You’ll have gathered from the previous post that I was a tiny bit apprehensive about the Pentland Firth, and my attempt to reassure myself by visiting it by car had rather backfired. I was particularly haunted by this image from the John O’ Groats display: it is lifted straight out of the tidal atlas which I have on board, but I have never before seen a page of tides presented as a tourist attraction. I was mulling this over when I got back to the boat and found that someone had come in and tied up next to me. They introduced themselves: a brother and sister from Hartlepool, who had bought a Hunter Horizon a few years ago and were peering at Blue Moon with interest as they wanted to get something a bit bigger.
For the non-sailor: a Hunter Horizon is a 30-foot cruising boat from the ‘90s that is justifiably very popular: it is by all accounts roomy enough and stable enough to take a young family cruising yet fun to sail and cheap to buy. However, it was built by a firm called Hunter, who are also responsible for the Sonata, the Squib and worst of all the Ajax, each of which I have raced often enough to know that they have no redeeming features whatsoever, so I am afraid I have a tendency to step back from other Hunters in case I catch something nasty. I was proud of myself for hiding my distaste from my neighbours though, and said humouring things like “well regarded aren’t they?” and “quite nippy for the size,” neither of which is untrue. “Oh yes,” he replied enthusiastically, “we often sail past people and they think we have the engine on. We never do!”
The conversation moved on to the Pentland Firth, and they were keen to know my plans. Nervous of giving advice that I was unsure of myself, I told them my plans were based entirely on recommendations from the harbourmaster, and was planning to leave as he suggested a couple of hours before High Water. “Mind if we follow you?” he asked. My heart sank – they seemed like nice people and I didn’t want to lead them to their doom. Anyway, unlike racing when I shamelessly follow people better than me, I hate the idea of doing so when cruising as you never know the other party’s intentions, priorities, capabilities, pain thresholds or even destination. But “of course”, I said, gallantly. So I spent the evening double checking my passage plan, re-reading pilots and tide tables and scribbling notes to myself about when you were (for instance) supposed to head for the eddies to the southeast of Stroma but then come round to steer north-by-northeast to keep Duncansby Head open of 120 degrees to clear the race heading northwest. Yes, mainly Greek to me too.
The day dawned, as planned, thank you, with a very gentle southerly breeze and wall to wall sunshine. It was 0615, and I’d planned to set off at 0630. “We’re ready”, called a voice from next door. I explained I needed a cup of tea before letting go any lines and they politely waited while I made it, but it was drunk under way as I was already feeling the pressure. I’d always planned to cook breakfast en route and so I did, trying to ignore the Hunter following me. I put the mainsail up before frying any bacon; they followed suit. With the mainsail at least; I don’t know about their bacon.
I tried really hard to ignore them, but it was difficult. I’d followed instructions to be a mile off Dunnet Head (you remember, the most northerly point of mainland Britain) and so we both were, they about five minutes behind.
From then on it all became something of a blur: the channel between the island of Stroma and the mainland is no more than a couple of miles wide and full of rocks and eddies and as we were whisked through it the tide increased until it added a full eight knots to Blue Moon’s five and we were hurtling through at motorboat speeds.
I was very disconcerted by breaking waves where The Merry Men of Mey roost shouldn’t have been, and altered course to avoid them. The guys behind appeared to go straight through and my heart was in my mouth – would they blame me if they got hit by big waves, or worse? They seemed to survive, but now I began to worry about my own course even more. This was a shame as we were going past interesting places – the Castle of Mey, for instance, where the Queen Mother used to live and apparently now Charles and Camilla were having their summer holiday right there, and Stroma island which is right in the middle of this whirlpool of tide dotted with ruined cottages I hadn’t seen from the mainland., and of course John O’Groats itself. But I didn’t have time to take pictures, I was glued to the iPad making sure I wasn’t being swept sideways into a roost, and worrying about where my friends were. As if that wasn’t enough, a fast ferry suddenly appeared out of nowhere (out of Orkney, actually). Judging which side of you a fast ferry is going is surprisingly hard as they go so, well, fast. Adding in the extra eight knots of tide made it a challenge too far and I just hoped he had seen me. He had, and was probably turning that way anyway, but now I was worrying about the boat behind, still hidden behind Stroma. Had they seen each other? Really that was nothing to do with me but I still felt an awful responsibility.
No accident ensued, and I’d pulled ahead of them now, so I began to stop worrying and concentrate on the last task in hand: to avoid the legendary Boar of Duncansby. Even on such a calm day I could see a mile or more of nasty standing waves ahead, and well beyond where it was marked on the chart. I duly swung north to avoid them, but even then clipped the top end and spent ten minutes or so bouncing through small but choppy bits, glad I had made sure all the hatches were shut tight.
By 0915 it was all over and I’d covered the 14 miles from Dunnet Head in an hour and a half. I could have waited breakfast. I popped down below to put the kettle on for coffee and when I came back up I couldn’t believe my eyes – the Hunter had gone straight through the Duncansby Race. I could see them bouncing up and down as the tide hurled them out into the North Sea – right behind me! To my relief they were unscathed, but also undaunted as they first of all unrolled their genoa, then tacked, then started sailing higher and faster. I was speechless – they were clearly in much better breeze, but even so! Being overtaken by a Hunter Horizon! I looked around: there was no-one to witness this shocking embarrassment, but I couldn’t live with my own shame. The coffee went cold as I tweaked every string I could find, stood Raymond down and assumed a position of extreme concentration on the helm. Still they chuntered over me, drew ahead and continued accelerating. Gradually the breeze came down to me, we picked up speed and I slowly started to reel them in. We were sailing quite close now to some jagged cliffs but it was obvious that they meant business, no sign of them putting the engine on to get clear of them. I followed and as we made it to the first bay south the breeze began to die; this time I was to seaward and began to sail over the top of them.
Immediately they tacked! I couldn’t believe it – just round one of the most feared headlands in the UK and they were match racing me in a dying breeze just to windward of some nasty rocks!
I considered tacking right on their wind (non-sailors: a standard defensive move) but realised I couldn’t, we weren’t actually racing and what would the lifeboat say if I slowed them down so much that they ended up on the rocks? I carried on into the rocks myself, tacked out and found they’d already tacked back. They were taking this very seriously, but now I was enjoying myself and even though we were only doing 3-4 knots in 5-6 knots of breeze the sun was out, we hadn’t drowned in the Pentland Firth and there was no deadline to get to Wick, which was probably going to be horrible anyway. So we carried on, short tacking down the Caithness cliffs, in and out of little bays. I’m relieved to say that after their initial success it was all going my way, and as the breeze filled in again I was lifted into broad Sinclair’s Bay with remote ruined castles dotted around a gorgeous but of course totally empty sandy beach, while behind me they seemed to be tacking in desperation and getting ever further behind. I couldn’t believe I was stuck in racing mode up here in the desolate far north: in the hopes of picking up a shift off the land I found myself tacking up the beach past two extraordinary castles, one clearly ruined and adding to the sense of desolation:
Sure enough, the breeze headed and I patted myself on the back as we tacked onto a 20 degree lift up to Noss Head lighthouse, while behind me the Hunter disappeared into a rain cloud as my final chance to gloat. He was still the other side of the bay, and I had restored my pride.
Then the heavens opened on me too, as if to punish me for such cockiness, and the wind died. I tried short tacking off the lighthouse but it was clearly very nasty and rocky, the tide had turned and it was well into the afternoon. I reluctantly reached for the starter button and motored the remaining three miles into Wick.
Wick turns out not to be horrible at all: the harbourmaster insists on guiding you in on VHF, coming down to the pontoon to meet you and show you round, and I fell to chatting with the people next door before another cloudburst. I tidied up, made some more coffee and headed up to the office to pay. The Hunter was just tying up, a full hour and a half behind me. The brother jumped ashore to greet me while his sister appeared to glare. “Wasn’t that fun!” he exclaimed. “You absolutely had us there, though.” I don’t know,” I tried to remain modest, mindful of the rainy punishment that awaited braggarts, “you were fairly smoking to start with.” “Oh, that,” he said. “We had the engine on.”
I hadn’t been looking forward to Wick, it being so very far north and allegedly rather industrial, but the warmth of the welcome was quite something – rather like Stornoway, I thought, when you are this far north you welcome everyone warmly as they need it, and pretty much every passer-by said hello. Again like Stornoway, although a tiny town it is a capital (of Caithness) and acts like it: there is a full sized Tesco and what passes for a high street. Ian the harbourmaster explained that it was Gala Week and I shouldn’t miss the fireworks, he also had telepathic powers as he mentioned that the Old Pulteney Distillery was just up the road in case I was interested. I thought I deserved a trophy for such a demanding yet successful piece of yacht racing and took myself off there. “It’s Gala Week!” said both of the men employed in the shop to upsell tourists to over-priced limited edition bottlings, “don’t miss the fireworks!”.
So after supper I took myself off to an experience not quite as special as the folk festival in Stornoway but every bit as remote and local: I am sure every resident of Wick and most of the surrounding countryside had packed themselves into a field by the river where there was a funfair, a massive bonfire and a firework display that I would happily have paid £20 to see on Muswell Hill.
I pottered back to the boat past bars that were clearly just beginning the end of Gala Week and poured myself a glass of Old Pulteney. If it hadn’t been so far north and consequently very cold I would have sat in the cockpit reflecting on successfully rounding two Great Capes in sunshine, with the tide, in less than five knots of wind. Beating two cruising sailors in a smaller, slower boat, who weren’t even racing, was just the icing on the cake.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
Leave a comment