Greetings from Scotland! We're in Scotland! For some reason, ever since we entered Scottish waters on Saturday it has seemed positively miraculous to me that we're here. How to explain it? Six weeks ago, we were over 3,500 nautical miles from here, and we said, "We're going to sail to Scotland." And we did. It's so unlike flying somewhere. I remember all the details of getting here, the gale and the shackle breaking, the apprehension around leaving, the wonder of our Fastnet landfall, the frustration of too much motoring around Ireland. Doing what we set out to do has taken most of the last two months, not the day it would have taken if we'd flown. We did it. We sailed Hawk here. It isn't passive. It's the most decisive, active, self-determined thing you can do. We controlled every controllable aspect of the voyage. We willed ourselves to Scotland. We covered every single mile. We lived every single minute.

We left Kinsale on the south coast of Ireland two weeks ago, determined to reach Scotland as quickly as possible. The cruising season actually begins in April or May up here, and we've been advised to be well out of the area by late August to avoid the fall gales. We pushed hard with far too much motoring in light winds to get up the Irish Sea. Currents and tides dictate our entire sailing day up here. Tidal ranges vary from 6 feet to 20, which means vast amounts of water have to move through the constricted channels between islands and up and down the shallow basin of the Irish Sea. Strong currents result, with max flows of three or four knots being average and six to eight knots not uncommon. When strong winds oppose these currents, nasty, breaking seas develop almost instantly. Going with the currents means a fast ride at 9 or 10 knots for up to six hours, time enough to make many miles during a day sail. Opposing the currents not only means a slow ride but often a bumpy one while the shore crawls by at a snail's pace and you learn every crevice and boulder on a particular headland. Evans has been spending an hour or more a day calculating the currents between our departure and arrival points and determining the best time to set sail. For some reason that always happens to be 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, but at least it's light.

We had the most magnificent day Saturday when we entered Scottish waters - one of those once in a season days that we'll remember whenever we think of this summer and our Scotland trip. Hawk spread her wings wide and we flew from Ireland to Scotland. We had 20 knots of true wind dead over the stern, the main on one side and the jib on the other, and we were making ten knots with the current so we only had ten knots of wind over the deck. After having been hidden by heavy cloud for the last week, the sun fairly blazed in the porcelain blue sky painting the water blue-black except under the turning white caps where it glowed a dark green. As we closed with the Mull of Kintyre, the misty headland resolved itself into high hills, then into a landscape of convoluted folds and tucks, a wrinkled and unkempt topography, so twisted it seemed impossible to follow the line of one valley or ridge. A rich green covered the whole, though whether composed of field or forest I couldn't quite decide without the scale offered by buildings or roads.

For the first time since leaving Kinsale, we both shed our outermost layer as the sun's warm rays lured us out from under the hard dodger. Evans calculated the tides perfectly once again, and we had the benefit of three knots free while we raced around the famous headland marking the entry into the Highlands and Islands - the wilds of Scotland. We raised anchor at Brown's Bay off Larne Lough at 5:30 and dropped anchor here at Ardminish at 11:30 - over 50 miles in six hours, and almost all of it under sail. Lovely, lovely, lovely!

Compared to the islands all around us, Islay and Jura, and further away Mull, this small speck hardly qualifies as an island. No more than five miles long and a mile or so wide, it runs in a roughly north-south direction but just slightly off axis so that the top of the island is a bit east of the bottom. Though Gigha is covered with fertile soil that is in turn covered with lovely rolling fields dotted with sheep and cattle, at the interface with the water the true structure of the island can be seen. There rounded and scoured glacial scrubbed boulders are covered with a mixture of kelp, lichen and wildflowers. These brown, gray and black boulders create tidal pools around the harbor where we are anchored. The jetty where we went ashore is surrounded by these rocks, and the bottom around them consists of a fine, white sand with large patches of kelp caught on the occasional rock or the legs of the pier. The pier was constructed from four two by fours covered by asphalt to create a plank a bit over a foot wide with an iron pipe railing running down one side. The asphalt provided excellent footing on the otherwise slippery wood.

Ashore on Gigha we wandered through the sub-tropical Achamore Gardens, home to Rhododendrons, Azaleas, eucalyptus and a variety of other exotic plants all kept alive in the winter by the tail end of the Gulf Stream. We explored the tumbled sandstone remains of a 13th century chapel, now filled with gravestones dating from the 18th century. We chatted with the proprietess of the local store which serves the island's hundred or so inhabitants. Even the overcast weather and another gale warning can't dampen our enthusiasm for these lovely islands.

Here's hoping summer has arrived and sailing has begun! Beth and Evans s/v Hawk