Round Britain with Moonshine
Read John Hooper's account of his voyage in his Maxi 1100, summer 2006
Five years ago I was fortunate to be invited to crew on a friend's yacht from Peterhead to Oban through the Caledonian Canal. This was a memorable and enjoyable experience which gave me my first taste of sailing in Scotland and which I was determined to build on.
Having done the Canal, as crew, I was keen to see if I could go right round the top, as skipper, and started to make my plans with that in mind. The pilot books do their best to make the Pentland Firth and Cape Wrath seem as frightening as possible but it became clear that the Summer months provide reasonable periods of calm enough weather if one is lucky. The key lies in getting the tides right and, for the Pentland Firth in particular, it's best by far to tackle it at neaps, as Spring tides can run in excess of 8 knots. Provided there's an absence of fog and winds are less than F4 there shouldn't be too much of a problem...We set off from Harwich on June 5th, which allowed us 12 days to get to Wick, the jumping-off point for the Firth, neap tides starting on 17th. If the weather turned foul before we got there, we'd go through the Canal, making our decision at Peterhead. In the event, when we got to Peterhead, conditions looked pretty stable and we had a good passage across the Moray Firth, arriving at Wick in late afternoon on the 14th. In fact, winds were so light that we had to motor most of the way.
Our first stop had been Lowestoft which hadn't proved to be as easy a first passage as I'd planned as the wind was mostly 3 to 4 and on the nose. It took us 11 hours of motor-sailing, about 3 hours longer than anticipated! My crew was Ian Miles, my brother-in-law, and Sam Block. Nevertheless we got a good meal at the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk that evening, and knew we were on our way.
The passage to Whitby was going to be our longest of the whole trip, but the forecast looked OK and we cast off just before 08.00, to catch the N. going tide. By noon the skies had cleared and it was hot, but there wasn't much wind, and it wasn't till early evening that we were able to hoist the main and start sailing. The night was spent dodging gas-platforms and varying between motoring and sailing, but by 05.30 we had Flamborough Head abeam, and by 10.30 we were off Whitby. It was a glorious morning. After a little bit of standing off, the bridge opened at 11.41 (Reed's doesn't lie) and we entered the marina.
Cruising
