We enjoyed an excellent trip up to Skye this year with some friends onboard and some great stops along the way to show them some of our favourite anchorages.
Weather was pretty delightful and it was lovely to be back in our summer ‘home’ at Plockton.
Prior to our first Skye cruise Red Moon’s crew had a little escape by road to the wonderful gardens at Inverewe, which are just north of one of our anchorages in Gairloch.
Fresh for our Skye season we started the first of a dozen cruises with mainly calm weather and plenty of sunshine. This year it worked out that the majority of our cruises were ‘south of the Skye Bridge’, exploring the Deep Sea Lochs of Nevis, Hourn, Moidart & Scavaig and including visits to the wonderful Small Isles.
One particularly soggy trip was looking like a wash out until we encountered an intensity of wildlife in one of our favourite destinations – Loch Hourn. The rain did not stop one of our guests from wild swimming every day – and she’s coming back for more in 2025!
On our more north trips we managed to find a couple of new anchorages and enjoyed a decent stop at Staffin on the north coast of Skye to look for dinosaur footprints and view the strange and wonderful rock formations.
We got to Gairloch a couple of times and were able to get ashore to the great pub at Badachro and also a first visit to the micro distillery just outside the village – some sampling and purchases for Red Moon’s whisky and gin shelves were obligatory !
Our final cruise of the season was for a special birthday with a request to see a sea eagle….well we obliged threefold with a spectacular sighting whilst at anchor near Scalpay. Three sea eagles put on a magnificent display in the skies over Skye.
Not to be outdone, one of our favourite mammals appeared on rocks nearby – a family of three otters, who seemingly unaware of us, played in the water and on the rocks. Just magical.
Autumn came in with rather a vengeance with some stormy weather, which seemed to continue through the winter. We made our journey back to Oban, dodging the weather and with a stop off at Mallaig for Red Moon to have some beauty treatment.
Over winter Red Moon’s crew have been out and about catching up with family and friends. February will see the start of all our preparations for the forthcoming season, with safety checks, routine maintenance and general sprucing up.
The 2024 season looks busy with a greater part of it in the Mull and Oban area. We look forward to that and our return to Skye in June.
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