After a nice sail over from Stornaway and into Loch Inchard, arriving in glorious sunshine and some stunning scenery, we tied up in what can best be described as a fish processing plant called Kinlochbervie – in the middle of nowhere. Accessed through a little cut and into a creek, all there is there is a huge set of sheds, an ice making plant, a dozen or so houses and an old hotel. Suspicioulsy – there were 2 Mercedes and a couple Porches parked discretely outside of the Fish Processing office. The harbor allowed Yachts to tie up on their pontoon (aka Fish Quay, complete with rank smell). There were a few fishing vessels parked up, but this was a place where the deep see fleet come back to and where fish would be packed and despatched by road across to who knows where. It literally was 60 miles from anywhere. It’s known as a stopping off place for yachts going to sail around Cape Wrath to the North – something we were about to do. Simon managed to get Tonic parked right up in a tight space making extraction for me the following day really challenging. The crew ate dinner while Barry and I tried to fix the furling head sail which had stopped working during the passage over. Within an hour we’d made the matter much worse! Now it would neither furl in or out. Tough to sail without a head sail! Another couple of hours and we managed to get things back to exactly where we’d started and by this time it was after midnight and we were the only ones awake! I sat in the cockpit and had a night cap and contemplated the world. I knew why this place existed – but couldn’t imagine what life must be like. It was desolate most of the time and then frenetic for a short period. 
We pulled out at 5.00am on the nose in order to make it to Stromness in time to get into Scapa Flow with a flood tide (because you simply can’t get in in an Ebb tide – we’re talking upto 12 knots). With an early watch we punched into the lock and out into the Minch (still sounds vaguely rude) and we headed up to Cape Wrath. This was a place I’d heard of every night as a student when I would be listening to the Shipping forecast while working (do not ask why). By 7.20am we were rounding Cape Wrath and to me it felt like rounding Cape Horn! We hot our window to get into Scapa and Then into the Harbor of Stromness.