Ever onward

We woke early yesterday, and had a chance to view our surroundings before heading off for the day. There were a few houses on the slopes down into the bay; traditional ones being side on to the sea, presenting the minimum face to the winter gales, and the more modern ones, looking out over the sea. The bay itself was quite stunning, with a number of rock arches carved by the action of the sea on the rocky shore, one large one, and a number of small ones.

The cliffs were home to huge numbers of seabirds. I'm not well up on bird spotting, so I'm afraid I can't tell you which types, but they were quite a sight, wheeling in the air.

Weighed anchor at 9am to catch the tide. Initially, although grey and overcast, the winds were 18knots and favourable, so we made good progress. Along the coast we were passed by Tico, a large motor sailing boat that we had seen at Peterhead.

However, later in the day the wind moved round so that it was blowing almost directly from the direction we wished to head, not good for a sailing boat, and became very squally, dropping to almost nothing, then surging to 25+ knots. This becomes very tiring very quickly when sailing short handed like us (fine if you have a large crew) so we called it a day and headed in to Cullen Bay to anchor for the night.

I don't know what was going on in the town, but the sound of bagpipes swirled out across the water to greet us as we came in close to anchor. Very atmospheric.

57 42.005'N 02 49.622'W