What happens when you put ten Yummicks on a 32-foot sailing yacht captained by a teenager and try to go climbing? An imaginative headline on the front page of Edinburgh Live, perhaps. Some may say an ambitious plan to sail down and climb on the Bishop Isles ought to be meticulously thought through. We are not those people, and early on the 22nd June ten of us loaded up our skipper’s wooden boat and ambitiously set sail to Mingulay.
A few weeks prior, the Cap’n, Meg, and her deckhand, Charlie, had been getting Kingfisher seaworthy in Ullapool. The pair were joined by Milo and sailed down the Sound of Skye, across the Minch, and picked the remainder of us up from Barra a few days later. By all accounts they had a rough time of it, but I wasn’t there, so here is an abridged version of what Charlie had to say:
“Large amounts of water immediately started spraying into the cabin. The pipe for the port side cockpit drain had cracked. Fortunately, I was down below and turned the seacock off. I wondered what else would break on the boat before we were back in Ullapool. Meg had warned me things often broke, but I hadn’t expected Kingfisher to start sinking immediately.”
“We tacked. A pulley snapped. Before she had even managed to close her eyes our skipper was dragged back out of bed to fix the boat, but fortunately with a shackle in place we were soon on our way again. The wind had now completely died, and the sea was still as a mirror. We passed a trawler and a pod of dolphins jumped and played in our bow wave.”
“I fell asleep but was quickly bounced awake by the first rough sea I had experienced. I got up, put on my foul weather gear, then went to join Meg on deck, but couldn’t see her. Mr rope had been left at the helm as Meg was busy wrestling a reef in the mainsail. Something must be wrong, I thought. Quickly, I offered my assistance, but she sat down and then, entirely unflustered, asked what I was doing awake.”
“The second time I awoke, just putting on my gear made me queasy. I got on deck, and was immediately given the helm in the worst weather I had ever seen at sea, though this was admittedly only my second day. I was well and truly out of my depth. Milo chose this moment to come on deck and spray me with bile.”
“We arrived in Vatersay bay and slept for an eternity. We had an excellent morning, but all too soon we were getting off the boat onto the pontoon at Castle bay, ready to meet our friends that evening.”
Meanwhile, the rest of us had been quite preparedly scrambling together life jackets, two-way radios, a spare 100m ab-rope, more rope protectors, and a SIM for the sat phone. It was not a good sign that most of the party felt quite unwell during the stormy crossing from Oban to Castlebay, but we were rewarded by our first sight of Kingfisher. Beautiful, but small for ten, I thought.
The next morning found us repeatedly failing to start the engine. Hopeless and lost already. There were three engineers on board but they don’t usually get up this early. The only solution dreamt up was from Meg, who decided to wield her studies of Physics and get inside the engine bay to short the terminals with a butter knife. After a bit of faff, and to our surprise, this ended up working quite well. We were soon motoring away from safety, ticking off The Bishop Isles.
We anchored off Mingulay in the afternoon sun, greeted by what we dubbed a super special seal event. Hundreds of basking seals lined the beach, which was to make the process of unloading ten people and kit on a small rowing dinghy a bit harder. There was some debate about landing the tender with some not insignificant swell but test dummies Noah and Milo settled our nerves. Watched by inquisitive seals, we (Meg) spent the afternoon rowing back and forth, until we had a small village set up on the hill by the old school house. In the end, only Noah and I had gone in the drink. We all lay out to dry in the sun for a bit, somewhat shocked we had actually made it. Our peace was interrupted, however, when the famously reliable Meg and Charlie departed to Vatersay for the night, leaving us to wonder if they would actually return.
That evening saw our first climbs on Mingulay, at a small nearby crag Milo’s parents had helped develop, Geo am Droma. We all made repeats of Milo’s mum’s route Fluorescent Jellyfish, 1* VD, and Milo squeezed in a new neighbouring route, Fluorescent Adolescence, 0* HVD. Walking back through the diverse wildlife in the old village grounds, Noah and I discussed feeling more settled on the island and could appreciate what an incredible place it was that we were visiting. Anna would like me to point out she caught a fish that evening. She ate it for dinner, and left the remains stinking up camp.
Returning late, the two of us bumped into the local NatureScot birdwatcher, Chris, who gave us pointers on where to avoid during nesting season and offered us shelter should we need it. The old schoolhouse he resided in made the place feel less remote, but we were grateful for his presence when an updated weather forecast came through. Very windy, ruling out most of the big stuff.
Eating breakfast the next day, I was secretly relieved to not have to brave the 100m abseil of Dun-Mingulay, but keen to get a look at it we took the rack and ropes over the hill between us and the climbing, and left them for later. Turning the corner past Dun-Mingulay every single jaw dropped. Fog, wind and huge swell swept the whole place, making it feel spectacularly wild and imposing. Thousands of birds of just about every species I could name were nesting or battling the winds. We sat and admired for a while, before our silly little urge to climb took over again.
We turned back and battled the tussocks over to Seal Song Geo, narrowly avoiding some friendly Skua dive-bombing. Unfortunately, fulmars had claimed the geo for themselves, and we moved on to the nearby Gerium Walls. Bird-free, we climbed until late, but left feeling a little frustrated. The setting was incredible, but if we wanted to climb mediocre 10m routes, we could have gone to Stanage.
Dinner brought about more weather discussion. It had worsened again. The next day was to be glorious sunshine, then dissolving into force nine winds. It was clear we had to get off Mingulay and by some miracle Meg and Charlie picked up when we called.
Obviously, we still went climbing the next day, with Meg and Charlie joining us. Chris thought Arnamul Wall might be free of birds, so most of us head in that direction, with Milo and Tilly going to do Fifteen Fathoms of Fear instead. Upon abseiling the 70m, it was clear there were in fact nesting Razorbills, and on pretty much every guidebook route. Whoops. We couldn’t be arsed to ascend the rope, so picked some new bird-less lines to climb out.
Chuffed with our first ascents, Noah and I named our route ‘Arnamul Egg’, a 1 star HVS 5a. We bickered with Dan, Anna and Robbie, who were claiming a two star E1 5b named ’Super Special Seal Event’. A good name, I’d give them that, but two stars for their first first ascent, I was a bit jealous. Charlie, Lottie and Meg followed them and immediately downgraded it to HVS. UKC was the real winner, however. As soon as we got the one-bar signal on the hill, Robbie announced their route was a word-for-word description of ‘There’s Nuffin Like a Puffin’, E1 5b. Ours too shared much of a line with an E2 5b named Puffin Protest. Oh well.
We had forgotten all about this once loading the boat back up. Bright blue skies and a picturesque beach waited for us. Naked diving off in the bay of remote island felt surreal, though I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly scared of all the seals swimming around to us. The sea stayed still that evening, and we motored into the sunset, singing, dancing and already reminiscing.
Safely back in Castlebay, Meg, Charlie, Robbie and I left the others behind to take Kingfisher back to Ullapool. Almost immediately, we nearly crashed into one of those pesky underwater rocks that make shipwrecks. Quick deployment of the butter knife saved us, and we made it to Canna that evening. By now the atmosphere was getting eerie. Rum loomed above us, the skies were darker and the wind much warmer. We were glad to be sitting out the weather we had left Mingulay for.
Some 36 hours of hibernation later, we had eaten through most of our supplies and finished and swapped our respective booked. News came through that the wind had dropped to force 6. Robbie and I agreed that this sounded high, but Meg said that it would be good sailing, so we got the dinky-donk going and tentatively waved goodbye to our neighbours, who chuckled back at us. Charlie labelled them soft, and we set sail for Iona.
When I first got on Kingfisher, Charlie described his experience of sailing as long periods of boredom interspersed with extreme panic. I learnt the meaning of this when the jib sheet let out a huge bang and snapped in two, followed by a ‘well that’s not supposed to happen’, looking up to see the other three aghast. To add to the stress, the tender started to work itself free, the waves got bigger, and Rum looked a lot closer. I would like to say we dealt with this ordeal calmly and methodically, but I think it was mostly panic, use of the butter-knife, and a lot of holding on to flying rope.
We only made it as far south as Gometra that evening, an island off an island off Mull. We anchored for the night and a trip to the island yielded a first ascent on an unclimbed crag for me and Robbie, aptly-named Spew on the Deck, HVS 5a, no stars. We didn’t bother with another, as it had started to rain while on lead. And the rock was crap.
The rest of the day was spent with Dolphins guiding us to Iona. We cautiously navigated into Tinker’s hole and went to bed early. This gave us time in the morning for some idyllic soloing on Erraid, and more swimming in the sunny alcove before returning Robbie to Oban.
Charlie, Meg and I spent the entire next day attempting to tack up the sound of Mull. Before we knew it, it was 2am, and we were dealing with the usual stresses of Meg’s magnetic boat. Meg was at the top of the foremost trying to fix the jib halyard block. It had broken quite dramatically when taking down the jib. Tired, we mostly ignored this problem and motored all the way to Balamory, fixing it in the light.
Time had got away from us now, and we agreed that to get back to Edinburg to vote, we had to sail the 120 odd nautical miles through the night, something I was quite excited to try. We settled into a rhythm of one, changing to two, hour-long watches and clocked in the rainy, but speedy, miles with very few hiccups. Only once did I wake up to the whip of a jibing boom, followed nervous laughter from Meg and Charlie. I decided sleep was worth more, but have since learnt we nearly crashed into the Skye bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh. We arrived at Ullapool shattered and devoured the fish and chips we had been dreaming about, rounding off the end of a rather fantastic adventure.