13-15th August

After some time we saw fog banks and presently were in fog. This continued for a couple of hours but by 1130 we had a breeze from astern and set a goosewinged genoa and soon the fog cleared and we were in sunshine. Lovely. Fog not good. There was about 10 knots of breeze from astern and I’d thought we’d move at about 4 knots but we were making over 5 which was great. By the mid afternoon we’d run out of telephone signal and Manus and I sat on the aft deck in the sun chatting. Ideal sailing conditions. Occasionally I’d have to adjust course 5 degrees or so to keep the sails full. We enjoyed a sundowner of wine and crisps before I deconstituded some hamburgers to make a spag bol. During the night the wind went around to the SE and we dropped the pole carrying on, now on a broad reach.

The following day was cloudy but we had good winds and made a good speed for most of the day. By 1700 the wind died again as we entered another fog bank. I roasted a gammon joint for dinner. Just after dinner a pod of big   dolphins with a white top to there. noses, not white sided or white beaked, possibly another species previously unknown to man, joined us and kept us company for a few hours. I’ve also enjoyed seeing gannets and fulmars again having missed them in the Baltic. I tried stopping the engine at 2000 but it was on again by twenty past and didn’t stop ‘til 2300 when an on watch Manus stopped it as the wind picked up from the NW. We put a couple of reefs in the main and I did the midnight to 1500 watch by which time the fog had cleared but we were ploughing into a heavyish sea. We had up to about 25 knots and I put a couple of reefs in  the genoa too. The forecast, old because we’d been without signal for some time, had the wind going to the NE before backing to the NW, initially we were more than making our course and I was optimistically thinking it would veer soon however it didn’t, it backed and then we weren’t making our course, or the Moray Firth, heading more for Peterheid. The wind was up and down and mostly around 18 knots and with the double reefed genoa we weren’t driving hard enough to push through the waves so we got out more genoa at which point we started sailing better again and the wind gods kindly gave us enough of a lift to get past Fraserburgh without tacking and we’re now just past Pennan bay hoping for another lift to see us into Inverness Firth later tonight.