I really shouldn’t do that tenterhooks thing, not only is it a bit unfair on the reader but it sets expectations that the next post will be truly thrilling and even more likely to impress multiple awards juries than the last, and in this case (as in every other case) it really isn’t. I hope nobody has called the Coastguard to say that someone writing a blog had intimated that something had gone wrong and they haven’t been heard from for 24 hours. But then I did mention that I was sitting in the library at Kirkwall so any Coastguard or Lifeboatman worth their salt would have spotted the unlikelihood that I needed rescuing from there, especially since I had gone in to get out of the rain and the librarians had welcomed me as if it was a club of which I was an esteemed member and offered me a range of desks with varying degrees of quietness, power supply and internet access. I was half expecting them to get me a coffee, and felt rather guilty that I pay my council tax at the opposite end of the country.
No, all that happened was that I had a sudden and rather dramatic change of plan, and I hate it when plans change. I suspect that the next few weeks will be rather challenging on that score, so perhaps I am doing the wrong thing in the wrong place, because it does seem quite likely that the further north I go the more the weather is going to step in and take matters out of my hands. It does have that reputation round here.
Saturday was a very good example, and there are already more since then.
You will remember, and have possibly already told the Coastguard, that the first place to look for me was Loch Eriboll, and that was indeed where I woke up to a mirror finish on the loch that suggested that the red sky/shepherd delight combo, confirmed by last night’s forecast, was truly on the cards,:
I know I say I am sailing round the UK but given the choice between motoring in a flat calm and beating into 18 knots I’ll take the diesel option every time. So I wasn’t too bothered when a few knots of breeze sprung up as soon as I motored past the spectacular sea caves at the mouth of Loch Eriboll which nobody gets to see, apart from the couple of fishermen who work there and the handful of yachts that sail in every summer, because the caves face seawards and there is no road.
The engine hummed along, Raymond pointed us at Strathy Point en route to Scrabster and I had a nice stable galley in which to cook a decent fry-up. God was in his heaven, the big Tesco in Thurso was waiting and all was right with the world. In case you’re worried that I was obsessing about groceries, I should point out that it was over ten days since I had left Ullapool, and that even Kinlochbervie’s staunchest apologist would admit that the Spar there, whilst friendly and well stocked, is not somewhere to do a big fortnightly shop, and the next day I was heading north to Orkney and the only big supermarket (another Tesco of course, this is Scotland) was on the far side of the islands from where I was headed.
Cooking breakfast on a moving boat is a dangerous activity and I should vow to stop doing it. Not in that it presents any physical danger beyond a bit of hot fat, and many years’ experience of preparing a maritime Full English/Scottish/Irish (why do the Welsh not claim fried breakfast?) means that I am pretty adept at avoiding that, but I have noticed that no sooner have I served the mighty pork feast than the wind pipes up/changes direction/requires a reef or two, or else a ferry or fishing boat appears from nowhere requiring avoiding action or even – on occasion – I am called by another ship on the radio just when I have a mouthful of black pudding and tattie scone. This breakfast was no exception: the breeze increased just as I sat down, the sail filled, the coffee went on the floor. Then it continued to fill in – well beyond the five knots the forecast had allocated to it. Before I was halfway through the bacon it had gone up to 15 knots, so I ate hurriedly and put this aberration down to the mountains up to windward. It did slacken off a bit (of course, just as I finished eating) but it was soon back again so the engine went off and the sails took over. At this rate I would be in Scrabster in time for an early lunch.
I took a look at the forecast to see what was going on and – of course – they had changed it without telling me. The five knots was now replaced by 15-20 knots, needless to say blowing right at me from Scrabster. Worse still, it was now forecast to turn through 180 degrees in the night and blow rather hard from the Northwest, exactly the direction I’d be taking from Scrabster to Stromness on Orkney. This required some quick but annoyingly complicated decision-making: the reason I was going to Scrabster was not only to wheel a shopping trolley but because to get to the entrance to Stromness (called Hoy Mouth because it’s the entrance to Hoy Sound which is the bit between Hoy and Orkney Mainland where Stromness is) while the tide was still with me I would have had to leave at 0430 which I didn’t fancy; if I got there after the tide turned against me I would be spat out backwards at four knots because it runs at nine knots. But now if I went to Scrabster it would be an unpleasant if not impossible task to get to Stromness sailing uphill into a building wind the next day, which was forecast to carry on building over the next couple of days into a full gale. There is only so much time I can spend in either Tesco or Scrabster and it’s well short of four days, so I had to get to Orkney today.
Leaving the greasy breakfast things in the sink I opened all the apps and pilot books I could get my hands on to see how else to get to Stromness: one of the peculiar things about Orkney is that there are so many islands (72 in all, I have since been told) that there is always more than one way from A to B, and so it proved. If I could get to a small gap at the far corner of Hoy before the big tide in the Pentland Firth turned against me at 1530, I could sneak in between the next islands into calmer and relatively tide-free waters and get into Stromness a few hours later, by the tradesmen’s entrance as it were. If I didn’t, I would be swept back West around the coast until I arrived at Stromness’ front door to wait for the next turn of the tide. Yes, six hours later. At least it would still be light up here, but I would be very cold and tired and cross by then, and all I would have for supper would be the Spar sausages left over from breakfast.
The breeze was still building, now up to a steady 16-18 knots, and with such a stomach-critical deadline to aim for Raymond was simply not as focused as I was, so I stood him down and found myself steering intensely for the next five hours. This got harder and harder as the wind continued to build and whilst the tide was with me (hurrah) it was pushing me into the wind (boo) so the waves got lumpier and more confused. The Pentland Firth is no place to be in any kind of tide, so I was having to be very careful to head along a very precise bearing where I’d not get swept into any races off headlands further down.
You know I made it of course, all the way to the library in the end, and eventually arrived off a very bleak-looking Cantick Head a full quarter of an hour before the tide turned.
Not before I’d had the most extraordinary experience of disturbing and then sailing through a huge flock of gulls and guillemots and whatnot, more like a swarm of midges there were so many of them:
I bore away past the lighthouse through the first of some nasty breaking waves that half an hour later would have bashed me about, and breathed a big sigh of relief.
Suddenly, in spite of the wind still increasing, the water was completely flat.
I was just inside the islands that make up the bottom of Scapa Flow, and could see why it was such a well-regarded anchorage for battleships and anyone else wanting a quiet night in a storm. Apparently sailing ships used to come through here to avoid the scary tides in the Pentland Firth, although that is no longer an option since Churchill ordered the building of the barriers down the East side which bear his name. The same barriers meant that Stromness was my only option with a shop that would sell food on a Sunday, but it was still about three hours away and I could see a big black cloud coming up behind. It was drizzling already, and getting windier. I had a look at the chart and saw a totally sheltered inlet with a village at the head called Longhope, off which were two visitors’ buoys and a safe anchorage. It was half an hour away. I am very fond of sausages, and the KLB Spar ones were surpisingly good.
I picked up one of the buoys less than half an hour later. Within precisely one minute the heavens opened and it started blowing truly hard, but by then I was down below with the heater on. There was beer and red wine to wash down the sausages and lentil dahl from a long-ago Tesco trip in Oban or perhaps even Toxteth. But now I was in Orkney, and warm and dry, and could if necessary motor the three hours in flat water to Stromness in the morning without worrying about tide races and breaking waves, let alone beating into a near-gale. There is a small Co-op there. I wasn’t going to starve. It was the right change of plan.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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