we had made a serious mistake, and hence the cautionary tale. We had landed right on the high tide and we were heading towards neaps so we pulled the boats about 4m up the pebble beach thinking (or not thinking as it turned out) that the next tide would be less. In fact, the very opposite was true, had we studied the tide more carefully we would have seen that the nighttime tide was higher than the daytime tide and the wind had shifted. We woke up the next morning to find two kayaks on the beach and not three. Ruaridh had left his kayak slightly lower than ours and it was gone along with his buoyancy aid, radio, paddles etc and to compound the problem he had not secured the hatch covers. With high tide at 5 am and a strong offshore wind his Kayak was long gone
After the usual amount of cursing and incredulous doubt, we formulated a rescue plan, firstly we contacted the coastguard to inform them that there was an unmanned Kayak floating (we hoped) around Bute sound on its way back to Skipess point. Then Gerry and Ruaridh (in Phil’s boat) headed to the nearest point on Bute which had a road at St Ninan’s bay 6km round the other side of the island, once offloaded Ruaridh called a local taxi and Gerry towed Phil’s boat back 6km to the island to pick up a clearly relieved Phil. By the time Gerry was back at the island, Ruaridh was already in his car at Collitraive.
The remaining two completed the trip back to Colintravie in the lee of the land as we had an easterly wind now via the cafe at Ettrick bay. The weather calmed as the day went on finishing mirror-smooth at Colintravie, which for Gerry was another 30km day once all the back and forward was taken into account.
So there are three paddlers in the club who will never, ever, ever leave their boats overnight below the highest line of seaweed on the beach, and will always secure hatches and cockpit covers just in case the unexpected happens. You all would be wise to learn from our mistakes!
At this point, the kayak and the kit have not been recovered, a sadly expensive lesson for Ruaridh. Who is now looking for a boat if anyone is selling a good quality expedition kayak please let him know.
Gerry Mulligan