In a scene in the film Crimson Tide, the captain of a US nuclear sub (Gene Hackman) and his executive officer (Denzel Washington) disagree violently about the merits of purposefully staging a missile drill while simultaneously dealing with a serious galley fire. The gist: Washington: “are you mad, doing that with all this chaos going on?”; Hackman: “this is exactly what you want – this is a ship of war and war is chaotic, so use these opportunities to practice”.
It felt a bit like that when, negotiating a tricky tidal situation south of the Orkneys, our man overboard recovery device exploded suddenly out of its housing, dropped into the water behind the boat and began to inflate. Oh great! We have renamed it Otto, after the unhelpful Airplane autopilot, and the rather similar humorous sound it made whilst inflating.
Although travelling east from the Orkneys, the cruising almanac recommends travelling 5 miles west of the exit from Scapa Flow before turning, to avoid being swept onto a nearby island by the east-going tide. With a typically unhelpful wind direction, we were already further south than we wanted when Otto decided to jump ship. A swift tack brought us back alongside and we recovered him back into the cockpit and resumed our original course. He sat in the boat for the rest of the journey, getting in the way and gradually deflating, just like his namesake, although Helen decided not to re-inflate him. On inspection, it seems Otto’s housing was wet inside (lots of rain recently), which must have triggered the automatic inflation; it was a good job we were around at the time, and was actually useful practice (we’re with Hackman on this).
The rest of the day was uneventful: in light winds we were outpaced down the Scottish coast by our rower, in spite of having the cruising chute up. We anchored in Sinclair Bay while he carried on a few miles to Wick. He won’t have been able to keep up with us in the strong winds we have had subsequently. After a week in the Orkneys, we decided we needed to make up some ground and wanted to test ourselves on a longer passage. So, we left Sinclair bay at 7am hoping to do a decent hop, ideally all the way to Edinburgh, which would be more than 200miles.
It wasn’t to be: after 24 hours we’d got as far as Peterhead when the wind died. The guide book notes that by sailing a direct course to Peterhead, you miss the delightful coastline of the Moray Firth but, tacking with the wind on the nose all the way, we felt we’d seen more of the coast than we really needed as well as well as the oil platforms in the middle of the Firth. Light winds were forecast for the following period and with limited stopping points for another 40 miles, we put into Peterhead with a mix of disappointment and relief at being able to rest.
As it happens, we liked Peterhead. It is pleasingly industrial with huge fishing boats and pipelaying gear in the harbour. A bit of an ‘80s town centre but the coffee was good and some of the buildings are pretty. The owners of “Bay View” cottages may not appreciate the large hangers now obscuring the view of the bay though.
We carried on at 8:30 the following day, the 100th of our trip, marked by eating the final piece of our 2017 Christmas cake. This journey proved one of the most challenging yet. The headwinds continued, inconveniently adjusting as our course changed around the coast. For most of the journey we had around 25 knots. Beating into that for 30 hours was hard work! The helm requires constant attention; in the dark it feels like you are holding the reins of some wild thing, galloping headlong. Alex almost came a cropper when making tea, overbalancing and lifting a galley door off its hinges, then hitting himself in the head with it. Fortunately, Helen is more sympathetic than Alex, as he would have found this very amusing had it been the other way around.
The noise is unbelievable: wind whining in the rigging, the whole boat vibrating and crashing through the waves. We each got 30 minutes sleep here or there, between 90 minute shifts on the wheel, just about enough to keep functioning. Climbing out of bed is literal: it’s on a 30 degree slope and you have to scramble uphill to get out. For added challenge there is a lot more traffic on this part of the coast: we have become accustomed to being alone on the sea most of the time and suddenly there are large freighters and cruise lines tracking up and down the coast while we are tacking back and fro across their routes.
The conditions started to take their toll on Ventata. Just before it got dark the genoa halyard snapped and we had to take the sail down to replace it with one of the spinnaker halyards. Meant to replace it last year but didn’t get round to it. Anyway, it was good exciting stuff on the foredeck with the boat leaping around. Later there was a cracking sound in the cockpit as the block that secures the furling line failed, spraying bits and letting the heavily reefed sail out in full until we were able to winch it back in. Noted afterwards that the critical parts were plastic not metal; we will be more aware of this in future…
By 6am we had got to May Island in reasonable shape, all things considered, and ready to head up the Firth of Forth. The final 25 miles to Edinburgh was hard in terms of effort and patience. In its usual generous way, the wind became westerly, forcing us to tack all the way up to Edinburgh. With deep reefed sails, she doesn’t point well into the strong wind, so to make those 25 miles to windward we sailed 50 over the ground. However, we made it! In 4 days since leaving the Orkneys we were underway for 63 hours, 59 of them under sail. We logged 358 miles, motoring for only 10 (mainly up the narrow channel that comes under the Forth bridges). The following day we washed the salt out of the foul weather gear, bought a re-arming kit for the MOB device and 35 metres of nice new dyneema halyard which Alex has been up the mast to fit. Now, sort of rested, we will see what Edinburgh has to offer!
Ventata 