West coast of Scotland - is it cruising friendly?

Quandary said:
Did you not know that they tried that on nearly every river in Scotland, fish are not easy to train. Round here many of the cages contain halibut, enormous fish that command an enormous price.
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Experts know the life cycle of pretty much every fish and I feel sure they could be fished in their natural habitat, having increased numbers by breeding young fish before release.
I guess you are another who cares little about the horrible lives in captivity of these poor animals.
 
mainsail1 said:
Yes, Loch Torridon for a start.
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Loch Torridon is very large and I know it's not blocked by fish farms, would you supply more details? There may be a case that can be presented if they are blocking historical anchorages.

A quick look at Google Maps, Satellite view suggests that all the popular anchorages are still free.
 
mainsail1 said:
Experts know the life cycle of pretty much every fish and I feel sure they could be fished in their natural habitat, having increased numbers by breeding young fish before release.
I guess you are another who cares little about the horrible lives in captivity of these poor animals.
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There are salmon hatcheries in Alaska which operate in the way that you suggest. A different species of salmon obviously. The fishery is very regulated, and a levy from every fish caught goes back to the hatcheries. So yes, in theory it can be done, but presumably the industry has determined that in Scottish, Norwegian, and Chilean waters, cages give a better return.

In answer to your second point, no, I don't feel anything for the caged salmon, or for sheep or cattle on the hill. Should I, and what's that to do with sailing on the glorious West Coast?
 
South side, upper loch Torridon, October 2018. We anchored on the North side but our original plan was to anchor in one of the nice little anchorages over hill from Sheildaig.
 
mainsail1 said:
Experts know the life cycle of pretty much every fish and I feel sure they could be fished in their natural habitat, having increased numbers by breeding young fish before release.
I guess you are another who cares little about the horrible lives in captivity of these poor animals.
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Yep,you got it, I am a hypocrite, gorging on salmon every week these days and pleased it is so cheap, when I was a kid my brother the angler only managed to wrestle one out of the river about once in two years. It is the farmed mussels I should really feel sorry for, clinging on to a piece of rope for the whole of their life and haviing to eat anything that passes, the salmon have it much better, get to swim around the cage as much as they like, hang out with their mates and food brought to them every day.
 
mainsail1 said:
South side, upper loch Torridon, October 2018. We anchored on the North side but our original plan was to anchor in one of the nice little anchorages over hill from Sheildaig.
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They are mussel farms and they do stretch right across the loch in multiple rows blocking access to an anchorage. Chart 2210 Approaches to the Inner Sound shows dashed lines right across the mouth of the two small inlets with the mussel farms. The dashed line means "maritime limit in general, usually implying permanent physical obstructions" (Section N Chart 5011). It looks like they have a right to block off the area assuming the chart information is a reflection of that right.

For reference when others come across this thread, Map of Fishfarms, posted on another thread http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthrea...tes-in-Scotland-(Fish-Farms-Mussel-Farms-etc)
 
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mainsail1 said:
Nope, it was a fish farm.
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Okay, but it looks like a mussel farm, in 4 rows stretched across the loch in Google Earth Satellite view, also it is stated as a shell fish site on the Aqua Culture map. Perhaps this data is old and they have been replaced by fish farms, you were there, I was not. The Loch Spelve Mussel Farms also look similar to fish farms, in some aspects.
 
mainsail1 said:
Nope, it was a fish farm.
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I think we have to accept that there will always be some limits as to where we can anchor. I've been at it a long time now, and can think of places where we used to anchor, and are now full of moorings for boats. It's not something to complain about, it just means that people are living there, and some of them have boats. Surely it's the same with fish farms, unless you think you have some God given precedence over local people. Come on, there is no shortage of good anchorages.

If the places that you are thinking of in Upper Loch Torridon, are Ob Gorm Mor and Ob Gorm Beag, they have had mussel ropes for at least 40 years. My recollection is that OBG is pretty much blocked, but OGM you can get in past the east side of the lines into a nice pool. The lines seldom completely block all access, - after all, the people harvesting the lines have to be able to get their boats in and out. Anyway, even if you can't access the inner parts of a particular bay in Loch Torridon, it's not exactly short of other options.
 
dunedin said:
As BoB says there are quite a few anchorages catering for deeper boats. But equally there are a lot of lovely places where you will unfortunately have to miss. And don’t assume all visitor moorings will be deep enough for a boat over 2m.
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Most will, but there are some at Ardminish and also at Craighouse which probably won't...
 
Lon nan Gruagach said:
The offers of local jobs have (at the Muck site) not actually ended up providing employment for original locals, but some that have moved in to work there. Could be good, small communities can usually benefit from growth.
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On a vaguely related note, a lot has been made of employment opportunities building wind farms in Galloway. A year ago I met the team putting up one local farm. Very nice people, and ever one of them was Filipino.
 
JumbleDuck said:
Pretty accurate, though. Almost any settlement in the islands is surrounded by a blight of abandoned machinery, vehicles and domestic appliances. I'm surprised that little of it seemed to go during the scrap iron boom a few years ago, but perhaps RET will make it worthwhile in future for some enterprising scrap dealer to go on tour.
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After 58 years living in the West of Scotland and I guess 40 years boating, I really cant recall seeing a scrap car lying abandoned on a beach or anywhere visible from a boat. Same goes for domestic appliances. There are obviously tidal inlets in the odd place that seems to gather some odd bits and bobs of domestic plastic rubbish and fishing boat rubbish, but that's about it. That's bad enough, but cars, machinery, washing machines and the like??? I can honestly say I have never seen anything like that.

I have observed abandoned farm machinery quite often in the Western isles and similar islands. It seems farmers are very good at being messy for some reason, but they keep their mess inland and usually around their own farm land.

Maybe I need to visit Specsavers, as I just don't see the so called mess around Scottish coastline that some have mentioned. Not even in the Clyde.
 
I was so horrified by the debris discarded in the outer isles (and some inner isles) that I asked a local if the council had stopped providing refuse services. He said that the cost of proper disposal of bulky items, such as washing machines and cars , was too expensive as they had to go to the mainland and so they were "just dumped in a corner away from the house".
By the way, we are talking about the country/hillsides, not he actual beach.
 
dunedin said:
As BoB says there are quite a few anchorages catering for deeper boats. But equally there are a lot of lovely places where you will unfortunately have to miss. And don’t assume all visitor moorings will be deep enough for a boat over 2m.
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Thanks. I would not pick up a visitor's mooring, as one doubts whether the people who laid it had 22 ton heffalumps in mind, so its anchor unless the buoy has a suitable weight written on it.
 
mainsail1 said:
I was so horrified by the debris discarded in the outer isles (and some inner isles) that I asked a local if the council had stopped providing refuse services. He said that the cost of proper disposal of bulky items, such as washing machines and cars , was too expensive as they had to go to the mainland and so they were "just dumped in a corner away from the house".
By the way, we are talking about the country/hillsides, not he actual beach.
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That's my observation of quite a few places North and West of Kintyre. Not universal, some places are maintained tidily. Others have dead cars, freezers, old tractors littered around their properties. Actual beaches are not common dumping grounds...
 
asteven221 said:
After 58 years living in the West of Scotland and I guess 40 years boating, I really cant recall seeing a scrap car lying abandoned on a beach or anywhere visible from a boat. Same goes for domestic appliances. There are obviously tidal inlets in the odd place that seems to gather some odd bits and bobs of domestic plastic rubbish and fishing boat rubbish, but that's about it. That's bad enough, but cars, machinery, washing machines and the like??? I can honestly say I have never seen anything like that.
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Me neither, which is why I wrote "Almost any settlement in the islands is surrounded ..." and not "Almost every beach in the islands is covered ..."
 
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