07:30 am

With the flat tops of the Waternish headland to the right & the scattering Harrissian coastline to the left you find your self inside a silent dawn vista, adrift with the wind, the swell gently slapping the foredeck; a million miles of sky overhead. The rapid slingshot current will carry you swiftly over 30 kilometres or reek havoc & drag you like a dog on a lead. I never tire of this paddle - nor tire of her ever changing moods, the familiar saline molar markers of Shiant & Trodday, the blinding wind whip, the rogue swell, the endless feeling of forward momentum the Cuan Canach gives to the kayaker resting on her skin like a pond-skater...balanced & delicate - eyes set on the horizon...

I then remembered I had stopped still in the open sea, & for no apparent reason MollyMac was in my heid. Molly is my pal Archies daughter. She's a stately 6 years old. She came sashaying through the door one afternoon not so long ago & put this question to Arch:

Da, if people are meant to be vegetarian...then why are animals made of meat?

:o)

I toured back & forth completing my 40th crossing..but i still giggled to myself constantly & pissed off the gulls & had still to explain it on dry land...to a bunch of Harris drunks, one ex SAS member the size of a rake who's never been out of MacLeods bar but swears he has, & 4 lost Germans. The old fellas will tell you he was never in the Sutherland Association of Sheep farmers but he could've been in the LDV - that's the Look Duck & Vanish brigade to you & me. Laughter often echoes out from here into the night, across the empty streets & out over the Cuan Canach when most sane people are sleeping soundly. I depart one island with a childs logic smiling in my head, only to arrive on the next to find a similar razor sharp wit & logic in the old fellas. Everyone is connected by an unseen thread. Why would you want to live out your days anywhere else...

Hurry up & take your time -as a wise old man once whispered