Heading north with the wind and sea behindA busy week's kayaking last week, as I managed to squeeze a trip from Lemreway to Gravir in with Mark as well as the Taransay trip with the Skye club. The original plan was to meet up with the Skye crowd again, but I had time constraints (helping out with the Hebridean Celtic Festival in the evening) and a lack of mobile coverage at Horgabost meant I met up with Mark in Ballalan to try and work out a plan. Once again the forecast (wet and windy) and the actual weather (warm, sunny and still) didn't seem to match, so we decided to head out to Gravir, drop off my car, and then take the boats to Lemreway and have a gentle paddle north, exploring some of the east coast of South Lochs that neither of us had seen before.

The weather decided to try and catch up with the forecast as we got the boats ready and set off from the slip at Lemreway, with increasing wind and swell greeting us as we headed past Eilean Luibhaird and out to the mouth of Loch Shell (Sealg). Taking stock of the situation, we decided we were both happy to carry on and headed off round the headland onto the exposed coast. The weather was now looking much more like the forecast, blowing about F5 from the south west. One the one hand, this meant we had the wind behind us, but equally, we also had the swell behind us, with the odd breaking wave to keep us on our toes. Aside from looking out for somewhere to stop for lunch (there wasn't anywhere), there wasn't a lot of exploring to do, but I did spot a puffin bobbing around just out of paddle reach keeping a wary eye on my, and another flew past, presumably heading to the Shiants. I also spotted a seal sleeping in a little cove past one of the headlands.

On rounding the last headland and moving into Loch Odhairn, the sea calmed down significantly, although we did have to put up with a strong westerly headwind until we pulled in to a rocky beach on the south side of the loch for a well earned coffee and caramel shortbread. Moving on, the wind calmed down and the sun even came out, and we had fun exploring the southern shore of the loch, including finding a sea kayak sized rock pool which you could just squeeze into on wave surges (Rockpool Hopping video on YouTube).

Overall, an interesting afternoon's paddle. No photos from me this time; the above is one of Mark's - he was desperate to try out his new waterproof camera despite the conditions! The long stretch from Loch Shell to Loch Odhairn was quite easy paddling (we were blown most of the way) whilst being nicely exposed, but otherwise rather dull to explore in those conditions. I think Mark's Facebook status summed it up nicely: "Mark Stokes is becoming a down-wind junkie... another excellent paddle today."