This, dear readers of the multi-award-winning blog, is Muckle Flugga. It’s just an island with a lighthouse on it, but it’s a very special island and it’s been occupying my waking and dreaming thoughts for quite a few years now, because it is the northernmost point of the UK. I have been telling people for some time that my ambition was to leave Muckle Flugga to Starboard and today I did.
I’ve dreamed about sailing round it with the spinnaker up, just to show off. I’ve tried to be realistic and imagined battling round it into mountainous waves and driving rain with three reefs and a storm jib. I’ve most recently imagined motoring around it in a flat calm as I have done every other major headland in the UK so far. What I had not even dreamed of was beam reaching around it in a Force 4 with sparkling sunshine, before lunch. But that is exactly what happened, and if I were to invent a unit of being chuffed and call it, say a Puffin, where seeing a puffin is one Puffin and having tea with them is five, I rate today as a Ten Puffin Day. Never mind the blog winning awards, I’m giving myself one.
It wasn’t going to be like this. The forecast had been promising less than five knots for the last two days, and yesterday it was. I had a cunning plan to spend the night in a sheltered harbour at the top of mainland Shetland so I could make an early start to catch the last of the tide around Muckle Flugga. You don’t want to be there wth the tide against you, or the wind, or anything else. The plan changed with the Shetland weather, it was going to blow from the East overnight and then drop to nothing from the West in the morning. So I picked an even more sheltered anchorage on the Isle of Yell with the odd name of Whale Firth (we are out of the land of lochs now, it’s all Voes and Firths round here) where instead of blowing at all it was completely calm all night.
I resigned myself to motoring around yet another terrifying headland. At least I could complete the set, and cook a decent breakfast while I did so. Even so, I was nervous: this is a scary place with huge tide rips and big waves. I’d been to a presentation at the Cruising Association where a really experienced couple had come this far, looked at Muckle Flugga and turned round and scuttled back again.
Then I woke up this morning. How could the weather do this to me? Not flat calm, it was going to be 10-15 knots from the north! I was actually going to have to beat around Muckle Flugga! This was disheartening, but I had not sailed this far to give up now. I put on some very warm clothes and full oilskins and motored gloomily out of the Firth into what was already a fairly feisty and freezing cold breeze.
But the most extraordinary thing happened. The sun came out. This always transforms any kind of cruising, and so it did today. Muckle Flugga was only 15 miles away, it was only blowing 15 knots. It would be fine. I put in a reef and bent to the task. The waves weren’t that big, and Blue Moon was flying: 6-7 knots to windward, sparkling spray, only half a knot of tide against us; not for the first time I congratulated myself on choosing the right boat for this trip. I realised I was no longer apprehensive at all, I was enjoying helming so much I wouldn’t let Raymond have a go and forgot all about breakfast, which is highly unusual for me. The lighthouse – or, to be specific, for the geeky pedants among the readership, the big rock off it called Out Stack which is actually the northenmost bit of the UK – had just turned into one giant windward mark, and I know how to go around windward marks.
First, you head into the shore to get out of what tide might still be left. That hill ahead of us delights in the name of Flubersgerdie, would you believe?
Then you wait for the lift off the cliffs., whatever silly name they have, and tack back out on it. These ones were called Gable and Orknagable. There will be more on Shetland place names in another post.
Then, just as you are resigned to another two tacks at least, taking at least another hour, you are rewarded by the most fantastic shift you have ever enjoyed: a 20 degree left-hander (sorry non-sailors, this will all be mumbo jumbo but I can’t be bothered to explain, but it is very good news if you need to tack onto port to get around the windward mark. It’s what I heard Sir Ben call ‘a big leftie’ during the America’s Cup). I tacked on it and couldn’t believe my eyes: I was now laying Out Stack comfortably. I kept checking the plotter: gaining every minute, even with the fierce tide now pushing me down towards it.
I hate overstanding a windward mark: it’s the sign of a lazy or under-confident sailor, and I imagine everyone seeing me as either or both of those whenever I do it. But today I was quite happy to hold up a bit; had there been a fleet of Parker 325s racing around Out Stack I would have let a few through below me and been rightly admonished by my crew. As it was, I had time to triple check I wasn’t going to get swept onto any of these legendary landmarks and then start enjoying myself.
First, it was time for a few selfies.
Then a (very) wee dram of Highland Park, chosen because it’s from Britain’s most northerly distillery:
Then I had the bright idea of making it look exciting by filming a boat’s eye view:
And while I was down below I managed to record my most northerly point for posterity:
All too soon the excitement was behind me, just another headland receding into the distance.
But then I had to start paying attention again: I’d remembered that the really scary bits are the other side where there are nasty overfalls described as dangerous in anything other than a flat calm. In my motoring mindset the night before I’d plotted a course a bit too close, it had now piped up to 20 knots and a wave caught Raymond napping. Since we’re in racing parlance I can best describe him as nearly rolling us in to windward before I could grab the wheel off him and get the keel back under the rig. Lucky that it was the tiniest of snifters of Highland Park: the next 20 minutes needed more concentration than all morning put together, but we finished on a sort of high by surfing down one of these big beasts at 11 knots, Blue Moon’s personal best in my ownership at least. I was still too excited to be scared, but needed both hands on the wheel so there isn’t a picture.
We made it, round the point into Haroldswick where I casually dropped the anchor (no, quite carefully actually, but made it look casual), had a spot of lunch, blew up the dinghy and rowed ashore to visit the splendid Unst Boat Haven, a great museum of Shetland seafaring. The cheery girl on the reception asked if I’d come far. “Whale Firth, on Yell”, I replied. “Oh, not so far then”, she said.
I had actually come 5,244 miles since leaving Itchenor, although it is only 597 as the crow flies, but I just smiled. “No,” I said, “and it was a lovely morning for a sail.”
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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