Reaching Orkney

Cruise ship entering the Pentland Firth from the North

I had planed the crossing times for the Pentland Firth carefully, checking and rechecking I had got the times of Wick high water right. When we reached there ten minutes early we could feel the tide against us, and fifteen minutes later it was gently pushing us towards Muckle Flugger. Nothing the engine could not cope with though, and within half an hour we had a northerly tide helping us towards South Ronaldsay. We had chosen to cross as close to a neap tide as we could manage, and there was hardly any wind, so we crossed in a flat calm. There was a fair amount of shipping about, and we kept a careful note of their positions. Julian turned AIS on on his phone, and told me the names of all the ships I could see, and warn me about ones I couldn’t yet! A large tanker, coming out of the Flotta Oil Terminal, obviously saw us and took care to go behind us as he headed east and out past Muckle Skerry, and by the time a huge cruise ship came round the east end of South Ronaldsay to head through the Firth we were safely out of the Firth ourselves.

The wind came back for a spell, and we could just sail our course toward the sound of Hoxa on a fine reach, so we turned the engine off for an hour of gentle sailing. Sheer bliss. We had reached Orkney, and had already decided that we were not going to try getting any further west. We would leave Robinetta in Stromness at the end of the week, and meanwhile have a few days relaxing.

Of course the wind died again after an hour, and the engine went back on to take us to our intended anchorage in St Margaret’s Hope. It was so calm that we got the mainsail down and stowed neatly as we headed through Hoxa sound, past the WW2 look out points and gun emplacements on Hoxa Head. From a distance they look in very good condition, and there were two people walking round looking at them.

We headed past a fish farm that was not on our charts, then rounded the headland and could see St Margaret’s Hope. The ferry terminal had a large catamaran type ferry on it, but there were only 2 yachts anchored in the bay so there was plenty of room, despite a scatter of small buoys. We put out 25 m of chain, in a 4m deep anchorage, so had plenty of scope out against a possible SW f7 sometime in the next 20 hours. By 22:30 we were safely settled and relaxed in flat water. It was lovely to see our new anchor chain descending into the water, and it certainly left the deck cleaner than our old one, with not a speck of rust.