As you can see we’re making our way south gradually. We’re really waiting for Tomorrow when the wind will be a bit more westerly, rather than just south. So woke to bright if not sunny skies. The tide was out and there were people walking their dogs on the beach. Also one person swimming,! 🥶. We set off about 10 ish and had a perfect Half hour of flat water and sunshine! J even had his sunglasses on briefly…….😎. Superb! As we turned the corner the wind was of course increasingly on the nose, and the waves increased. However as the wind never went above 20 knots we coped very Well with two reefs and a reefed headsail. The chart showed a lot of confused seas just off Mull head, which we gave a wide berth. Pretty confused even where we were! En route we came across “Norwegian Dawn”……a cruise ship ploughing slowly into Kirkwall. We passed pretty close and We wondered what the passengers would have been saying about us. Maybe didn’t even notice or possibly felt a bit sorry for us…. Or maybe envious 😳🤔? Who knows. Once out of the worst of the confused seas, we tacked back towards our destination of Holm sound. Our plan is to anchor tonight so we only have about 40 miles to go to Wick tomorrow. Avoiding Copinsay island we tacked back toward Holm Sound. The whole face of the cliffs Copinsay were white presumably because of the birds and we passed huge rafts of guillemots bobbing about. They are funny they just wait until you get near and then dive down into the water to make it all go away. Completely understandable. One of the Orkney lessons we’ve learned…. Is that when you look on the chart at an anchorage, with perfect protection from the prevailing wind …….because the land is so flat, the protection is pretty minimal and actually you’ll just be anchoring in the middle of a ( slightly shallower) sea. Usually though the water is at least flat .. ish. With a bit of a swell….
We anchored Angelique in about 7 m in the middle of Holm sound just in front of one of the Churchill barriers. Avoiding a few lobster pots and with the aid of a trip buoy, given that we’re anchored amidst a few WW2 wrecks. Still sunshine early on, and later in the evening the wind completely changed direction and it started raining . So tomorrow is back to mainland Scotland! Setting off 9 am ish .
What I’ve learned today….. a bit more about the weather…. When a front comes through, it’s accompanied by a change of wind direction, some rain and then it all settles down again 😊 today it went from south to northwest, then gradually going round to SW
Sue x
Angelique 