An abandoned assault on the Scottish Islands Peaks Record Written on May 17, 2009, by andys.

The Scottish Islands Peaks Race (SIPR for short) starts in Oban, a small town on the west coast of Scotland. To kick off with, pairs of runners complete a short fell race around the hills behind Oban. The two runners then join the rest of their teams and sail off to Mull, Jura and Arran competing mountain runs on each of these three islands in turn.

sailing out of Mull with 40 boats in hot pursuit

My brother Joe and I cruised around the first run in just over 26 minutes, jumped into the dingy, joined our three sailors and sailed out of Oban harbour with about a two minute lead on the chasing teams.

The sail to Mull was fast. It was MEGA windy. Luckily, once back on land, it turned out to be relatively dry underfoot, the wind wasn’t too much of a hindrance and consequently Joe and I managed a fast run up and over the munro of Ben More (3hrs18’) and shaved a sizeable seven minutes off the record set by Jebby and Rigby back in 2000.

Back on the boat and off to Jura. The Mull to Jura sail is a considerably longer leg than the first sail. The wind dropped a couple of times in the night, which to be honest we weren’t going to complain about, as it meant we arrived at 630am on Saturday morning at Craighouse, on the south-east side of the island. We had feared landing slap bang in the middle of the night and didn’t fancy tackling this rough route with headtorches.

Happy to be running in the light, we headed out along the short stretch of road and up onto the mountain. The “Paps” (cone-shaped hills of Jura) were unfortunately immersed in a thick blanket of cloud. This together with wet rock and some very hairy scree descending meant that even with a solid run and no nav errors we could only manage 3 hours 22, about 18 minutes shy of the record for that particular leg.

Joe out on deck

And we were off on the boat again in the knowledge that although we’d been a little slower than we’d hoped for on Jura, a record run on Arran of 2hours54 would secure us the nineteen year old record for the “King of the Bens” – the total amalgamated time for the three island runs. It was definitely feasible. Given how easy we felt on Mull there was no doubt that taking a mere 8 minutes of the time we’d done in 2006 on Arran would not be out of the question. What was out of the question, however, was arriving on Arran in the first place.

We’d left Craighouse at 1030am, sailed at a storming pace down the west side of the Mull of Kintyre, but by 5pm the tides had turned, literally. We were battling into a gale force 8 head-wind with the tide doing its utmost to drive us in the opposite direction to that which we were headed. After five hours of persistence, one very sick sailor, and many tacks west and east between the Mull and Northern Island, we’d got absolutely nowhere, in fact we’d gone backwards. The towel was thrown in. There was no way our sailors could carry on like this, the two of them hadn’t slept for over 36hours and the third of the three was busy spewing into our soup pan. It was grim. Imagine crawling into a washing machine, putting it on “fast spin”, seeking out a friendly yak and requesting that he sporadically butts, with all the force he can muster, the side of the kitchen appliance with the top of his head. Then imagine crawling inside, putting your head down and “recovering” ready for the next run. It was not a lot of fun for any of us. To make things worse the boat had flooded and more or less all of our gear was now drenched with salt water.

Andy enjoying a green Thai chicken curry on board Calypso, before disaster struck...

We made the obligatory call to the race organisers, were informed that we were the 20th boat to call it a day (out of approx 40) and returned northwards for an anchorage and a bit of relatively stationary kip.

That’s three times I’ve attempted the SIPR now and with one completion in 2006 (when I was much less fit) and one cancellation in 2007 due to a dingy capsize in even worse conditions, it was sad to once again not be able to get around this challenging course, especially being so close to the record.

But who knows I may forget the body trashing and grimness of it all and give it another shot one day… maybe…

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