Few people have been to St Kilda, the isolated archipelago in the North Atlantic that marks the end of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. Next stop, America, and St Kilda’s exposed location — it can be lashed by heavy seas and gales at a moment’s notice — serves as a barrier to all but the most intrepid of yachtsmen. Respect, then, to Kirsty Macpherson, a partner with Edinburgh practice Gillespie Macandrew, who is one of a select minority in successfully skippering a yacht to St Kilda.

Not that it was easy for the lifelong sailing enthusiast. “I’d tried to get there a few times previously,” says the commercial property specialist, “but the weather can play havoc and we had to turn back.” On her fourth attempt, as the skipper of a 39-foot Beneteau boat chartered for the trip, she got lucky with the conditions.

The effort was, she says, well worth it. “It was incredible to see St Kilda rising out of the mist as we arrived. We saw dolphins on the journey and the most beautiful sunset. We travelled overnight and moored in Village Bay, which meant we could go exploring for the day. It was very special.”

Macpherson has been sailing so long that she can’t remember when she first stood on deck. “Throughout my childhood, we sailed as a family off the west coast of Scotland,” she recalls. “I think I was only six months old when I was first on a boat.” Later, Macpherson gravitated to skiing while studying history at the University of New Hampshire (becoming a member of the Scottish ski team), but resumed her love affair with the ocean in her mid-20s, by which time she had returned to Scotland to complete a degree in law at Aberdeen University.

“I did a lot of sailing then in my hometown of Inverness,” she says. Much of this entailed working with children from disadvantaged backgrounds, whom she took sailing on a 70-foot ketch under the auspices of the Ocean Youth Trust.

“It was hard work,” Macpherson admits, “but they tended to stop being cheeky when they got seasick.” She also sailed with children suffering from serious illnesses, who were being treated at York Hill Hospital in Glasgow. “It was very rewarding taking these kids sailing. It was nice to feel that you’re giving something to people less fortunate then yourself.”

Macpherson also found time, at the outset of her legal career, to spend a month working as one of the crew on a square rigger in Canada. “It was completely different to the sailing I was used to,” she says, “I had to learn fast.”

Nowadays, work as partner in a law firm means that everyday recreational sailing isn’t an option, so she looks forward to a couple of major trips each summer, returning to her family’s happy hunting ground of the west coast of Scotland. “It’s so beautiful there,” she says, with her thoughts turning to a trip next summer from Ullapool along the dramatic Sutherland coastline.

Macpherson says that sailing does act as a form of stress relief from the demands of her job, but believes there are parallels between sailing and the law. Indeed, she goes so far as to say that sailing is “almost an extension of what I do at work. Both law and sailing involve team-work and strategy. I’m responsible for the safety of my crew and must set co-ordinates for the trip, including alternative routes and contingency plans in the event of bad weather. Time management (judging the tides) and people management are both — as in the law — crucial.”

But there is a difference. “When you’re crossing the Minch [the notoriously treacherous straight separating the Inner and Outer Hebrides] you’ve got to have a back-up plan if things go wrong. Again, this is analogous to legal practice. But you’re dealing with purely practical things, not paper. It’s real life happening in fresh air, under the open skies.”

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