Day 28: Garenin Hostel, NW Lewis to Port of Nis, Butt of Lewis (25Nm, 10hrs)

Today was a fantastic finale to the expedition, involving the longest paddle, the most exposed paddling and the best finish.

It started at 7am in my bivvy bag with a nice sunrise. I went up to the hostel to boil the kettle for a cup of tea and to fill my flask, and heated up my black pudding and potato omelette from last night. It wasn’t as tasty as last night for some reason but I ate it nevertheless. After chatting to various people I managed to get on the water at 9.45am, 45mins later than I planned to, so that meant I’d be arriving around 7.45pm.

So I was off on the last day of the expedition, I’d nearly made it, so far, I couldn’t believe it, I’d nearly managed to paddle the whole length of the Outer Hebrides! Although it was far from over. I came out of the mouth of the inlet the hostel was in,and started along the coastline. There was coastline as far as I could see and further and I seriously wondered if I was capable of doing it. I carried on paddling. I was pretty good at being happy in my own company by now, not to say a paddling buddy would have been great, and coped with various activities such as singing and making up songs, talking to myself which I thought was pretty good conversation (!) and listening to the few hundred MP3s on my mobile phone which I now knew off by heart. The coast just went on and on and on.

One nice thing that happened was befriending a Fulmar who thought I was a fishing boat and kept on landing in front of me and watching for waste fish as I drifted by. It did this for a good 20mins and I started feeling sorry for it I aimed straight for it when it was in front of me, which scared it and it flew away and didn’t come back. The weather was great, clear blue skies, not too much swell - I stayed roughly 1km off the coast to avoid swell in the shallower water - and I was working with the tide (the whole 1Kt of it!). The paddling was a cycle of paddling as long as I could before the aches and pains got too much, then having a rest to stretch and move around to get blood flowing in my legs/feet again.

A nervous point on this leg was paddling past the army firing range which had ‘Danger’ labelling the boundary of an area on the map that I was paddling through. I thought about phoning the coastguard to make sure it was safe, but in the end thought they would probably see me if they were going to shoot anything. I couldn’t help wondering if things were going to fly past me at any time and explode!

I got to the planned lunch spot at Siadar, recharged the mobile phone which had run down due to listening to music, had some coffee and a cup of soup with the locally baked bread. After a 20min break, periodically floating my boat inshore and moving my stuff as the tide came in, I felt refreshed and ready to carry on.

So I continued with the tide and the sun into a light northerly wind on the next 4.5 hour paddle - the final leg! I was pretty ecstatic for a good while (probably partly due to the coffee), coming to terms with the fact that I had nearly paddled the 250Nm (275 statute miles) up the Western Isles. I looked back to see how far I’d come, grateful to see the headlands fading into the haze.

If paddling long distances does anything for you, it forces you to think about forward paddling technique! I think the technique frequently anyway but forward paddling is really the most essential skill in sea kayaking and good technique makes paddling much more efficient. Coaches often talk about aspiring to make kayaking skills effective and efficient, but I’d now like to coin the term EESSy (effective, efficient, smooth and stylish - in that order) which I think adds two more important qualities to skills and I’ll be using that in coaching - ‘…how can you make your strokes more EESSy?...’

I passed some creel buoys and was happy to see them downstream of the rope in the water meaning the tide was flowing in my direction. Then I got to a skerry which had an eddy NW of it, again comforting me because I was going with the tide. I was getting closer, now only an hour from the Butt. The anticipation was killing me! Eventually I got there, great!

What a place for paddling, with loads of islands and a natural arch above the HW line, but I couldn’t explore because it was 7pm and I needed to get on. I was nearly there! I rounded the Butt and had 3km to Port of Nis. I enjoyed the coast with the deepening light from the start of the sunset and the reduced swell on the east coast of Lewis. The tide had started flowing in the wrong direction for me and the last headland I had to cut in close land to avoid the current which looked a good 2-3kts.
Then I got to the harbour - woo hoo! It was like some kind of Mediterranean beach and with a flat sea, everything lit with sunset orange, I landed at the slip way in Port of Nis! I had done it! I sat down to come to terms with the fact that I had done it! Then some pals (Sean ZS and Innes) arrived with their bio-diesel, from used vegetable oil, van. They gave me a can of Tenant’s Lager which I gulped down - thanks guys! The rest of the night is another story which involved sausage rolls, whisky, more lager, and a party in Stornoway.

The next day we went for a trip out into the Minch on a 67-foot yacht which Innes and his dad Angus charter. What a life! Sean, Innes and Alison gave me a lift and buddied me down to Leverburgh where I paddled across the Sound of Harris with the wind which was great, and had a wee play in the wind and against tide next to the hostel which was quite a big area of 1ft standing waves with the tide ripping through at 3ish knots! Stayed with Brian and Kath, the friends with the wind turbine, left the boat there, stayed over night and then got the bus the next day to Eriskay and the ferry back to Barrabados!

So now I’m back at home, eating lots of green vegetables that are growing in the garden! That’s it. The first Sustainable Expeditions expedition is finished! I’ll wait a couple of days then I’ve got a few kind of results of and thoughts on this expedition which was really a bit of an experiment.