Kipper Sailing

Neither of us we especially early rising this morning and Nasher was definitely the worse for wear.

The first job was to fill up with water. We shouldn't have really needed to but there was a small leak in our starboard tank, at the top, where the inlet pipe joins and, with the boat bouncing around on the last leg, the water had pumped itself out and into the bilge. We think we've fixed it but will attempt a better repair in Lerwick. Even if it does leak, we're not going to die of thirst. The, slightly smaller port tank is OK and we've got lots of bottled water.

We had to fill up on the ferry pier, which has nasty steel edged piles and there aren't any fender boards, so we had to be careful with the fenders in order to protect Kipper's topsides. Then we moved back out into the bay, to share a mooring with Summer Bird, a beautiful Warrior 40. I'd love one of them but, dream on. They were struggling to fix their autopilot. The ram had detached from the quadrant and they hadn't got the necessary spanners. Fortunately Kipper's extensive tool kit was up to the task and I spent an hour or so with my head under their cockpit putting it back together for them. They've promised beers in Lerwick.

We then went ashore for lunch and found an absolutely fantastic little, family run, café / restaurant near the post-office. Mum is of Italian stock, Dad Indian and they had a mouth-watering selection of Indian and Italian dishes. Sons and daughters wait at table. Actually, that's not quite true. Daughters wait at table. Sons seem to mainly loaf around. Anyway, I had today's special vegetarian curry with naan bread and it was truly delicious. Definitely the best curry I've had outside India (sorry Annie). Nasher had a ginormous plate of spaghetti carbonara. It defeated him but I think he was still feeling a bit off colour.

Then, whilst Nasher retired to Kipper for a siesta, I set off to walk around the bay and across the causeway to Vatersay, which has beautiful white san beaches, but it was a lot further than I had reckoned and I had to turn back in order to go to the Co-op for supplies. I managed to buy a cheap, really cheap, pretty crap watch because I've broken the strap on my faithful, old Sieko. I hope to get it repaired in Lerwick.

Before we came to Barra, we had been warned, by race veterans, that the shop here was completely useless and some had even gone to the trouble of shipping food here ahead of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Co-op is reasonably large and very well stocked. There's another grocery store, bank, post-office and a hardware shop.

We re-start at 2043 tonight. The leg to Lerwick is around 470 miles and, looking at the GRIB (weather) files we downloaded this morning, we're likely to suffer a couple of spells of light winds, so we're estimating that it's going to take us 5 days, meaning that we'll arrive sometime on Sunday evening. Once again the faster boats that started 2 and half days ago have enjoyed much better winds. We were watching our friends', in Ding Dong, progress on the tracker, yesterday afternoon, and we could see them reaching at 10kts wheraas, when we're in the same area, we'll be lucky to be doing 5. Ah well.