Scotland to Isle of Man crossing & return

We have just completed a fantastic adventure kayaking from the Isle of Man to Scotland , and back!

We have been wanting to paddle this crossing for a couple of years now, but with full time jobs and the UK's unpredictable weather we just hadn't found the right two days.

We got home last Thursday night around midnight after an evening's multipitch climb, in an excitable mood with adrenaline still pumping through our veins...... we instantly decided the next 2 days would be perfect for the crossing! Rummaging around the house we found the tidal charts for the Irish sea, wiped the dust off and set to planning! It quickly became obvious, that as we are on a full spring tide, this crossing would be doubly as hard as it looked on the paper! Oh well... our minds were still set!!

Managing to convince our boss at our outdoor center for the afternoon off work, we got away at lunchtime, quickly strapped the kayaks to the roof and off to Scotland we went! At

5.45pm, exactly on schedule we were paddling into the sea on our set bearings. The settled large high pressure system over the UK gave fine conditions and the Isle of Man was clearly visible the entire journey.

We kept up a good pace, stopping for only 3-5minutes every hour to eat and change bearings. Due to the fact it was a full spring tide, there were times we barely made any distance .... we were paddling on a bearing of 270degrees (basically due west) against a 3knot easterly tide in the middle of the sea for 2 hours. However, the sheer beauty of the sea that evening took our breaths away and we were able to keep positive! After the full flow of the tide had passed we soon started to make distance again.

We stopped for 5minutes to watch the sunset over the still as glass irish sea, at the same time porpoises were swimming all around our boats and jumping out the sea ..... an absolutley amazing moment neither of us will forget.

With it being a new moon, it soon got dark out at sea, and all we

could see the flashing of the point of ayre lighthouse, reassuring us we had done our tidal planning correct and we were still on track! At 12.30 we finally reached land, right at the top of the point of ayre! Our tidal planning had been 100% spot on, happy days! We dragged our kayaks up the beach.... suddenly realized 7 hours of continuous paddling had left us very tired ... and quickly fell asleep under the stars.

The next morning the weather forecast warned us of an approaching low pressure system with northwesterly winds of up to force 5 that would be with us later that day.

We had two options, one was to leave at around 11am and have less tidal flows, and could paddle quickly to miss the strong flows at the end. Or to leave early at 7.30am , and battle the strong tidal flows both at the point of ayre and the middle of the crossing. We decided to leave early, battle the strong tidal currents ... meaning despite harder work we should arrive back in Scotland earlier ... hopefully before the winds picked up!

Launching on the sea at 7.30am with a 3knot tidal race was slightly demoralizing, meaning we had to put a lot of effort in to slowly ferry away from the Point of Ayre, only gradually making distance. Visibility was poor at sea and it didn't take long for the Isle of Man to disappear into the haze of the sea. With no land in sight, just the haze of the sea, it was impossible to tell where we were .... we just had to trust our planning!

By 2.30pm, according to the plan we should have been 3/4 across the sea to Scotland and were once again ferry gliding across strong tides. After staring endlessly at the hazy horizon, we finally got just a glimpse of the outline of Scotland, although it was still a few hours away it was an exciting moment!!

Looking over to the west we could see the front coming in, an ominous line of grey cloud

was slowly closing in on us. As predicted, the sea turned from still to slightly choppy, then we felt the winds pick up, and next thing we knew HEAVY RAIN! It was amazing to see how quick the conditions at sea could change, from completely calm to this!

Anyway, we weren't too far away form this point, and just altered our paddling angle slightly to paddle in towards the cliffs to gain shelter from the wind in case it picked up much more. We reached the cliffs in the bad weather, followed them up the coast, rockhopping through some of its interesting features. Finally, we paddled the last 500 meters with the rain hammering down and the wind directly in our faces, and finally landed our boats.... precisely 24 hours after we started!!!

What a great adventure!