Sunday 21st August
It was still dark when we left Wick at 5am on a still morning. I wasn’t worried about getting out of the harbour like I’d been on the way in, as we’d just passed high tide. Out into the North Sea we picked up a south westerly breeze strong enough to blow us along, so it was all sails up and Victor off. The sky was covered by a blanket of flat, grey cloud with the rising sun making its presence known as a slash of glowing orange in a break in the clouds, like molten lava in the sky.

It was quite mild and as the sun got higher in the sky the clouds moved off east and it got pleasantly warm. The south westerly wind came and went; at times dropping off to F3 then increasing to F5 gusting F6. F5 was perfect to maintain a good speed, F3 wasn’t ideal but we still bimbled along at around 4kts. At lunchtime the wind dropped to F2 but we kept sailing albeit at 2kts, at least I wasn’t lurching about as I made lunch. Unfortunately no amount of wishing, whistling and eventually swearing at the sky brought the wind back and we reluctantly fired up Victor. What was most annoying was the weather forecast had been prefect for us and reality was nothing like what was forecast.

The sailing half of the trip was great, in contrast to a dull motoring half punctuated by some slow moving showers and the wind dying completely; but at least this flattened off the sea and we were able to see and avoid a big tree trunk floating in the Moray Firth. We also spotted, just in time to get the engine into neutral, a huge length of floating line from a pot buoy, trailing many meters from the buoy itself. We picked up some positive tide around Rattray Head to help us along and we were pleased to arrive at Peterhead harbour at 8pm arriving just after a cruise ship had left.

We’re aiming for Eyemouth next, which at 100 miles will be an overnighter. The forecasts for the next few days aren’t showing us anything that will give us a good blow all the way there, so it’s a choice between a rock and a hard place of burn diesel motoring or paying in a marina whilst hoping for a better forecast to come along. Whilst in Eyemouth we’d like to try and visit Edinburgh and catch the end of the festival so I think our decision is made as it ends at the weekend!