ron-t kayaking blog
04 January 2017 ............ Grey Dogs and Scarba
Today I did something I have wanted to do for a while - I climbed to the top of Cruach Scarba.
There isn`t a public ferry service to Scarba, so if you want to go there, you have to arrange your own transport - I used my sea kayak to cross over to Scarba, and this page is about the crossing over, and the trip back at the end of the day.
There is a page in the climbing section of my website about my trip on Scarba.
Being deep in winter the days are awfy short, and I unloaded my boat and got packed up whilst it was still dark - but it was well into daylight by the time I set off - it just seems to take me so long to get ready, and of course as well getting ready for sea kayaking, I had to prepare for going up the hill as well.
It would have been about the end of the second hour of the ebb tide through the Grey Dogs by the time I got there - they were completely flat, but a strong current meant that I couldn`t paddle through the north channel.
I didn`t have to go through the Grey Dogs of course, but since I was there, I had a wee play.
I did get part way through the south channel and into the eddy at the top of the island - it is an unexpected place to have an eddy, but it is actually caused by some rocks some 20 metres or so above the island - this is one of them, with some chunky stuff around them.
The early morning sun was lighting up the cliffs on Lunga in a dark orange hue.
I could well have played on, but I just didn`t have the time, I had to get to Scarba, so I headed round the island and back out of the north channel.
From the Grey Dogs to the small harbour on Scarba isn`t that far, but it seemed to take forever - in theory I should have been getting washed south by the ebb tide, but it just didn`t work out that way - there must have been some really weird circulating currents, at times I was going nowhere, and it felt as if I was paddling through treacle.
So it took a lot longer than it should have done, but I got there eventually, hauled up on the beach there, and got ready for climbing instead of paddling.
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Back at the beach now, after my trip up to Cruach Scarba, and getting ready to go paddling again.
All packed up, the last thing to do is zip up my drysuit and then launch - oh no - the zip jammed.
Absolutely jammed - wide open.
Cue panic !
The trouble with all this modern technology that we rely on - when it breaks it is always at the worst possible time in the worst possible circumstances - there was I stuck on a remote island, running out of daylight, and I just could not free it.
In the end I just had to push down the velcro on the zip cover, and go as it was, I really didn`t have any other choice.
I carry a spare radio, spare paddles, spare food and drink, self rescue kit - have I now got to carry a spare drysuit ?
I guess the survival time in the Firth of Lorne in the middle of winter would be about 5 - 10 minutes, but you would lose muscle control sooner than that.
It is an interesting question - could I do a self rescue before I got too cold to be able to do a self rescue ?
Fortunately I didn`t have to find out.
The journey back across was okay, it got quite chunky out in the middle in quite a distinct race, but I stayed upright and got back over okay.
A bit before I got there the sea had calmed down a bit, and I turned round, and there was quite a good sunset going on behind Scarba.
Back at Luing now, beside the old pier - so a bit of an arty shot of the sunset -
Later on, and I`m all packed up and ready to go, and there is now some super colouring to end a most succesful day.
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