To The Land of Sand

 

My watercolour painting of our Sanday track

The island of Sanday will be our our stepping off point for the crossing to Shetland - but that will come later!  First we had a couple of days in Stromness to clean and prepare the boat plus do a spot more sightseeing while the strong winds blew through.

We had arrived back on Tuesday evening 9th July, tired after our long distance adventure south by public transport.  So we had Wednesday and Thursday to soak up more of Stromness and Mainland Orkney.

Our chores completed, we set off by bus on Thursday towards the ancient Neolithic remains at Skara Brae.  We were dropped off amongst the many tourist coaches ferrying cruise ship passengers to this important site but we had visited here twice previously and instead we crossed to the adjacent beach to walk along the coastline. 

A windy Skara Brae beach

Flocks of noisy Oyster Catchers took off as we walked along the rocky shore.

Oyster Catchers (hard to spot I know!)

We followed the path inland to the hills above Skara Brae.

Orkney skyline

Then we found a stone cairn and, looking seawards, contemplated our return to these waters the following day.


Afterwards, we walked back down to the grounds of Skaill House and made our way to the real reason for us coming here - lunch at the Loki Seafood Shack, that I had been following on Facebook for so long!

Loki Seafood Shack


And their delicious seafood - wow!

After lunch, we hopped on the bus for a trip partway home to take a look at another ancient stone circle - we thought we should see all we could before leaving this wonderful area.

The Ring of Bookan - note the essential Scottish Summer wear!

Thankfully less frequented than the nearby Ring of Brodgar, this ring had been constructed approx. 5 thousand years ago and  we found the remans of an ancient burial cairn at its centre.

Next day, with the weather moderated to NW F3 but rising later, it was back to the business of sailing and we set off at 08:00 to catch a favourable tide through the Sound of Hoy and northwards along the Mainland coast to thread our way through the maze of islands towards Sanday at the NE of Orkney, 38 miles away.

Our winding route to Sanday

Doug had carefully calculated the tide times and our route, as it does not pay to go against the flow in the Orkneys!  Despite this, and as referenced in the pilot guide, not all the tides follow the predictions, so we did occasionally find a small adverse tide.  However, all the major tides followed the rules and we had a speedy passage to Kettletoft Bay at Sanday, where we picked up another free, community sponsored buoy.

Rapport, alone on her remote and windy Kettletoft buoy












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guinness!

Image
At the moment the weather is always against us - very strong winds in the wrong directions!   So it was a wonderful relief to be able to sample some "proper" (i.e. Irish) Guinness in Carlingford last night after a long, trying week battling the elements. The Antidote In the last post, we were in Dunstaffnage Marina, waiting 2 days for the weather to improve. A Lovely Backdrop It's a good time to show you this special delivery we received from 5yr old Thomas, travelling with his parents on their 21'-9" Drascombe Cruiser, moored just ahead of us on the Caledonian Canal.  This was a thank-you to us after we charged his iPad. "Rapport" by Thomas At 06:15 on Wednesday 14th August, we finally cast off from Dunstaffnage and headed off to catch a fair tide through the maze of islands guarding the route south towards the Irish Sea. We were trying to time our journey to reach the entrance to Cuan Sound, where the fierce tide would start to flow south after 10:30....
Read more

Just In Time!

Image
The 10th of May was very busy for us as we prepared the house to be left and gathered everything we would need for the voyage.  Doug decided to add another thing to our "to-do list" as he had organised the handing over of our dinghy, Tamar Fortune to its new owner :)  We also needed to say goodbye to Cody Sailing Club, who we'd been hosting on their Weir Quay dinghy camp.  Oh and our much-needed Shetland charts arrived at lunchtime! Rapport on her Weir Quay Mooring Suffice to say, we were pretty tired by the time we had loaded everything on board and packed it away that evening.  Rosie had brought so much food that we had to be pretty ingenious to find enough spaces to stow it all!  As Doug said "it was lucky that the kitchen sink had been bolted down"! We'd only recently fitted the sails as we'd had to wait for good weather earlier in the week to have our mast down and the rigging replaced by Allspars in Plymouth, ready for this trip. But we were well r...
Read more

Reaching Home

Image
On the mooring in New Grimsby Sound, the weather was so warm that I even jumped overboard at one point.  I didn't stay in the water for long though, it was more refreshing than I expected. New Grimsby Sound - Fine Weather After two days of sunshine, the weather turned grey and we took the overland route (green on the chart, only advised with at least half-tide and rising!) over to St Mary's for an early start, next morning.  We sadly gave up on the idea of anchoring in The Cove (between St Agnes and Gugh) and the delights of the Turks Head public house due to a forecast of SSE breezes blowing straight into the anchorage. The 60 miles to the Helford River involved light breezes and we motor-sailed all the way.  Our Yanmar engine continues to run smoothly; nearly home!  Tuna fish leapt, as did their prey, trying desperately to escape them.  We were impressed by the tide generated lumpy seas around Lizard Point, which bore no relation to the wind strength. In Helfo...
Read more