The Wrathful Cape

It seemed about time to leave the West coast of Scotland behind us and to start a new chapter in our journey.

And that meant rounding Cape Wrath - the most north-westerly point in mainland Britain.  
[By the way, it seems that the name Cape Wrath is derived from an Old Norse word "hvarf" meaning turning point - so it doesn't have to strike fear into our hearts - although it did!]

We needed to get our sums right for this - the tides both round the Cape and at the entrance to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys are very strong and need to be with us.  We must also try to avoid the condition of wind over tide that can generate big seas.  AND it would be nice to have the usual requirement of a wind, from a good direction not too strong and not too light!  This required much thought and consulting of the tea leaves or should it be seaweed? (the online weather forecasts).  

Anyway, we decreed that we should sail from Lochinver at 08:00 on Friday 13th July - anchor in Loch Inchard to wait the tide and then set off towards the Cape at 19:00 for an overnight passage to Stromness in the Orkney Islands.  Huh - isn't sailing on a Friday 13th mean to be a bad thing... ?

So we duly set off in F4 winds and sailed up to Loch Inchard,  where we dropped anchor in the closest bay South of Cape Wrath.

We wanted to rest and take stock while we waited the few hours before our long night passage.  However, we could not avoid noticing the troubled bleats coming from a group of three sheep that seemed to be marooned by the tide on the rocky shore.

Rock-bound Sheep at Loch Inchard
The tide still had an hour to fall and we waited to see if the sheep would find their way to safety by themselves.  No luck, so we blew up the dinghy and rowed over to them.  It started raining and we wondered in any case exactly how we could rescue three reluctant sheep from our rubber dinghy!
Doug clambered ashore and this seemed to spur them into deciding to follow the route home over the slippery rocks rather than facing the unknown danger from him.  Problem solved but I'm not sure that the sheep were particularly grateful :)

Sheep-herder Doug Clambers Ashore
We set off at 19:00 into very light winds and motor-sailed northwards. After two hours, Cape Wrath loomed ahead and the rain started falling, turning the coastline a grisly grey.

Approaching Cape Wrath

As we rounded the Cape, we were soon beating into a rising F4 ESE wind.  We had been warned to keep clear of the confused seas close to the Cape but even offshore, the seas were swirling and strong - speeding our progress with a 5 knots tide.  The wind alternately blew at F6 and then back down to F3 but the tide pushed us on at a good speed up to 9 knots over the ground.

Things settled down at about 01:30 and we were once again motor-sailing into light headwinds at the 5 knots speed we had calculated would bring us to Scapa Flow at the right time.  I took over the watch to let Doug have some sleep and we sailed on into a gloomy but not fully dark night.  There were frequent light rain showers and in the poor visibility we were glad of our GPS chart plotter that showed we were clear of the few ships rounding the Cape with us.

Just after I passed the watch to Doug, the wind increased again but this time from the WSW and up to F5.  His watch was spent hand steering (the autopilot "George" could not be trusted to avoid a gybe in these conditions) with the boat screaming along downwind not wanting to wake me but concerned that he was going too fast for our carefully crafted arrival time.

I, meanwhile slept soundly for my 3 hrs off watch :) and by the time Doug woke me for my turn on duty, things had settled again so that George could steer - just about - especially after Doug could finally rig a preventer rope to hold the boom forward so we could not accidentally gybe.

The tide duly turned against us and our progress was thankfully slowed to help us achieve our necessary arrival time into Scapa Flow.

A Grey Hoy Island Looms Out Of The Gloom
We watched the island of Hoy pass by as we slowly approached the entrance to Scapa Flow at 09:30.
We were glad to head through Hoy Mouth into the famous Scapa Flow as the tide shot us past breaking seas on the shores to both sides.  We turned sharply to Port and motored into our destination of Stromness on the Orkney Island of "Mainland" with its welcoming marina.

It seemed to us that we had completed a major milestone and deserved a good rest - phew!

Stromness Harbour in the Sunshine Next Day








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