If you are as old as me you might have been a member of the Puffin Club. It was probably a shameless marketing ploy dreamt up by the folk at Penguin to get kids to buy more books. but it was very well concealed as an earnest attempt to encourage reading. I don’t remember which books I got through it, but I do remember two quite un-booky bits of what today would be called merch, but were I think free, or perhaps rewards for getting your parents to buy lots of books: one was one of those wall charts where you record your height and the other, rather better one, was a Puffin Badge which I wore proudly, being rather bookish at the time.
You don’t have to have been a bookworm in the seventies to appreciate a puffin – they are as close as any bird comes to cute. I know I will cause offence to certain readers by saying so, but they look cuddly and quite fun, they waddle about in an endearing way and – best of all – a complete bird dunce like me can positively identify a puffin from at least 100 metres away, and there are very few birds I can say that about.
We’d seen puffins before of course: flying about their clifftop burrows on Raithlin Island, loitering on the water around the Shiant Islands off Lewis, and bobbing about off Handa and Cape Wrath. But in Orkney there was the promise of puffins you could walk up to and chat to (you can do this further south but I hadn’t been able to land on the appropriate islands because – yes! – the wind was wrong. The cheery French crews we’d met in Kinlochbervie were self-confessed puffin nuts: they had been ashore on countless islands by the sounds of things, and couldn’t get enough of the little things. “We’re going to Westray”, they announced in Stromness, “there are so many puffins you can trip over them!”. This didn’t sound like an approach David Attenborough would take, but apparently puffins are unfazed by people wandering up to them, although I am sure Jamie will set me right on this point.
I was annoyed though because someone else had recommended Westray as a great jumping-off point for my next leg to Fair Isle and it was where I planned to go next, with the side benefit of getting close to some puffins, but with the enforced stop-over in Stromness I really didn’t have time. I needed to get north to Shetland, and my next destination was Fair Isle, the only place you can stop between Orkney and Shetland which would otherwise be a very tedious 15+ hour sail. All I knew about it was that it was a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, with a tiny harbour that might squeeze in a couple of yachts if you were lucky. It has a few crofts and – hang on a minute – a bird observatory which has just re-opened. I wondered what kind of birds you could observe, and a quick Google confirmed that amongst the huge range of amazing bird life was something for the beginner – hordes of puffins. I sneakily kept this information to myself though in case the French got wind of my plan and got there first and took up all the space in the harbour.
My overnight stop in Eday was part of the plan as it gave me a great jumping-off point the next morning, and an early start meant that I was the only yacht on the AIS as I motored in a flat calm past another flat and unremarkable island (Sanday – probably not named because of the beaches but they did look lovely if you fancy a beach holiday at 59 degrees north in the middle of the North Sea).
This was a long and very tedious motor – out past the shelter of the islands the waves had come all the way from Greenland and had had plenty of time to get very large on the way, even though there was barely a breath of wind. I was so bored with motoring I tried writing a blog post but instantly felt sick which is no way to win any more awards, so cooked a monumental breakfast instead, which always does the trick for me.
Uh-oh. From behind the northernmost island, North Ronaldsay, an AIS target had appeared. It was an American boat I’d seen in Stromness but not spoken to. I didn’t know about their puffin-fancying tendencies but they looked to be headed to Fair Isle too. Luckily I had a head start and seemed to be going a tiny bit faster, but I couldn’t relax any more. There should be room for two…
Then a disturbing sight. A target had arrived from behind. It said it was a yacht, but it was doing nine knots! I looked closer and it was 26 metres long – more than twice the size of Blue Moon, This was a worry: the pilot said there was ‘usually room for two 40 foot yachts to tie up’, but this guy would take all that space on his own. I worked out that he would overtake me in about three hours time and he did. Even half a mile away I could see clearly that this was a massive superyacht and my heart sank. I would have to anchor in the bay – luckily it was calm enough to be safe – I didn’t imagine the oligarchs on board would take kindly to having me come alongside.
Eventually Fair Isle was off the bow and I patted myself on the back for having got the fierce tides right and arriving when and where I wanted, with a little frisson of schadenfreude when I saw the Americans hadn’t and were now even further behind clawing up against the tide.
Then, as I got closer, my heart sank again. Now the AIS had picked up two boats already alongside the quay at Fair Isle – a yacht and a big workboat, I knew they were doing some work in the harbour and it looked as if my luck was out. But then two extraordinary things happened. First, I saw the workboat moving on my screen and sure enough, as I rounded the corner, there it was, steaming out of the harbour at full tilt. Of course – Friday afternoon and they were going home to Shetland. Then, ahead of me, the superyacht had not turned into the harbour at all but gone and anchored off under the cliffs. Now triple-chuffed by my luck as well, I headed in to the harbour to find one yacht tied up and a lot of space. I came alongside, and no sooner had I done so than its very cheery occupants arrived and explained that they were leaving, they’d had a great afternoon looking at puffins and were heading north. They left, I tied up, and the Americans arrived about an hour later. I took their lines but explained that I couldn’t chat, I had puffins to meet, and off I went.
I followed my cheery friends’ advice and headed for the (stunning in its own right) North Lighthouse, an easy 45 minutes walk away.
Sure enough, as promised, there were puffins perched on the cliffs. I could walk up close to them but there was always something of a gully between me and them so it didn’t feel particularly close or personal.
I had a look at the lighthouse and wandered out to the cliffs on the other side to look at the waves crashing on some sea stacks below. Then, to my astonishment, I realised that on the grassy top of the cliffs all around me were puffins – hundreds of puffins. I walked slowly closer and none of them batted an eyelid (do puffins have eyelids? I suppose so but none of them blinked).
So I got as close as I dared and then sat down, thinking I might look a bit less threatening. None of them cared, in fact a couple came up to have a look at me. If I had brought a picnic blanket and a small hamper I could have spread out afternoon tea on the cliffs and they would have been completely nonplussed. As it was, an apple and a Tunnocks wafer did just as well, and knowing that puffins only eat sand eels I had no compunction in not sharing, so I sat in glorious sunshine on the top of a spectacular cliff on the edge of Fair Isle, on my own, eating my tea with a bunch of puffins doing whatever puffins do. Not a lot, by the looks of it:
By now I was off whatever scale you use to measure being chuffed by, and could happily have spent the evening there, but after a while I remembered that I was 59 degrees north and was getting a bit chilly so I said goodbye to the puffins and headed back. From the track I could see that down in the harbour there were comings and goings – some Canadians had arrived and being in a bigger boat were rearranging things so they could raft up with the Americans. Nice to see that away from the White House they still get along.
“Did you see some puffins?” asked the friendly Americans. “Yes I did”, I replied, shamelessly grinning from ear to ear. This had been worth getting up at 6am and motoring ten hours for.
I could have stayed another day or two, as I suspect the others planned to, but again I had seen a forecast suggesting more wind so next morning I slipped out of the harbour and headed due North. Fair Isle is part of Shetland, I was surprised to discover, but it didn’t feel as if I had made landfall as it is such a small island and still 35 miles from Shetland proper. But – still grinning – the 35 miles passed in an easy morning and by lunchtime I was tied up in Scalloway, in Shetland proper. The houses look more like Norway than Scotland, the landscape is different again from anything I have seen before, and I am now above 60 degrees north – further north than Bergen, or St Petersburg, or bits of Greenland and Alaska. It is still light at 11pm. I am a very long way from home, and it seems as if the people of Scalloway know it as everyone I pass says hello. The cheery chaps (they are chaps, definitely, they have a Royal Cruising Club burgee) I had met in Fair Isle followed me in, and we were having a pleasant chat when we were accosted by an incredibly loud hen party who were starting their fun at the Scalloway Boat Club and handing around drams of whisky, apparently to visiting English yachtsmen too. The bride-to-be was dressed as a loo roll. It was quite a change from Fair Isle, but equally extraordinary.
Yes, there is a village called Twatt. There’s one in Orkney too. You can buy fridge magnets with a road sign on. Don’t worry, I won’t.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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