Trilleen spent what felt like a long time alongside in Lerwick, due to severe weather which detained even yachts three times Trilleen’s length, and also to allow my lovely mum to visit. I was also able to repair the navigation lights which had been ‘eaten’ by the pier at Baltasound and attend to a few other issues. Eventually though we got free and headed south, back across The Hole a notorious piece of sea in the Fair Isle Channel, south across the Pentland Firth and into Wick.
The weather which allowed me to sprint from Baltasound to Lerwick did not last, and over the succeeding days a selection of more and less beaten boats headed in to the visitors’ dock at Lerwick for shelter. At most we were rafted three deep. I’m was very grateful to have been allowed next to the dock, a gift in regard to disability, and also not to have been rafted onto because no other visiting yacht was small enough to do so.
When the weather window opened again I fled southwards to Grutness Voe, a shallow bay on the south easterly tip of Shetland just a mile or so north of Sumburgh head, This first passage was beautiful over flat sea with a fine close hauled passage down past the edge of Mousa and then, I confess a motor sail into Grutness Voe. The wind was falling away and I was keen to make the anchorage and prepare for the passage to Wick.
Grutness Voe anchorage is right at the end of Sumburgh Airport runway. Traffic is however minimal so there is very little disruption to the peace of the anchorage. More disruptive was the presence of a pier extension works for the Fair Isle ferry which narrowed the effective anchorage a lot. I’d not found a Notice to Mariners about this work and it was a bit of a shock. I anchored roughly where the pilot suggested, but a couple of hours later a lovely chap from the works asked Trilleen to move due to their need to exfiltrate a spoil barge. We ended up in a narrow salient between their works and the rocks, but the anchor was hard into sand, nearly the best holding available, so I had little concern.
The next morning I waited with bated breath for a forecast south westerly or west south westerly wind to fill into, which would lift me south past Fair Isle, Orkney and into mainland Scotland. The arrival of the wind wasn’t certain with different forecasters predicting different things, but about lunch I thought it was here, and a long slow trickle south began, with Trilleen as close to the wind as she will point battling south to Fair Isle, the island’s cliffs a mocking presence on the horizon for hour upon hour.
The fall of night brought the usual routine of micro sleep and nav checks. Fortunately the Fair Isle Channel, at times a busy shipping lane was deserted and so Trilleen trundled on creeping south mile by difficult mile. In the early hours of the morning the wind strengthened gradually and by sunrise she became a little overpowered. I reefed her down first one reef and then the second, both episodes resulting in an unwanted bath of seawater as her bow plunged south into the low, but irregular sea. Reefs made, the wind began to turn to the west, allowing me to shape her course ever so slightly further away from the wind with the inevitable thrilling increase in speed from three knots to six.
Having crept down the side of Orkney Mainland, and rejected a diversion to Mill Bay or Deer Sound, Trilleen and I negotiated the eastern approaches to the Pentland Firth, passing just east of the rightly feared Pentland Skerries. As we threaded our way through the light but continuous stream of traffic, I was grateful for the skill and professionalism of a series of bridge teams who made space for Trilleen’s tiny form as she crawled across what has become the domain of giants.
Just past Duncansby Head the wind died, and I had to resort to the motor for the final seven miles to Wick. To add insult to injury the tide began to turn and I and a few other yachts ended up playing follow my leader at three knots as we all headed for the shelter of Wick marina, where Ian, the amazing harbourmaster took my lines and welcomed me back to the mainland of Scotland, around 430nm (500 statute miles) across the ground since I left Orkney.