Hello everyone - We're currently anchored in Little Kettle Pool, a small completely enclosed anchorage about 1/2 a mile across, just a mile or so from the entrance to Loch Skiport, a large fijord on the NE shore of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. We're protected through 360 degrees by islands to the west, north and east and by Hecla, a 2,000-foot high peak, and its associated ridges to the south. Katabatic winds whistle down Hecla's slopes in strong southerlies as we discovered when we arrived here two days ago. The SE winds outside the loch had been blowing no more than 15 knots, but we anchored in 25-30 which died away instantly when the wind shifted to the west.

Low green vegetation, nothing more than knee high, covers the 200-300 foot high islands around us and the ridges and mountain to our south. Gray rocks and boulders lie scattered across the vegetation, glacial erratics dumped by a retreating wall of ice; rock outcroppings cap each point and headland, scoured clean by the same glacier 10,000 years ago. The sea meets the shore in a band of dark kelp-covered rock - just a line at high water but a slippery slope some dozen feet high at low. The landscape feels over-large, constructed for giants. Nothing ashore offers scale to the eye - no roads, no buildings, no trails, no animals, no fences. It's hilly enough to provide a strong sense of depth, which gives the impression of distance, but it's not so high as to limit the horizon as in the Alps or Rockies. The sky feels grand and wide, and the land below feels boundless - the ragged end of a continent trailing off into a thousand miles of open ocean.

Yesterday we took the dinghy and ventured ashore, a daunting task where no pier or landing stage exists and the water level will change by six or eight feet if we're exploring for even a couple of hours. We landed in a small inlet after passing through a channel only a bit wider than the dinghy that we deemed to have adequate water that it wouldn't dry at low tide. Ashore, the vegetation consisted of coarse grass, thick, spongy moss and a low conifer-like bush (heather or gorse, perhaps) that came up to our knees. The exact combination varied depending on how wet the ground was, which itself went from bog to marsh to squishy and only reached damp to almost dry at the top of the rocky ridges. Marsh grass and wild flowers predominated where we were slogging through bog up to our ankles; moss and grass turned to moss and bushes where the ground went from wet to squishy; and on the sides of the hills where there was some sort of drainage the bushes predominated. Both the moss and the bushes created a deep, soft mattress over the muddy ground but offered uncertain footing. I now understand why the book we bought on Scottish Islands regularly assumes an hour per mile of walking and refers to these hikes as "scrambles."

We moved from shoulder to ridge to shoulder wherever possible to avoid the knee-deep bog of the lower ground. We passed a couple of ancient fences made from turf, now covered with their own layer of grass and bushes. We also skirted a rock walled enclosure divided into two rooms, about forty feet long and fifteen feet wide. From any distance this looked like just another random pile of gray rocks tumbled across the bog. Within ten or fifteen minutes we had climbed to about 500 feet and could see more water ahead, which Evans suggested was the continuation of Loch Skiport beyond our anchorage. But we quickly realized this water was about a hundred feet above sea level, and as we approached we could see Hawk's mast through a notch in the ridges which now separated us from the anchorage - and the water level of this lake was above our mast! When we finally stood above it, it made quite a sight. The inland loch was a mile or so long and maybe a quarter mile wide, contained by rocky shores and rugged ridges. It ended at a ridge beyond which we could see the top of Hawk's mast, and beyond that the islands, skerries and channels of Loch Skiport. Beyond that, a large headland jutted out into the ocean, and a white sail moved slowly across the expanse of the Sea of the Hebrides. The colors were all muted, the gray of the rocks, the dusty green of the foliage, the silver-blue of the water, even the soft blue of the sky, yet the air was so clear it felt as if I could close my hand over the tiny sail and pluck it from the water.

We walked further inland coming to a second inland loch, then followed a jeep track along a much higher ridge to where it ended at the edge of a cliff probably 800-1,000 feet above the valley below with a 360 degree view of the island. In the low land below us to the west, we could see another large inland loch with a small village on the far side, and then the deep blue of the open Atlantic where the island ended. To the south lay Hecla, the rugged slopes covered with scrub vegetation and round boulders fully visible despite its name (Hecla means 'shrouded in mist' - there seems to be at least one on each of these islands). To the north lay the ridges beyond Loch Skiport, then the lower land of North Uist and the open sea to the east. Both islands sagged beneath the weight of rock and ridge, and the ocean intruded deeply into the lochs on their western shores. The sun reflected off the inland lochs and the boggy ground, shimmering from a thousand pools and marshes. I understood then why these southern islands of the Outer Hebrides are referred to as "drowned islands" - the rocky ridges seemed just to be resisting sinking forever into the sea.

We returned to find the dinghy high and dry on a bed of rocks and sea grape which we skidded over to reach it. We managed to slide it the ten feet or so to water and push ourselves off before using the oars to cross the couple of hundred feet to the narrow channel now completely choked with kelp. Two hours later, the channel we'd passed through lay four feet above the level of the water in our anchorage. So much for our judgement of water depth! If we had returned a couple of hours later we would have been stranded for four hours or so...

Here's to summer sailing adventures for everyone! Beth and Evans s/v Hawk

PS - Don't know exactly when we'll get to send this. We're now sending e-mail from our laptop aboard Hawk using a cell phone and an infrared port, but no signal out here. We should be able to transmit when we reach Loch Maddy on North Uist, so sorry if this is delayed.