4 Kidneys and a Wonky Leg

We started the day with a delay. Having been to fill up on fuel first thing, we went to the transit pontoon to await the opening of the swing bridge and our first locking of the day. Only when we called in, they were ushering several boats through the sea lock behind us, one of which was joining us going through the Muirtown flight.

There was a delay of about an hour, so we didn’t get started till about 10:30. With just two boats going through it was a fairly quick job and we were soon off down the canal at the statutory 4 knots, where I got a cracking photo of a heron on the bank as we went past.

A couple more swing bridges and a final lock before the canal gives way to Loch Dochfour. This is less than a mile long and goes narrow and shallow before opening out into… Loch Ness and what a sight that is! Long and straight bounded on each side by forests and mountains.

We could have sailed but we just wanted to soak up the scenery and so motored.

We happened to be monitoring the the depth as this is the deepest water Watanga has sailed in. At 182m the depth gauge sudden started flashing and showed rapidly shallowing water, within seconds it was at just 4.9 metres!

We quickly turned toward the centre of the Loch, even though we were a quarter mile from the bank. I checked the charts, it should be around 18O metres, a flat muddy bottom, 1000 ‘s of years of sediment. The gauge settled again at 182 metres so we resumed our course. Almost immediately the bottom apparently reared up again, this time to about 7metres. Was the depth guage on the blink or was it Nessie? After about 5 minutes everything settled again and we continued on to Urquhart bay where we anchored in the shadow of Urquhart castle to spend the night.

What had just happened? It’s food for thought.