walking through the pontoons I like to look at the boat names and ponder on the thinking of the person who named it. There is considerable thought that goes into this as people who've done it have testified. I think this one just has to be owned by a dentist.
Joan and Joe saw me off from the marina this morning when I left at 8.00. Joe took a photo and said he would email it to me. I was expecting southerly winds but they didn't arrive until later in the day so I mostly motored to Findhorn, which is about 24nm east of Inverness.The sea was dead flat calm and it rained for most of the way. It was not as bleak as it sounds because there was quite a bit to see, apart from when i could see virtually nothing at all.The radio was talking about the rest of the county having to cope with temperatures in the 30s and my thermometer was saying 14.5 degrees!
As you reach the Inverness harbour limits the Inverness Firth narrows between Chanory Ness and Fort George. Its an impressively large fort with not much showing above its steep walls other than the roofs of the buildings within.
Just beyond the fort is White Ness Sand and I counted 88 seals hauled out on the sand bank. There were also several in the water. As always they were curious but kept their distance.Heavy rain always seems to have a flattening effect on the sea and each rain drop seemed to bounce on the surface. I was listening to radio Scotland through my earphones off my smart phone at the time.It was a programme called Out of Doors and they were visiting less visited areas of Scotland.They were in Fife, which is an area I will be going through. What was strange though was that they were in hail off Bass Rock and so I had the sound of hard rain in my ear phones whilst it was pelting down around me-a strange sensation.
The rain slowly cleared and the sea remained flat. It is difficult to get a sense of movement in those conditions if you do not look backwards to see the wake. The sea is more like sheet metal foil than water. The sea birds are very conspicuous as well and there were now razorbills as well as the guillemots and gannets.Razorbills are a bit smaller than guillemots and their bills look like they have been designed by a graphics artist. It feeds on small fish especially sand eels.Feeding frenzy flocks of sea birds tend to form around shoals of sand-eels. I know that whales can also be seen when such commotion is going on. In such stillness I hoped to see the fins of dolphins, but not today. It was also far too shallow for whales
I had asked my sister if there was anyone who she knew at Findhorn who might show me around. Susan and Crawford had kindly taken up the challenge and they phoned me as I was finding my way in. Findhorn has a very shallow entrance which dries in Spring tides. Fortunately it was neaps but I was arriving at nearly low water. the minimum I saw was 1.4m. The size of the seal colony here dwarfed the one I'd seen earlier.
They have recently built some pontoons next to the Captain's table restaurant, and someone moved a small rib so I could get on to it.
Susan and Crawford met me there for coffee and then took me on a quick tour of the village, the Findhorn Foundation, the nearby town of Forres and up to Califer Hill for a panoramic view of the Moray Firth. The view of the Findhorn harbour showed what a small and shallow place it is.
My sister and Joan and Joe all said they would be interested to hear what I have to say about Findhorn, so I am going to spend some time tomorrow coming to an opinion. It's a bit like the alternative side of Totnes at first impressions. But I'm going to need to be more considered than that. Joan and I had both heard Satish Kumar talking about the Big Society on radio 4 and how Cameron's ideas compared with Shumaker's. They gave a clip of Shumaker speaking at Findorn, so there are more than superficial connections between Totnes/Dartingto and Findhorn.
Susan and Crawford invited me to dinner and I benefited from their long association with the Foundation. Crawford had come here about 20 years ago.He became disillusioned with the place within 3 months. He now considers himself to be a dispassionate observer. He has has been moved by the magical but fleeting moments when people have come together and created incredible atmospheres but he has also seen the sleazy sexual predation on naive and vulnerable women and the blatant commercialisation. I think I got a both ends of the spectrum view from the 2 of them.
Their recent story is that a couple of years ago they had sold up everything and loaded it into a van to drive to the Sierra Nevada in Spain to make a rock cave home that some people seem to be doing out there. A tyre burst on the motorway and their possessions were strewn all over. They escaped without physical harm but it has taken until now to recover from the experience. Prior to the accident Crawford had told Susan that he had dreaded something like this happening. You may call this a premonition or say that his fears created the situation. Alternatively, it may have just been an accident and a coincidental set of thoughts. However, having had the worst of your fears realised but escaped then everything is up from there. They are happy and back in their rented house. She is a ghost writer for a food/health/natural cosmetics producer. He helps make bio fuel from spent chip oil and has not been to a filling station in 6 years.It was a great evening and I cycled back into a glorious sunset at 10.30 pondering on the nature of spiritualism.
Susan had said that she saw an openness and sparkle in my eyes that probabaly comes from being on the sea and being with nature.She had obviously not met me before so had no idea what I might look like normally. However, perhaps the " tranaformational self discovery" that Findhorn promotes is not found by something you go somewhere to gain, but it is something which you find when you strip away the stuff that gets in the way of our essential natures. Certainly, sailing and being on the sea and just looking and not thinking much beyond the immediate is a de-shackling experience and perhaps enables you to be more of who you really are. This may be a bit early in the trip to be philosophising like this and I should welcome comments from those who are following my ramblings. Somene tell me if I'm losing the plot please,
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