Round Scotland - 11 July

This race is turning out to be fun, a game of leap frog is going on. However I have found it very hard, mainly because it's been bitterly cold. Remind me never to be persuaded to do the Round Britain and Ireland race, it's just too cold. I would love to come back to cruise in Scotland but only if you can choose when you leave around the weather and be in the pub at night with a roaring fire and a tot of whisky.

Anyway I digress. We had an amazing send off from the people of Derry/Londonderry. There were hundreds of people lining the river banks in the city and along the banks of Loch Foyle as we made our way down to the start at Greencastle.

Crowds line the banks of the River Foyle as we depart

We had a flying start, second over the line I think. I'm not sure exactly, as I was in the nav station at the time, Ben (the skipper) had asked me to look at the tides. We came out of the bay quite close behind Yorkshire and straight away hit the cold. We were beating up wind all the way up around the Hebrides, past St Kilda on our port side, which was the first sighting of the land of Scotland. Then we saw Lewis on the starboard side. We only came off the wind at the Cape Wrath, when we turned the corner to cross the top of Scotland.

I had the dilemma of being on deck, sitting on the rail getting cold, or going down below to get warm and knowing that I would get seasick. So on the first evening I had to come down, as I was concerned about getting hypothermia, and the old “mal-de-mer” kicked in. It meant I missed a watch the first night as I was really quite ill, with the shivers etc. as well as nausea. It lasted all the next day, but I managed to get up on deck during the day and a spell on the helm helped me to feel better.

Across the top of Scotland, the sea temperature was 9° C.

Once round the corner we had to play the tides and we approached the Pentland Firth, knowing we would be against the tide going through and had been just overtaken by Finland. Visit Finland is the new boat that replaced the one that ran aground in the last race, and it just does seem to go faster.

We came up on watch in the afternoon to great excitement. Finland had taken a route down the middle of the outer sound and just stopped in the adverse tide. Ben had spotted an eddy around the north of Stroma and we just shot past them.

The next day Finland were clearly chasing us down and overtook us again. Last night great excitement again as Gold Coast (who had been leading), and Finland got caught in a wind hole and we just went past both of them. Ben was so excited he couldn't sleep.

As I write, Gold Coast have apparently passed us again. It's difficult to tell because they have switched their AIS (identification system similar to that used by planes to identify themselves, and give course and speed information.  It is not compulsory for this size of boat at sea.) off, but that is the latest position report from the race office. Down the east coast we've been down wind sailing with the kite up, but it's still cold, requiring all my layers. We've had to pull kites down twice for repair because of holes in them, so it's been very busy the whole time. Busy is good because then you keep warm.

I’m off to bed now for my morning sleep, as I am on deck again this afternoon. Let’s hope for some sunshine. It's also just been grey the whole way.