Roger Cox: Planning to surf the islands? Prepare for every eventuality (including a complete lack of surf)

1 As your ferry leaves Oban, listen carefully to the recorded safety announcement – not because you should be worried about the ship going down, but because you’ll get to hear the best pronunciation of the word “whistle” in the known universe. Doesn’t matter how eventful your drive to Oban was. Your trip hasn’t officially begun until you hear the CalMac announcer say, in lilting island tones, “in case of emergency, there will be several short blasts followed by one long blast on the ship’s hhhhhhhhhhhwissle.”

2 Bring a good selection of kit – all the boards you can safely strap onto the roof of your car – because you never know what the Atlantic’s going to throw at you. By all means bring your most futuristic-looking shortboard for the good days, but make sure you also have a big fat longboard handy for when it’s knee-high and dribbly.

3 Beware of sea monsters. Seriously. The great Barra storyteller John “The Coddy” MacPherson has a colourful tale of the time his father encountered a “tremendous beast” while fishing for lobster on the west side of the island. Initially the men thought the dark lumps they could see in the water were buoys attached to herring nets, but then they realised “some of the lumps were going down, and others going up, and that led them to understand it was a monster”. MacPherson Sr and his crew made for shore as quickly as they could and didn’t look back; if you find yourself in similar circumstances, be sure to do the same.

4 Try singing to the seals, if you see them bobbing alongside you in the surf. They seem to like it. Abbey Road-era Beatles songs, in particular, keep them coming back for more.

5 Be prepared to do a lot of driving. Conditions are constantly changing, and the best place to surf today might not be the best place to surf tomorrow.

6 And as Kanye West once said: drive slow homie. Petrol in the islands can clock in at around the £1.50 per litre mark, so living out your rally driver fantasies can be more expensive than burning banknotes. Dangerous too. A lot of the roads are twisty single-track with passing places and there are kamikaze sheep around every corner, just waiting to hurl themselves through the windscreens of unwary boy racers.

7 Don’t neglect the east coast of whichever island you happen to be on. Yes, your goal is to surf premium-quality Atlantic groundswell coming from the west, but waves sometimes do funny things. The beach at Crossapol on Tiree, for example, faces south-east, but it can sometimes be surfable in a howling south-westerly, when the west coast is a churning, unsurfable mess. Similarly, when on Lewis, if the swell’s coming from the north, don’t forget to check the spots just up the road from Stornoway before heading to the better-known surf zones on the other side of the island.

8 Travel in hope rather than expectation. Understand that there will be long, maddening flat spells and that the wind will blow in the wrong direction for days on end. Understand that, at such times, it will be necessary to find alternative activities in order to maintain your sanity. So go swimming, go running, go foraging for interesting bits of driftwood. Become expert at identifying varieties of orchid. Seek out the curry on Barra and the steak on Tiree. Climb the hills of Harris and go yomping on the Uists. Visit the stone circles of Lewis and wonder if they might have been intended as something Neolithic surfers did to kill time between swells.

11 Don’t turn your nose up at the small days. They might be the only days you’re going to get. At the same time, know your limits. If it’s looking big and stormy, consider that the currents out here can be ferocious and that it’s always bigger than it looks from the beach.

10 Maintain a state of constant readiness: boards on the roof rack, wetsuit packed, belly full and check the surf as often as possible. As soon as it gets good, hit the water and surf your eyeballs out. Pack in as much water time as you can, because you never know how long you’re going to have to wait for the next swell to hit … running … swimming … foraging for driftwood … fiddling about with orchids.