Solo sailor Martin Montgomery recalls a visit to the anchorage of Loch na Cuilce at the head of the spectacular and forbidding Loch Scavaig
It was getting late in the season and I was working my Vancouver 28 Tethys in stages along the south coast of the Isle of Skye heading east, but ultimately towards the other Inner Hebrides and then homewards to the Clyde. I’d been holed up comfortably on a mooring in Loch Harport for two or three days near the famous Talisker Distillery as a patch of inclement weather clattered through. But now, mid-afternoon on passage, I was looking for an overnight anchorage. And Loch Scavaig – one of those wild craggy indentations along the southern coastline of the Isle of Skye – might just do.
Skye, of course, is steeped in myth and legend. It was split over the Jacobite uprising in 1745 with some clans siding with the Hanoverian monarchy while others sided with Prince Charles, the Stuart claimant to the English throne. After the failure of the rebellion Charles managed to evade capture, hiding in the Outer Isles, assisted by the remaining clandestine supporters, one of whom – Flora Macdonald – helped him escape by boat from Benbecula to Skye – hence the well-known song: “Speed bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, onward the sailors cry. Carry the lad that’s born to be king, Over the sea to Skye”.
The myths and legends are rooted in an awesome natural setting on Skye. The South of the island is dominated by a ring of mountains which rise to a circular ridge of peaks known as Cuillins: “The mountains rise up dramatically from the sea”, says a guide, “creating formidable, enclosed sea lochs, with the absence of foothills enhancing their vast scale”. Loch Scavaig is the most dramatic and formidable of these lochs and is described in the Sailing Directions as “one of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring anchorages in Europe…It is wild and totally remote from civilization”. The Directions then add a sentence which ends forbiddingly with a memorable phrase: “The anchorage even in settled weather is subject to violent downdraughts which are capable of ‘blowing an anchor out’”.
A treacherous anchorage
As it happens, I don’t think I’d actually decided in advance to overnight at Loch Scavaig – I was rather aiming for Soay – a small island to its south almost carved in two by a perfectly sheltered anchorage before you reach Loch Scavaig. But the anchorage at Soay has a narrow entrance with shallows that you can only cross after hal
