The Best Laid Plans

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 up’ into the wind with the sails close-hauled (pulled in fairly tight) so that it all becomes a bit of a struggle. On average we were perhaps making 3 or 4 knots per hour and yet our 'sail plan A' required us to average 5 knots if we were to reach Stonehaven close enough to high tide to get into safe shelter. I started fantasising about sailing in the Mediterranean or Caribbean. Anchoring in a beautiful bay and diving off the boat into warm blue crystal-clear water. The kind of sailing trip that my partner Toni would want to join me on. My nickname for Toni is ‘sunnyside’ because she loves hot sunshine and will cross the street to catch a few rays, while I tend to stay on the shady side and crawl under a rock in the midday sun. Anyway, this North Sea experience was nothing like warm and sunny, but when Mark woke up from his 1.5 hours snooze and called up from below ‘alright buddy?’ I am rather proud to report that I managed to avoid the prolonged whinge and foul language that sprang to mind, and merely offered an observation, ‘well it is a bit cold’. Mark got the message and put on several layers and full foul weather gear before coming up to take over the helm for his shift. In the shot below Nuala is geared up and on the helm of Tami Nori with Kindred Spirit in the background and chasing to keep up.

After a couple of hours of struggling against the wind in a lumpy sea we have a quick radio discussion with Peter and Nuala on our sister ship and we are all agreed that ten more hours of this might not be a bundle of fun, so we opt for Plan B and turn on to a more comfortable tack towards Arbroath. It is a funny thing about adventure journeys, that this kind of mild suffering, often including getting cold and wet and hungry, is part of the game. Without a certain amount of suffering and risk and then the adventure becomes merely ‘practicing’ an outdoor activity at a low level of challenge. I guess we could just sail Kindred Spirit II up and down the Blackwater estuary, from Mark’s sailing club base and back again, and drink plenty of gin. There is certainly a place for this kind of outdoor activity, after all it is supposed to be ‘fun’ and practice is useful for developing skills. But adventure requires an uncertain outcome, and to some extent that seems to involve a certain amount of suffering. Maybe Mark and I should have stuck with sailing his Wayfarer dinghy, because we certainly used to suffer more when sailing that off the west coast of Scotland, and the outcome of each trip in the dinghy was very uncertain. So you buy a bigger, more comfortable boat and then move the goal posts, aiming for a longer more challenging trip to ensure that you still get plenty of suffering. It’s a funny old game this ‘adventure’ malarkey. The good thing is that you make your own rules for your own adventures. In our case one rule seems to be that when sailing round the UK it is fine to use the shortcut through the Caledonian Canal, but it is not quite the full round. Back enroute to Arbroath, of course the sun soon came out and the wind even backed a little towards the northwest and ironically provided much better conditions in which to carry on to Stonehaven. However, after another radio negotiation we quickly agreed to continue into Arbroath, no doubt tempted by its proximity as well as its sophisticated café culture. The sailing became more enjoyable and by lunchtime we were motoring into the outer harbour and through the lock gate into the inner harbour. The lock gate means that the inner harbour avoids drying out to the mud at low tide, but it also means that we cannot escape until about 11am tomorrow morning. So it looks like we can enjoy a barely deserved lie-in on day three of our tour.

One bonus of sailing with our friends in a second boat was that we managed to get some photos of Kindred Spirit II and of Tami Nori under full sail. In our 59-day UK round trip in 2021 we did not manage to get even one shot like this. In this case the sails are reefed, meaning they are partially rolled in, to reduce the sail area in the gusty wind.

Tami Nori is a couple of feet longer than Kindred Spirit II and with high specification sails and a well-qualified and experienced skipper it does seem to go quite a bit quicker than Kindred Spirit. After chasing them for a couple of hours I was able to pull the ‘photos under sail’ card and they kindly put in a few tacks to wait for us to catch up. I need to think of similar crafty ploys for every day this week. Perhaps tomorrow I will suggest ‘video under sail’ to stop them sailing out of sight over the horizon, not that I am competitive or anything like that. Maybe I will sneak out tonight and tie a bucket on a length of rope to the back of Tami Nori! She looks great in this shot below.


So, given that we are in Scotland, it seems appropriate to quote the famous baird Robert Burns (better known as Rabbie): ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men. Gang aft a-gley.’ So we are in Arbroath for a night out and a lie-in rather than in Stonehaven as originally planned We hope to reach Stonehaven tomorrow, but that is a scheme and a story for another day.

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