We had a big adventure picking up the new boat, Island Panther, recently. We spent ages agonising over boat names for our RIB, but when we saw Island Panther, not only was it the perfect boat, but the name was just right too!
We started off from Lochaline at 6.30am on a Saturday morning with a lift from the lovely Kenny from Ardtornish into Fort William to get the bus to Inverness. A comfortable start on the City Link to Inverness and then wandering around the city got the day off to a good start. We then got our second bus North via Wick and Thurso to Scrabster for the ferry to Stromness on Orkney.
It’s fair to say we were blown away by how good the boat was – absolutely perfect for our trips. We just faced the journey home starting in some rather rough weather!
A 6am start beckoned and a look at the weather and swell forecast curtailed our plan to use the West Coast (and us wanting to do whale and dolphin spotting!) and we decided to use the Caledonian Canal via Inverness. After a rough crossing of the Pentland Firth, we bounced down the East coast to Inverness thinking the suspension seats were broken (they weren’t, we just didn’t know how to use them!!). 7 uncomfortable hours later, we entered the sea lock into the canal thanks to some incredibly friendly and helpful lock keepers.
You can see the beautiful weather as we entered the canal. We just had a quick fuel stop to make and then a short flight of locks and we could make progress towards our overnight target of Fort Augustus. We docked and started filling up and the heavens opened and poor old Fraser was on the filler while Peter was inside paying. You can tell in the picture below that Fraser was fine with it.
Pretty much as soon as we no longer needed to be outside, the weather cleared up and the rest of the evening was lovely. Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle below
We reached Fort Augustus in early evening, tied up and got a bite to eat before crashing out early, exhausted.
We left Fort Augustus as early as we could and made out way up the canal, frustrated at the (necessary) speed limit of 5 knots. We were hoping to make it out of the canal and home that day, but missed a lunch break at one stop and only made it to the top of Neptune’s Staircase in Fort William just after they stopped for the afternoon.
Another night on the boat, but we thought we would be through the staircase early and out onto Loch Linnhe in no time. We made the first transit through only to be scuppered by a broken rail bridge which delayed us for some time. That meant that we made it to the sea lock too late and there wasn’t enough tide to let us out! Eventually the tide came in enough and we were released and an hour or so later made it back to Lochaline.
Definitely an adventure!
