Kindred Spirit II sailing around the UK farewell tour

Today was a quiet day of sailing. Mostly motor sailing, but with a bit of wind in the middle of the journey to make us feel like proper sailors. We were persuaded, rather reluctantly, to avoid our normal approach of a 4am departure and instead set off after a light lunch at 2pm. The fickle winds were on our nose and forced us to use the motor. Luckily the sea state was mostly moderate, not too rough, so we travelled the 37 nautical miles to Peterhead in 7 and a half hours mainly because the wind picked up from 6 to 16 knots and veered from north to north-east to speed us on our way. We both managed a brief snooze below decks but as we had a lie in already that did not work very well. So, we passed an hour or two revising the phonetic alphabet, sad but true. The trickiest letter, at least for us, was P for Papa, although M for Mike, N for November and surprisingly W for whiskey had us struggling for a while. This kind of quiet day, when the risk seems low and the sailing is easy, offe...

 One of the joys of sailing is the subtle sounds of passing through wind and water and the feeling that you are travelling lightly on the planet following a longstanding tradition and immersed in nature. So, motor sailing in faint breezes for seven hours to get to Stonehaven today seems like rather poor style. Not only is it a kind of cheating, if you claim to be ‘sailing’ round the UK, it also increases your carbon footprint and annoyingly involves the constant running of a rather loud 18 horse power diesel engine. The boat is too small, you cannot escape the noise and vibration, although on this lovely warm day with an almost flat calm sea I did visit the front deck for a while to gain a slight respite from being 20 rather than 3 feet away from the growling beast that is maintaining our steady progress at 5 knots. We are at least motor sailing, so we have the mainsail up and it is catching the slight south-easterly wind so that, more in hope than physics, we might gain a little a...

We escaped from Anstruther harbour at 5am on a falling tide because that was the latest we could be sure to avoid getting stuck in the mud. Our ‘Plan A’ was to sail for ten hours or so and reach Stonehaven. In the event we opted for ‘Plan B’ which was a much shorter day to Arbroath. The wind was variable, switching between 10 and 20 knots, but generally of sufficient strength to keep us going at our target average boat speed of 5 knots. The main problem was the direction of the wind, which was almost northerly, meaning it was blowing from just west of north and yet we want to travel north. One hour after leaving Anstruther Mark went below for a snooze and left me in charge. Within half an hour I was starting to feel chilly, despite wearing several layers and full foul weather gear. The North Sea can be a friendly and beautiful place but it is also capable of being a lumpy and cold body of dark menacing water. I tried my best to enjoy the sailing, but it was frustrating having to ‘beat ...

 With a good dose of déjà vu I rise at an ungodly hour of the morning, click the kettle on, and turn back to my bed to stuff my sleeping bag into a dry bag. My brother Mark, with the help of crew mates from his sailing club – Martin, Jackie and Christine - have sailed his 30-foot yacht, Kindred Spirit II, up here to Edinburgh so that we are in position to tackle some unfinished business. During May to June 2021, we set off from Blackwater Sailing Club in the south-east and spent 59 days sailing clockwise round the UK, crossing the Thames then heading via the Isles of Scilly, Holyhead, Northern Ireland and then the Scottish Islands to eventually travel down the east coast back to our starting point ion Essex. However, we took a short cut through the Caledonian Canal, which runs from Fort William in the west to Inverness in the east. We therefore feel that we have a date with destiny in the far north, specifically we would like to sail round The Orkney Isles and Cape Wrath. We now ha...