Wick to Duncansby Head

The Pentland Firth is best crossed leaving Duncansby Head at slack. Slack at Duncansby Head is high water at Wick. Today that was about 2:30 am or 6:25 pm. We weren’t up for an early start, and we had the reefing gear to fix.

I spent most of the morning fixing the boom. It turned out that of the three screws, one was fine, one was completely missing and the third had broken off inside the hole. All the holes were badly worn so I drilled three new ones. The first two went well. The thin bit I was using to drill the pilot holes broke off in the third hole. So, I had to start again. I got there in the end.

Then we raised the sail to check the fix worked and found a few other things needed sorting. The top mast hoop had come untied. The peak outhaul needed tensioning. The gaff span was not hooked onto the wooden lugs on the gaff so was pulling on the robands and not setting well. We also got the bowsprit out on the pontoon and set the No 1 jib.

Fixing all these made us much more confident we had a sailing boat.

We left Wick about 2pm after a nice lunch of Spaghetti Carbonara cooked by Alison and eaten in the cockpit.

There wasn’t much wind – variable 3 or less in the forecast and probably south westerly 2 on the water. But we got the main up and the sails were drawing. Motoring against the flood tide up to Noss Head was very scary eight years ago but now we had confidence that the back eddy in Sinclair’s Bay would propel us north.

Around Noss Head the tide was running strongly and turning into the bay took some time. Once on the recommended track between the 20m and 30m contours we picked up speed. The wind had veered a bit towards the north. We could probably have sailed this leg, but we wanted to be sure we wouldn’t be late, so we motor sailed. We had a course to Duncansby Head in the plotter so we could see our ETA and we throttled up and down as the wind rose and fell to keep to time.

Once out of Sinclair’s Bay the wind was a bit too northerly to keep the jib filled. We tacked into the shore to get a better line, but then decided to furl the jib.

The sea stacks and bird life at Duncansby Head are spectacular. One of the privileges of sailing these waters.

Alison had said “we know we mustn’t be late at Duncansby Head, but I don’t know what it would be like if we were early”.

We were going to find out.