Its Hard to Leave

On Thursday 1st August, the storm winds had relented and we moved to the fuelling berth to fill up before setting off northwards through Eynhallow Sound to eventually turn west and south round the top of Mainland Orkney.

Kirkwall Marina - waiting for fuel

Eynhallow is a place where it pays to attend to your navigation, as it has a fearsome reputation for extreme waves and overfalls under wind over tide conditions and the flow needs to be with you or you'll make no progress!

Approaching Eynhallow Narrows in the beautiful sunshine

This route is well-known to us and has some lovely views to the other Orkney islands.  It is likely to be our last visit here by yacht and although it was great to see it looking so fine, it was also sad to be leaving all this behind.

At 4:20pm, we had reached Hoy Sound and turned east towards Scapa Flow.  We had considered stopping at Stromness for a final time but as the forecast was for very strong headwinds tomorrow, we decided to push on to Longhope, where we could pick up a free community mooring and be ready for a jump across the Pentland Firth when conditions allowed.

A huge laid-up Oil Platform awaiting her fate in Scapa Flow

It was a lovely evening but after a while the wind had headed us so much that we took down the sails and motored.

Longhope - "Hoy Head" Ferry in her night-time berth at sunset

We found "our" mooring was available again and picked it up just after 7pm.
Next day we blew up the dinghy to row ashore for a shower and restock our stores from the local shop.

On our Longhope mooring for the last time

Later in the day, the predicted strong headwinds arrived plus rain, so we stayed where we were.

Early start leaving Longhope

Next day our tidal calculations decreed that we must leave at 05:50 to cross that other fearsome area of water - the Pentland Firth that would take us to mainland Scotland and the coast of Caithness.

Our destination was Wick, only 25 miles south but a world away from the communal and uncomplicated lives enjoyed by the Orcadians ....

We passed inshore of the new Beatrice field of wind turbines that are just north of Wick.

Look carefully to see the thicket of turbines filling the skyline









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