In any event, we decided to leave Oban after 3 days. On Monday the 4th we went ashore and took the ferry to town in the morning for last-minute supplies, and at 12:47 we dropped the mooring and headed up Loch Linnhe toward Corpach, where the Caledonian Canal begins, a trip of some 30 miles.

Oban is behind (and sheltered by) the Island of Mull, but Loch Linnhe is a long deep gash running northeast into the heart of the highlands. About 2/3 of the way along, the loch narrows briefly to about 150 yards, the "Corran Narrows." Here there is a ferry going back and forth, and of course the tide runs through at a pretty good rate.

The tide was against us as it happened, but was not a strong as it was reputed to be, and we passed through fine, with a slight delay caused by waiting for the ferry to cross our bows.

We passed the Fort William waterfront by, however, and continued on to the tiny town of Corpach, where the canal begins. Right around 16:30 we negotiated the turn into the first lock (of 29), the Corpach Sea Lock, and by 16:35 were secured and shut down the engine.

A couple of smaller sailboats joined us in the lock, and soon the gates closed behind us and we started to rise. The lift here is only 6 feet, but the highest part of the canal is 106 feet above sea level.

The construction of the Caledonian Canal was started in the very early 19th century, both as a way of providing work for some of the many displaced crofters, forced off their farms in the infamous "clearances," and to provide an alternate route for sailing ships that avoided the stormy and tumultuous Pentland Firth between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands.

It was designed by a Scottish civil engineer named Thomas Telford, who seems to have designed everything else in Britain as well. It was opened in 1822, but was never as profitable as had been hoped. Commercial ships were getting bigger, and even though the locks are 170 feet long, the canal is only 15 feet deep, so too small for some of the newer steel ships.

After our first night in the canal we moved immediately (at 8:00 in the morning) into the first of the eight locks that make up "Neptune's Staircase." Here one moves from one lock immediately into the next, rising 8 feet in each lock, or 64 feet total.

In our group, along with some not-very-interesting sailboats, were Gaelic Rose, a converted fishing boat from Wick, of all places, that Dougie remembered from her fishing days, and Pride of Mother Sea, a ketch from the Netherlands that specializes in taking passengers on distillery cruises in Western Scotland. Gaelic Rose is now being run by a family who take groups on diving expeditions.

Nowdays the lock gates are opened and closed by hydraulic rams, but at first they operated by chains that ran through holes in the lock walls to capstans with places for 8 bars, that were walked around by workmen.

It took us 2-1/2 hours to get through the eight locks, and then we had a break of a few miles until we came to an (open) bridge and Gairlochy Lock. We were busy enough in this "reach," as the stretches of canal between locks are called, that we did not even notice the four aqueducts we passed over.

At Gairlochy, we had to wait for maybe 25 minutes because the lock was being used by a boat coming the other way, but soon we were through the lock and out into Loch Lochy, which sounds like a redundant name.

As we came out of the loch into another canal section, we came almost immediately to the Laggan Lock, and fortunately we were able to go right into it, although we did have to wait for a few other boats to load.

One very interesting boat followed us in the next locking or so and tied up ahead of us (we had already seen her in Oban): the Baltic Ketch Kommandøren, now converted to a yacht and serving as the flagship for a shipping company.

The next morning there was no point in getting an early start, since the Laggan Bridge was not allowed to open during rush hour, and in any case there was a large group of boats headed west coming through the next "staircase," at Fort Augustus. So we set off at 08:30, ran through the bridge and narrow Loch Oich, which is really more like a river, with lots of channel markers, and through the lock at Cullochy with no delays.

Here we had to wait at the jetty "reserved for large craft" for about an hour while the west-bound group of boats (including a Dutch barge turned into a cruise ship) completed their ascent through the five locks.

Barbara took advantage of the wait to do a little shopping in the town, promising to catch up with us at one of the locks. She found the provisions she needed, and also stopped at a bake sale and bought a homemade "caraway cake" that turned out to be what we would call a pound-cake with caraway seeds in it. It was delicious.

Descending seems to be faster than ascending through locks, perhaps because the keepers can open the water gates wider when there is no boat in the lower basin, and we were secured in the first lock at 11:58 and ready to leave the last (fifth) lock at 12:50.

We did not see "Nessie," but the loch is spectacular, with steeply sloping banks. The whole Great Glen is a fault line, and Loch Ness is 600+ feet deep in places, with deep water right up to the shores.

Near the eastern end are the ruins of huge Urquhart Castle, and one of our chores was to dodge the tour boats and bare-boat chartered motorboats coming out to visit the site. The canal is full of these small "hire-cruisers," as they are called. There are two or three companies that rent them, and they seem to be very popular. We could see that it would make a great family vacation, chugging along the canal and stopping here or there for walks or other activities. With our Caribbean experiences, we worried a little about their skills, but they generally seemed to manage all right.

Fifteen minutes later we were tied up at the head of the Muirtown flight of locks, the last big set of locks on the eastern end of the canal. We inquired our way to a pub and found that it was run by a retired Army captain who was very good company and interested in our boat and voyage.

The next morning, we started up at 08:30 and slid into the first of the Muirtown Locks. By 9:42 we were on our way again, but fifteen minutes later we were alongside in the Clachnaharry Works Lock, followed by our friends in Pride of Mother Sea and a couple of small sailboats. The railroad bridge right after the lock was open when we were ready to leave, and the lock keeper urged us to hurry, since a train was due, and the bridge would close soon.

We made it through, as did several of the following boats, and at 10:19 were stopped in the sea lock, the last barrier before Moray Firth and the North Sea.

Leaving the lock was a little complicated, as there was a workboat broken down in the approach from the sea side, and the tide was running very strongly, but we made it out without incident.

Moray Firth is quite wide, but full of sandbanks, so the course to sea is fairly involved, but with the tide behind us we covered it quickly, at 9 to 10 knots since leaving the lock.

Our course to Wick led generally northeast, past Cromarty, past Tarbat Ness, past the old lighthouse at Clyth Ness. At Clyth Ness we diverted from the direct course to pass nearer the coast at Lybster so that Dougie's family could see us from their house.

The harbor is in a river mouth but entirely man-made, designed, of course, by Thomas Telford. The entrance involves negotiating over-lapping breakwaters and requires some sharp turns, but once inside it is very quiet.

When we arrived we noticed several wind turbine blades stacked in various places around the harbor, and while we were there a smallish (100 meter) ship came in and unloaded the components for some windmill towers.

He counted his lobsters out into a form of car that was new to us; plastic tubs with holes in them that hang from the quayside by ropes. A net with a drawstring to purse it up closes the top of the tub, and of course the rope has to be long enough to allow for the 12- to 13-foot tides. Once we noticed these in Lybster, we saw them everywhere.

We went inland from Lybster to visit some neolithic cairns, elaborate piles of stones about 5,000 years old. These are ancient burial sites, and Barbara crept in to explore the insides.

The entrance-way is very low, and one has to crawl in, but then the roof rises and one can stand in a little chamber with two big unshaped standing stones left and right to mark the doorway. Through the doorway there is a high, suddenly bright, chamber with a hole in the roof for light, and three big flat stones erect lining the walls. Here is where most of the ancient skeletons were found; apparently the hope was that one went from death into light.

There are peat bogs all over this area, and some energetic people still cut peat out by hand and stack squares of it to dry. Most people have given the practice up, however, because it is such hard work, and because other alternatives (particularly oil or gas) are now available.

The food was unexpectedly good; I had a dish of hummus with a hot flat bread, and it turns out that the owner (or at least the cook) comes from Malta, which maybe explains the mixture of Levantine and Italian cooking.

We were well-stuffed when Dougie took us back to the boat.

We were a little puzzled by the uniform series of buildings on our side of the harbor, but the simple explanation is that an earl named Pulteney commissioned Thomas Telford (who else) to design what we might call a development called "Pulteneytown" on the south shore of the river to house workers who arrived to work in the herring boom of the 19th century.

A highlight of our stay was an invitation by Tony Sinclair, of the Wick Heritage Center, to have a look around their museum-ship, the restored fishing boat Isabella Fortuna. She has a dipping-lug rig and an elegant old Kelvin engine, that Tony started up and ran briefly for us.