Two night watches and one day watch later we arrived early morning – still in the dark – at Newcastle. With Storm Benjamin lurking threateningly only a short distance to the south it was felt sensible to wait it out.
Once in Kirkwall we really had to do the tourist thing and two minibuses and tour guides were duly arranged to pick us up at 9am. We then did a whirlwind tour of mainland Orkney – the home for three-quarters
This morning we did the shortest passage so far – about a mile and a half across to an anchorage just off Egilsay. The Zodiac was hoisted into the water and we all headed ashore to walk a mile or
I stuck my head out first thing to try and get a better sense of where we had anchored. I got little sense at all! With low cloud and drizzle, the view was little better than it had been in
Another textbook springing-off demonstration saw us heading off again just after 9am. This time our destination was slightly uncertain. The wind, infuriatingly, had gone round to the SE and so, once clear of Sumburgh Head, the skipper tried to see
With the weather improving we left Suðuroy in the morning of October 17th to head across to the Shetland Islands. The passage was about 170 miles and the hope was to head across at the same time as a small
Off again …. After breakfast we headed south and we left in style. Despite being moored close to an Icelandic trawler in front of us, the skipper held on a spring, hoisted the mizzen, staysail and main (with the peak
Moving on …. As we need to keep doing …. Today was a fairly short move down to Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroes and for me, a second visit as we had already had a morning there on the
One good thing about storms is that they generally go through quite quickly, but despite that we got held up for a couple of days on the Vestmannaeyjar islands. This was because while the storm did go through quite quickly,
Heimaey is the largest island in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago, and the largest and most populated island off the Icelandic coast. It is just 4 nautical miles off the south coast of Iceland, but feels quite a bit further. Depending how