26/07/2011
The day started with mist rolling down the hills around the loch but the visibility to sea was clear. We were away by 8am to make the 50nm to the entrance to Hoy Sound, planning to get there a little earlier than when we thought the tidal stream would be reduced enough to enter safely.

The wind was light so the swell leaving Eriboll was much reduced from yesterday. The wind turned out to be pretty much on the nose rather than the northerly forecast. But the forecast for the next day was for even lighter winds so rather than spend 2 more days in Eriboll we decided to motor all the way to Orkney if needed - which is what we ended up doing. The sea surface was lightly ripped but there was a long swell and even when the wind backed a bit to a sailable angle it wasn't strong enough to push Emerald's 14 tonnes over the swell.

It was a pretty uneventful trip, not a lot to occupy us and as I'd taken my Stugeron the night before so no queasiness I was able to pass the time with reading. Part way across the sky went blue and the sun made a welcome appearance and stayed all the rest of the day. Closing on Orkney we could see the Old Man of Hoy and lots of seabirds appeared, I passed an hour or so attempting (and mostly failing) to take photos of fulmars swooping around us.

We got the bins out and Hoy Sound looked completely flat, so although we were earlier than planned we decided to go through. We had only an extra 2kts of tide with us and other than a few tiny circular whirls the water remained flat.

Round into the marina, onto a hammerhead pontoon and settled in for a few days in Stromness marina.

Apologies for not blogging for a while and posting a whole lot at once (James - we hope it isn't taking up too much of your work time reading them!). Thanks everyone for your lovely comments on here and Facebook, we really appreciate them and it keeps us blogging-on.