The Shetland CG forecast at ten past ten gave the same dreary general synopsis - high pressure over Iceland, low over Scandinavia, cool northerly airflow over Orkney - then they said that this was not going to change for the foreseeable future. That did it, and the passage planning started in earnest. We decided to save £123 by not going through the canal, and I began to fathom a way of working the wind and tide to get away from Shapinsay and off to Cape Wrath.

We got the dinghy deflated and stowed and prepared for sea, then sailed off the mooring shortly after one o'clock and headed West before making our best course to windward between Shapinsay and Wyre towards the various cardinals marking shoals between us and the Westray Firth. We had to put the engine on for 20 minutes to motor between two cardinals in a straight line as there wasn't any space to tack safely, but otherwise it was a good sail, close-hauled with 10 - 15 knots over the deck. Once into the Westray Firth we stayed on the port tack over to Muckle Green Holm, where the water began to swirl and boil and the tide took us at 50 degrees to our heading, sweeping us NW up the firth and out towards the Atlantic. The wind suddenly started gusting up to 24 knots or more true wind speed, and we took in two reefs in the main and rolled half the genoa away, deeming it best to do this now in the relatively flat though swirling waters here rather than in the Rull Rost which lay in wait for us a few miles up the Firth. Tacking onto starboard and with the wind slightly free we headed for open water, the tide picking us up and hurling us on a one way trip towards the dreaded Rost. We had no idea how big this would be, and although there were breaking waves over towards the Westray shore we had a fast, bumpy but reasonably under control passage through the worst of it at ten or eleven knots over the ground. At 18.00 I put in a waypoint for Cape Wrath - 61 miles to go.

The autohelm went on and stayed on until Cape Wrath. Mostly we sailed under all plain sail on anything from a close to a broad reach, with the wind North to NE at anything from five to eighteen knots. When it dropped below six knots for any length of time we put the engine on to stop the sails flogging too badly. We did two hour watches through the night, although neither of us really got enough sleep. The night hours were largely without incident, apart from the UFO (unidentified floating object) which sometimes appeared to be under way and heading for us, sometimes appeared to have flashing lights or searchlights, had at various times two red lights one above the other or four red lights on a tower, and remained on a constant bearing for hours even though we were dong five knots - but never seemed to get any closer or further away. After one abortive attempt to go round its stern we decided to ignore it.

We reached our Cape Wrath waypoint, about 2.5 miles NE of the cape, at around nine o' clock. We had somehow enjoyed a fair tide pretty much the whole way for the previous eighteen hours, but now the tidal woes began. We had three knots against us, and the seas were horrendous. We were motorsailing with prevented main and low engine revs to prevent overheating. The wind was dead aft and the genoa could have been flown with a pole rigged, but there was no way I was going on the foredeck and playing with poles in those seas, so we sat there doing between four and five knots through the water and between one and two over the ground for over three hours before that wretched headland slowly began to slip astern. Once we were out of the worst of the seas I poled out the genoa and we killed the engine and began to make progress down the coast.

With Kinlochbervie abeam the tide slackened and we decided to carry on for Lochinver as a return visit to Kinlochbervie held no particular attraction. By three o' clock the tide had turned in our favour again and we were making six knots or more over the ground heading for the Point of Stoer, enjoying splendid sailing as we surfed goosewinged down the steep following seas.

These excellent conditions continued all the way to the entrance to Lochinver, with the extraordinary backdrop of Suilven towering over it. We rafted up alongside the Beneteau 'Spirit of the Isles' from Lochgoilhead at six thirty. An X-Yacht from Orkney was also on the pontoon; we had met one of the crew in Kirkwall, so we chatted with them., then helped a couple in a Snapdragon from Ullapool come alongside before heading off to the Culag hotel for a pint and maybe a bar meal. This hotel was on the waterfront when we were here thirty years ago, but now the view is of the massive fish sheds and associated development of the new pier and harbour - like Kinlochbervie, built during the boom years and now largely unused since the fishing decline. Lochinver is doing better than Kinlochbrvie though; trawlers do come and go, and although there is now no market here fish is sold directly onto lorries that haul it off to France and Spain.

We ended up just having beer and crisps, then walking down the village to another pub to find it had stopped serving meals, so another pint then back to the boat for bacon and beans followed by biscuits and cheese and falling into bed.