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Leaving Stornoway.  Thanks Toby for the great photo! After a lovely time in Stornoway, we dropped the lines close to midday and started our estimated 36-hour-trip to Stromness. Not the best weather to head into, but we have a tidal current to catch. We got soaked! Our plan to sail to Stromness was foiled as we had an extremely speedy sail across from Stornoway.  With both current and wind in our favour, we zoomed across much faster than planned.  Surely this is a good thing and why would this possibly cause troubles? The simple answer is the tides and current. Three hours on either side of high water.  The black arrows denote current direction.  Notice the direct change?  The thicker the arrow, the stronger the tidal flow. Stromness is inside the area on the image above marked "Scapa Flow."  The easiest path into the Scapa Flow from the west is through a strong tidal gate.  We were so early for the tidal gate, we almost made the previous t...

Ashore We woke up inside the ring of islands and were pleased to have blue skies for our day of exploration on the biggest of the Shiant Islands.  There were no permanent inhabitants, but plenty of sheep and birds.  Living on a ship takes its toll on your cardio fitness and we were going to make ourselves wheeze a bit by climbing to the top of the cliff. We came ashore on the gravelly isthmus between the two nodes of Garbh Eilean (eilean means 'island' in Gaelic) and walked over the rise to see the bothy we spotted when we were approaching the island group yesterday. Bothy facing south Most countries that have vast extents of wild areas to walk/hike in have some form of shelter that have been left for use of travellers.  This one would have originally been a shelter for the shepherds when the sheep were brought here for the summer. The bothy A view to the south A view to the west Hmmmm ... lamb for dinner tonight? The Shiants attracts ...