August 29th - 30th Passage back to Scotland
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Sat 30 Aug 2014 13:32
After exploring and going for a good hike up the local hill we had a convivial evening as the Canadian Boat 'Pelorus Jack' moored next-but-one invited us for dinner aboard their smart 'Island Packet'. We had a great evening with the Canadians (plus one Australian) finding out about their semi-permanent live aboard life. They have come from the West Coast of Canada down via Panama and then across from North America and Greenland. An amazing journey and one apparently full of ice in the latter parts. It turns out they may overwinter in Falmouth so we had much to talk about. In fact we seemed to be in a small enclave of around 6 similar sized yachts all of which appeared to be of the long distance sailing and live-aboard variety, including one German vessel complete with a collie as part of the crew.
Friday dawned very foggy and there is the threat of the remnants of Hurricane Christobel in the offing later this weekend, but after paying our harbour dues and checking out with the Torshavn Harbour master we decided to risk the reportedly 3m swells outside the harbour and hope that the visibility improved away from land. It's that or possibly getting stuck here for another 4 days or so. Pelorus Jack had the same idea so we cast off in company at 13:00 GMT.
The swells and rip tide provided us with a slightly tense couple of hours with visibility down to a half a mile. PJ behind us has an AIS transmitter and we could see them clearly, so has become the next thing on Awelina's Christmas list. The Faeroes are infamous for tidal over-falls and while we escaped the worst even the mild ones we had to sail through were impressive, breaking over the coach-roof.
However the visibility improved, wind settled and we passed a wonderful evening bowling along in the setting sun with a few stars and phosphorescence. During Fiona's first watch, just as it got really dark, a splodge fell to the deck and on putting out her hand a little bird hoped gratefully into it and just hunkered down. Fiona had to call James to come and make a nest out of a cardboard box. Usually land birds don't survive when they land on boats but so far it is still alive in the saloon and has dried out and warmed up nicely but has not eaten a thing (we think it's an insectivore from the shape of its beak, but not having any meal-worms to hand we've tried digestive biscuit crumbs, very finely shredded lamb and Icelandic cheese - but none acceptable) nor has it drunk any water.
We've been tracking the projected path of 'Extra-tropical revolving storm' Christobel from the Met Office High Seas bulletins, which predict violent storm force winds and very high seas. It's away to the SW and closer to Newfoundland than us at the moment but is moving 'very rapidly' NE and the normal shipping forecast has just started to issue gale warnings for the sea areas to the S and W of us. However so far it's all as we expected and we hope and plan to be in the Minch and even nearing Plockton before its first effects are felt. The centre is predicted to pass over Iceland, not the Hebrides, luckily for us but a bit tough on the Icelandics as they already have the volcano eruption to contend with.
Today the wind is only force 3 from the north so we are on a run and trying to ignore the slopping about of the boat in this mixed sea. Pelorus Jack is ~15 miles behind us (we spoke to them on the SSB at breakfast) and we're both hoping to avoid the incoming wet and windy weather tomorrow. They're going to put in to Stornoway.
We can just about tell we're nearing home waters as a great skua (aka a Boxie) has appeared, but no dolphins yet. We're almost exactly 50 miles north of the Butt of Lewis.