Emerald now has her own Facebook page which you can ‘like’ by following this
link. I’ve had problems using the RSS feed on my mobile phone to get notifications of when other blogs have been updated, so we decided to create Emerald’s own Facebook page to which our Sailblog posts are linked. This means when you check Facebook (which I will confess to doing at least once (ok maybe three times) a day if I have internet signal), you’ll see updates; we can also send text messages to Facebook to update when we don’t have any internet. Creating a Facebook page for the boat means you don’t have to be accepted as a friend, you can just simply like the page; and unlike it again if you don’t want updates anymore.
Monday 15th August
We started southward bound in sunshine at 7am picking up a good tide out of Shapinsay Sound which pushed us out to Mull Head at 7kts. The overfalls there were easy to spot so we kept well off to avoid them.
Out into the North Sea the swell became noticeable from the east with wind from the south west. Our plan was to sail as close as we could to our course to Wick and hope that the wind went more westerly. If it didn’t we’d tack across and hope the wind went more southerly! As it was the wind was much stronger than forecast which we guessed was due to the rain squalls we could see marching towards us from the west. We sailed on starboard with all sails set but put the staysail away when it started gusting F6. We were making around 5kts but then this would suddenly drop to below 3kts for no obvious reason – no change in wind speed or direction and no change in tide (which was with us). All we could guess was that it was the waves and swell knocking our speed off.
Having not been able to make that great a course to Wick and with our speed being knocked off we were running a bit late for the tide which started turning against us as we tacked to make a best course some miles north of Wick. We were making pretty poor progress against the tide and close hauled in the south westerly so it was time for Victor to be fired up. It was as we tacked in to shore that we also brought ourselves into the range of the rain showers and we had a bit of a drenching; but the rainbows they left behind were pretty impressive – we even saw a 3 tier one. The wind died off as the showers cleared so at least the sea state died down a bit and we were able to dry off in the evening sun.
Calling up Wick on our approach the harbour master confirmed that we had arrived bang on low water and that we might ‘touch bottom’. With a high level of nervousness I brought us in on the low swell to then make the 90 degree turn into the outer harbour and run close to the wall before making another 90 degree turn, avoiding a shoal area into the inner harbour. The lowest depth we got was 2.8m so we’d had a whopping gap of 70cm underneath us!
The winds are light for the next few days so we’ll spend some time in Wick. The harbour master is very friendly, the rates are reasonable and we’ve never been here before. Hopefully we’ll get something from the right direction and right speed at the weekend to head on down to Peterhead.