Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

We left MacDuff yesterday evening after getting the all clear from Roddy and David, the engineers. We headed north by west for the Pentland Firth. The run was good upto the Pentland with a light NW 4-5 breeze, but when we entered the firth (which is the straits between the Orkneys and the north of Scotland) we were met by quite a large westerly swell and were hurtling along in a 9 knot tidal race. The tide and swell meet to the north of John o Groats and the island of Hoy and where they meet it causes huge overfalls and tidal eddys which gave us quite a bumpy ride for and hour or so. We managed to reach 16.4 knots at one point which is the fastest we have ever gone in this boat, we very rarely go above 10-11  knots.

The montains along the northern tip of scotland

We then set our course for Cape Wrath, the scenery was quite spectacular along this part of the coast, with huge mountains reaching out into the sea. We spent the rest of the day travelling down the Minch, which is the stretch of water between the Western Isles and the west coast of Scotland, fingers crossed it has been a good run down so far.

Cape Wrath(nw tip of scotland)