The Scottish Islands Peaks Race 2018 –
Confessions of a Reluctant Sailor
Disorientated,
fuzzy-headed, slightly nauseous, not in proper control of my own body, and
having lost track of time. It was in
this state that I was invited to take part in the Scottish Islands Peaks
Race. I’d been at the East District
League cross country at Stirling University in October 2017, and had gone for a
pub crawl afterwards in Bridge of Allan with Jim Hardie and Graham Nash of
Carnethy. Jim and Graham had been the runners
for Sundance of Lorn’s successful SIPR effort earlier that year, but Graham had
other plans for 2018. Presumably having
exhausted other options, Jim asked if I’d be interested in stepping in.
Even
in my drunken state I was extremely wary about committing immediately. It sounded like a real adventure, and an
honour to be invited, but as I told Jim, I had (at that point) never set foot
on any of the islands, and suffer from pretty bad motion sickness. As an
example, I threw up on a pedalo in Corfu when I was 8. It’s one thing to sign up for an event and
let yourself down; it’s another entirely to let down other people who have
invested a huge amount of their own time, effort and money in pursuit of a
goal.
But
Jim kept working away at me, and I eventually agreed – it felt like an
opportunity that might not come around again, and too good to refuse. Looking back now, it is almost amusing how
naïve I was about it. I didn’t think I
was underestimating what was involved (I was extremely apprehensive about it,
and fully expected to be as sick as a dog for much of the weekend), but my
expectations were still hugely different from the reality.
There
is perhaps an inclination to disregard things that you are not entirely
familiar with. In my job I regularly see
or hear colleagues on projects gloss over my contribution (e.g. “we just need a
reinsurance contract put in place”), while I probably don’t appreciate just how
much heartache is involved in aspects like IT development and build. I knew the SIPR was a running and sailing
event. But I thought the sailing was
more of a given. I had pored over
results from previous years in great detail, so discovered that the sailing was
by far the biggest component of the overall time, and Jim and Graham had told
me about missed tidal gates adding hours to a leg, but I was still thinking of
it as just a matter of when, rather than if, we’d get there eventually. I suspected that the sailors had to work hard
(indeed they would be “active” for far more of the trip than we runners), but
was viewing the sail as basically just an unpleasant and slow means of
transport to the runs. The sailors do
their bit and then I rely on Jim’s navigational skills to guide me round the
runs. I’m in reasonable shape, and am
used to hours on my feet from doing ultras.
What could go wrong?!
Jim
got in touch at the end of April to say that our sailors (Skipper Ian Woodman,
and his pals Ian Steele and Paul Turner) were planning a shakedown sail on the
weekend of 5 and 6 May. Unfortunately I
was taking part in the Glen Lyon Ultra, so couldn’t make it. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.
Jim
and I elected to drive up to Oban on the Thursday evening, rather than risk arriving
late on the Friday morning. It was
probably just as well we had our own transport, rather than taking the train, as
our combined luggage suggested we were embarking on a circumnavigation of the
globe. The aforementioned Graham is
always supremely organised and takes his preparation to the nth
degree (every item photographed and its weight in grams recorded for posterity),
so I followed his kit list to the letter.
And then spent most of the Wednesday evening throwing in more for good
measure.
We dropped
in on the guys at Woody’s Mum and Dad’s in Connell. They were busy ferrying equipment out to
Sundance, which was anchored in the bay.
It seemed to be a pretty involved process of multiple trips out on the
dinghy but, after giving us instructions to pick up a gas canister en route,
they said they’d meet us round at the Oban yacht club at around 11pm.
Kit
check was ticked off without any drama. So
much so that Jim was happy to pass spare items to Tim and Rory from “Kea” to
top up their first aid. We then had time
for a quiet pint while we waited for the Ians and Paul to arrive in
Sundance. Kicking out time came and went
with still no sign of the guys, so we did what any rational person would do and
toddled along into Oban town to continue drinking. We eventually met up around midnight with the
guys, and I was introduced to the delights of the aft cabin (or “Gimp Locker”),
which was to become Jim’s and my temporary home for the next few days.
After
a decent enough sleep, Friday morning began with a safety briefing from Woody. We were shown how to put on our lifevests,
what to do in the event of a man overboard (don’t like the sound of that), how
to launch the life raft (oh, hell no!), and advised to always have “one hand
for the boat” (i.e. a hand on something for balance). In
regards to the life raft, Woody’s sage advice was that it tends to be better to
be in the boat unless it’s on fire or sinking.
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The fleet at Oban
(photo: Jim)
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While
the Ians and Jim attended to some last minute prep (screwing in ceiling panels,
drilling holes for lines, etc), Paul and I took a trip to Tesco for a few final
provisions. This was an extremely good
gig, as we had time for a bacon and egg roll from the in-store café, followed
by a last luxury (stationary) sh1t.
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Sundance's battle flag - more Trump-related nonsense. This time with added aubergine!
(photo: Paul)
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After
the pre-race briefing (highlight: “there are no stupid questions”… “that’s a
stupid question!”), the action commenced at noon with a 4 mile trail run
starting and finishing at the yacht club.
Jim made the point that it counts as sailing time, and a few minutes
here or there weren’t going to make much difference, so there was no benefit to
be had in bursting ourselves. It was a
nice wee route, and we had a steady enough run.
Nothing spectacular, but after being ferried back to the boat by
Steeley, Sundance was underway and left the harbour safely in midpack.
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The finish line of the Oban Slip race
(photo: SIPR FB page)
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The
first few hours on the way to Mull were very enjoyable sailing. There was warm sunshine, light winds, and benign
seas. We weren’t moving terribly quickly
but then nor was anyone else – at least in our class. We had been placed in category 3 – slow
monohulls. The fast crews were starting
to disappear into the distance, but there was no point in worrying about
them. It was enough to be in the mix in
our class. Sorr of Appin and Marisca got
away from us a bit, but we were in decent contact with the likes of Ailish II,
Bascule, Capricorn, Contender, Dionysus, Fearless Friend, Jjig, and Ledauphin.
This
nice gentle introduction gave me an opportunity to take in what was going on,
and get a bit of a feeling for what the sailors needed to do. They were a very well-drilled unit when it
came to tacking – each playing a part in releasing a line on one side of the
boat, and winching in a line on the other, while the wheel was brought
around. It was also interesting studying
the instruments which conveyed information like wind speed and direction, boat
speed through the water, boat velocity on your plotted course (or “distance
made good”), depth of water, and so on.
It was a bit of a reminder of school maths/ physics concepts of vectors,
and the difference between velocity and speed.
I learned about the optimal angle of wind on the sails – the instruments
suggested that somewhere between 30 and 60 degrees was good, but Woody
explained that 30 degrees was ideal for Sundance. There seems to be a natural temptation to
sail closer to dead ahead when travelling into a headwind, to minimise lateral
movement from big tacks, but this was sailing “too close to the wind”, which
was liable to make your sails go slack and lose thrust. So that’s where the saying comes from…
We
averaged 3 or 4 knots until we got close to Duart Castle and the Lismore
lighthouse (around 8 miles sailed of the 20 or so to Salen on Mull), when
suddenly the wind direction seemed to shift and the majority of the boats ahead
decided to deploy their spinnakers.
After a bit of discussion, our Jenny sail (the front sail, usually used
in addition to the main sail, and necessary for tacking into a headwind) was
brought in, and our own spinnaker run up.
Steeley explained that it was like a large umbrella, and its use was
dependant on a decent following wind.
Our speed picked up noticeably – Paul on the wheel claimed an early speed
record for the trip of 7.2 knots. It
didn’t last for very long though, and the spinnaker was soon being stowed away
again. Jim joked that this was par for
the course – “get the spinnaker up”, “get the spinnaker down” being something
he’d heard quite a lot of the year before.
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Spinnaker!
(photo: Stephen Lawson)
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Unfortunately,
the burst of speed was soon to be but a memory.
We became becalmed not long after Duart Castle, still around 10 miles
shy of our first destination. The oars
came out and we took turns either rowing or watching the anemometer for any
sign of movement. I must admit to being
sceptical as to how much difference two men rowing an 8 ton boat could make
but, once we got some momentum, it was possible to achieve around 2 knots. The Ians commented on how, after a fair bit
of trial and error, they’d found the optimal location for the pivot points.
Paul
had fired up Spotify so we had some good tunes, and there was good chat
too. This gave us a temporary reprieve
from Steeley’s (limited) selection of single lines from songs. The man doesn’t know a second line. One of them (“it ain’t easy, livin’ in a
bubble”) did accurately describe our lodgings though.
As
we got closer to Salen, I was keen to establish what I’d be running up. Jim seemed to tire of being asked, “Is that
Ben More?” No Nick, that’s a foothill in
front of Ben More. No Nick, that’s a
ridge on the way to Ben More. Etc, etc.
We
finally arrived at around 7pm, which was slightly later than last year, and so
we’d have a little less daylight to work with than Jim and Graham had had. After being rowed ashore (Steeley getting us
in at a good lick) we were met by the Mull marshal crew which was made up of Jim’s
Carnethy team mates, led by Gordon. Jim
was kit-checked by Chris, and I had Digby.
Looking at the results, I see that we were placed 29th out of 33 teams
at that point.
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Arriving at Salen
(photo: Digby Maass)
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Having
gotten a little chilly on the boat, I started running with two tops on, but it
was a lovely warm early summer’s evening on land. I stopped within the first mile to take off
one of the tops.
We
made good progress on the largely flat 8 miles of running out to the start of
the climb. We passed our first other team
at around 2 miles in. We then saw a
single runner heading back towards Salen.
It was odd that he was on his own rather than in a pair, so we asked if
he was ok and he said yes. A little later
we came to two boys idly lobbing stones into a loch. I should make clear at this point that they
were very polite and well-behaved young men.
They explained that their teacher was ill and was going to fetch the
boat to take them back (which explained the single runner). Because Jim and I are puerile, infantile and
had little better to do to pass the time, we started suggesting more and more
extreme maladies that might be afflicting the teacher – moving on quickly from catastrophic
diarrhoea, we eventually settled on that Amazonian parasitic fish (the Candiru)
that swims up the urethra. Global
warming having led them to Scotland’s West coast. Oh, and in a later retelling on the boat, the
boys had graduated to panning in the windows of a nearby digger (they
definitely didn’t). On the Thursday night
in Oban, Jim and I had talked about scoring some mind-altering drugs
(“jellies!!!”) to help the runs pass more smoothly. On this evidence, none were required.
The 8
miles of decent running was a bit of a surprise to me. I knew that the total route was around 24
miles, so started thinking that we therefore had only around 4 miles of climb
to come, and we’d then be on the downward/homeward 12 mile stretch. No bother!
The run
became more of a steady trudge as we entered the first valley proper and
started making our way up the valley side to the ridge leading to Ben More. By this point we’d dropped off the first of
our six tokens on an orienteering control point. We did a bit more passing on the way up,
taking a further three teams. Jim then played
a blinder in having us leave the ridge and contour round a rise, avoiding a nasty
traverse of a scree field and an unnecessary ascent and descent. We saw a further couple of teams slipping and
sliding around above us, sending rocks tumbling, but happily not in our
direction. We then had to make our way
up a steep section to rejoin the ridge (a fairly sharp arête, with quite
pronounced drop-offs on both sides) that led on to the final push to the
summit. This involved some quite hairy rock
scrambling. I was feeling a little woozy
from the constant dosing of Stugeron (or was it vertigo?), so didn’t dare to look
anywhere much other than at Jim’s heels or where I was putting my own
feet. If Woody’s earlier advice had been
“one hand for the boat”, then my own advice to myself was now “two hands for
the mountain”. It was a relief to
deposit our second token at the summit cairn.
I
was glad that we took a much more moderate route off the hill. The descent down a scree field was good fun,
once I remembered the technique – a bit like surfing/sliding down a sand
dune. There was a slightly unnecessary
descent down into a gully to place another token, which then meant a bit of a
climb back out, before crossing over the shoulder of a couple of ridges towards
the correct exit valley.
We’d
talked about a crashed plane earlier on the boat, and occasionally came across
fragments of wreckage. Steeley had
advised us to watch out for ghosts angrily asking, “are you the navigator?”
We
knew that there was another control point just before we should start our
descent proper. Both thinking that we’d
seen it, we ran quickly over to what turned out to be a dead sheep. We didn’t reckon the marshals would give us
much credit for popping a token on the remains of its tail. On retracing our steps we wondered how the
hell we’d managed to run a matter of yards either side of the big obvious white
and orange thing.
Darkness
was falling fast now though. While extremely
grateful that we’d had good light for the tricky ascent, this gave us some difficulty
in finding the narrow loose trod on the return down the valley. Shadows would convince you that you were on a
path of some description, only to stumble in heavy claggy tussocky undergrowth,
and then see something that looked better ten metres higher or lower.
Nevertheless,
there were various headtorches visible in the distance on the other side of the
valley, and it felt like we were gaining on them.
As
more of a road runner than a fell runner, I was looking forward to returning to
the tarmac for the last few miles. Jim
commented that we had both grown quite quiet by now – there is sometimes a
tendency to fold in on yourself a little towards the end of long runs.
We
arrived back to the finish in a little under 5 hours’ running time. We were slower than Jim and Graham had been
in 2017, but they had had an hour’s more light.
This moved Sundance up to 20th overall on aggregate time, and
saw us ranked 15th overall and 5th in our class for the
Ben More run. As only one team in our
class started after us (therefore also experiencing darkness on a significant
section of the run) and ran quicker, that felt like an acceptable effort.
Paul
was on chauffeur duty back to Sundance.
After a bit of food, just enough time to dust some of the mud off, and
get a change of clothes, we were retiring into our sleeping bags in the Gimp Locker. Leaving Ian, Ian and Paul to the next leg of
the voyage.
Following
some congratulatory and slightly hubristic chat before going to sleep, I’d
hoped/expected to be waking up not far from Craighouse. We’d optimistically pencilled in a possible start
for the Paps run at around 2pm. And it felt
like we were making good progress during the night – I definitely remember some
hard tacks that flung me from one side of the bunk to the other, and the sound
of wind and rushing waves was very encouraging.
It
was therefore strange to wake at 7am to almost perfect peace and quiet –
bobbing around off Duart Castle, once more.
The water was flat calm and the anemometer immobile. Somehow, despite working all night, the
sailors had only gained around 12 miles in 7 hours.
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Sunrise
(photo: Paul)
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We
were certainly not alone – slightly to the rear of the usual suspects in the
slower section of Class 3. And we would
all remain becalmed for the best part of 5 hours in total. We were the first of the fleet to get the
oars out, and managed to row past 6 other boats. This inspired some of the other crews to
follow suit with the oars but, I must say, without the same success as we
enjoyed.
We
were all on the lookout for any sign of a breeze, trying to move towards any
patch of water where there was a hint of a ripple. Eventually we saw the sails of Ailish II (the
most advanced of the pack) start to fill.
“They’ve got wind. They’ve got wind!!! Row there. Row there!!!”
Hugely
thankful to be under way again, but by now it was touch and go whether we’d
make the tidal gate in the Sound of Luing.
Keeping our options open, and loathe to sit anchored for up to 6 hours
waiting for the tide to turn, we agreed with Woody’s suggestion that we head
for the West coast of Jura. This was
very much the long way round. It is
around 40 or so miles from Duart Castle to the start of the Sound of Islay,
which is similar to the distance from Duart Castle to Craighouse through the
Sound of Luing. However, after reaching
Islay, there is then a further 20 miles to cover to get round and back up to Craighouse. It is also more exposed – with Colonsay
offering only limited protection from the full weight of the Atlantic swell. In theory we could come back towards Luing through
the Gulf of Corryvreckan, but it is home to the famous whirlpool, and at one
time the Admiralty considered it “unnavigable”.
A number of boats seemed to be hedging their bets, only to change their
mind at the last minute and head for the inland passage. We were ploughing our own lonely furrow.
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Life on the ocean wave
(photo: Jim)
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We
certainly got good wind on that side – peaking at 35 – 40 knots at times. And we took one single tack to run pretty
much the whole length of Jura. It looks
great on the “Yellow Brick” tracker. But
the swell was now huge, and we were crashing through the waves given we were
heading pretty much straight into the strong southerly/south easterly. Although the sun was still out, both the boat
and crew were starting to take a bit of punishment. I focussed my gaze intently on the distant shore
in an attempt to avert sickness, and Steeley joked that he would test me later
on the features along that stretch of coast.
I
think it is a pretty good litmus test when even the sailors get sick – Paul
being the first to succumb. I took a small measure of pride in having held
out that far.
And
then a line to the Jenny sail snapped, leaving it flapping around and (to my untrained
eyes) in danger of ripping itself to bits.
Woody had to tether on and head to the prow to try to gather it back in
by hand. All while the ship was pitching
up and down violently in the roiling ocean.
No doubting his bravery - there weren’t many offers from the rest of us
to help! And he got soaked repeatedly by
the freezing water as he hadn’t had time to put on his oilskins when the rope
snapped. We persevered with just the
main sail for what I think was a couple of hours (it was difficult to
accurately judge the passage of time at this point), before deciding to motor
into the shelter of Loch Tarbert to take stock and effect repairs.
The
Ians cut and retied the line to the Jenny, while Paul managed to bodge a fix
for a sheared bracket to the spray hood.
Playing more to our own strengths, Jim and I did the dishes from earlier
and put one of Woody’s excellent pasta bakes in the oven.
After
eating there was a team discussion. Battered
and bruised, I reckon everyone was already thinking of abandoning, but didn’t
want to say it. We agreed to motor back
to our last “sailed to” position and recommence under sail. We’d play it by ear once we got to
Craighouse, but concerns were expressed that we were already in danger of
running out of time. We all had Monday
off work, but had hoped to arrive in Troon on Sunday evening in time for celebratory
beers. At this rate, with the Paps
likely to be done entirely in darkness, and a potentially even more difficult
journey around the Mull of Kintyre, we’d be lucky to finish on Tuesday. That wasn’t really going to cut it.
The tide
was against us on the approach to the Sound of Islay, and took an age to
turn. The lighthouse at Ruvaal and the
distillery at Bunnahabhain remained frustratingly out of reach for some time. When it did turn, the combination of good wind
and the following tide of around 6 knots saw us set a new Sundance speed record
of 11.4 knots, with Woody at the helm.
It felt suitably quick.
But
the boat was still pitching about quite strongly in the waves. In the blackness Paul (who’d by now taken
over the wheel from Woody) couldn’t see much of what was coming towards him, so
struggled to minimise their impact. And
I could no longer see the horizon, rapidly leading to sickness.
There
was a bit of a funny moment (not remotely enjoyed at the time) when I rushed
down into the main cabin to throw up in the toilet and shouted “has anyone got
a headtorch?” Jim pointed out that I
already had one on my head.
In
the end the sail from Mull to Jura took 26 hours, arriving in Craighouse at 2am
on the Sunday morning. The sailors in
particular were absolutely exhausted; a combination of hard graft and very
little sleep. Steeley reckoned he’d had
only an hour since waking in Oban on the Friday morning. It was at this point that we took the
decision to abandon. Even still, we
didn’t go ashore for another 7 hours, spent trying to sleep but mostly being
thrown around in the Gimp Locker. I was therefore on a boat for 33 hours
straight. That is my longest ever. I could still feel the motion of
the waves two days later.
We
weren’t the only ones to find the Mull to Jura sail tough. In total, 10 boats withdrew at or on the way
to Jura (in addition to one that had withdrawn on Mull), including 6 of the 11
in our class. Only Dionysus arrived
after us – at around 8am on Sunday morning.
And all credit to them, their runners (Brigid and Lizzie) had a go at
the Paps run before discretion won out over valour/ stubbornness/ stupidity/ hypothermia
(delete as appropriate). We spoke to
them after they had retreated to the warmth of the village hall, and they had
the haunted air of survivors from the First World War trenches. Thousand yard
stares were de rigueur.
Over
(excellent) breakfast doubler rolls (I had one bacon and egg, and one lorne
sausage and black pudding for those interested) in the Antlers café in
Craighouse, we discussed our options for getting back to Oban. I think I had some kind of PTSD going
on. I was very keen to avoid
experiencing the same feelings of sickness again (“don’t make me go back on the
boat, don’t make me go back on the boat”).
Jim and I explored various possibilities including a ferry to Tayvallich
and then bus to Oban, and I spoke to a chap from Bascule who was heading to
Islay for a £60 flight he’d found on Skyscanner. None of it was going to work though and, very
reluctantly, we agreed to sail back up to Oban with the guys.
As
it turned out, and as promised by Steeley, it was much easier going heading
north with the wind behind and the waves running in the right direction. My spirits even improved to the point that I
was able to go below deck and put a brew on!
We
got back into Oban just before 7pm on Sunday evening. After a quick change and “Glasgow shower”, we
headed out for food and beer. It was
really good to have a few pints with the guys and pick over the events of the
weekend. It was definitely the right
decision to sail back up. We needed
something positive by way of closure.
The
issue of whether we should try again next year came up. I don’t want to make any rash decisions on
that, so will not give an answer yet.
But there is definitely an itch, and it is only likely to grow more
urgent as time passes, and (as seems to happen) the memories of the bad bits
fade to leave only the good.
So,
ultimately a failed attempt. Failing
without learning something must be the worst kind of failure there is. But what did I learn?
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Top
tip: if you are thinking about entering this race, take part in a shakedown
sail, particularly if you are a non-sailor!
You need to have experienced the reality, and prepare yourself
accordingly ahead of the event.
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Sailing
has a lot in common with camping. An
all-pervading dampness is almost a certainty in Scotland. Trying to keep kit dry is virtually a full-time
occupation. I became obsessed with my 80
litre dry bag and an infinite number of sandwich bags for individual
items. Getting up in the middle of a cold
rainy night to go for a pee on a boat is also not vastly different from having
to leave the warmth of your sleeping bag and tent for the same purpose.
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Sailing
can actually, with the right company and the right weather, be fun. As someone who has always hated boats and
dreaded sailing, that is quite a revelation.
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Sailing
can be f*cking atrocious too. That came
as less of a surprise.
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Don’t
underestimate the sailing.
·
Don’t
underestimate the sailors.
Well
done to all who finished, and commiserations to those who didn’t – it seems to
have been a tough year. Thanks to the
marshals and organisers for putting on a terrific event. And thanks to tremendous team mates – a great
bunch of guys and it’s just a shame we couldn’t manage it. At least, not this year…
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Battle damage!
(photo: Paul)
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Sundance's intrepid crew
(photo/selfie: Jim)
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