At last the Pentland firth.

Let's be honest here, this is my third trip this far north and I have avoided traversing the Pentland firth. Don't know why, yeah right. I have even gone to Shetland to get round the problem. It has a fearsome reputation and I was keen to see if I could do it.

Of course I had been all set up for it and then it didn't happen, what with the fog. I thought I would try a different tack now that we were in Scapa Flow. If I just nip down to Long Hope, I will be able to pop out into the firth and catch a ride between Swona and Stroma before being spat out at the other end.

Anyway we seemed to have got rid of the fog for a few hours to I left the Bay of Ireland down Hoy Sound.

With Stromness behind us.

Hoy with it's highness.

And it's high and low lights to lead you in from the westward.

You can just see the lower light at the righthand end of the island of Graemse. We island hoped our way along the eastern end of Hoy, past Cava with it's vinyards and dive boats.

Onward past the wee Rysa Little and inside the larger island of Fara where Flotta came into view. This island is set apart as an oil terminal. Pipelines end up there from the North sea and tankers fill their bellies with the black stuff.

I had thought that Marshmallow towers were a thing of the south but apparently not. I saw two of them and here is one.

After all this fun I had to take over from Samantha to avoid a tricky little reef and round up and take some sails down for out approach into Long Hope Sound, except you can't call it that now as they've blocked up the other end so I suppose it's a loch now. Anyway the Burgers of Long Hope have thoughtfully laid a couple of visitor's morings. The lifeboat was out in attendance just in cast. It was their openday, sadly ruined by the "no-show" of the rescue helicopter. They were called away on a real shout.

Taking the dinghy ashore allowed us to be parted with vast sums in aid of the brave folk who man these fine vessels. Anyway I wanted to cross their palms with silver as they may be needed if my plans went belly up!

After all the fuss had calmed down I took Tutak into the little harbour and tied up for a quiet sleep.

The morning brought us clearish skies and the jolly was on after getting the forecast, so we left Long Hope on the island of South Walls behind.

The wind was due to be variable 3 - 4 and we were just able to lay out of the bay and into Switha sound. The idea is to take the last of the West going steam out into the firth and West to Aith Hope. Lot of hopes around here, worries me it does. So rounding the East of South Walls we pick up the Cantick light and round that for the West.

A thing or two about tides. I have got all the Admiralty tidal atlases with their rates and directions and pretty diagrams. These must be a figment of some graphic designers imagination and can bear no relationship, now or in the future, as to what the tide might actually be doing. We shot out of the sound at 8kn to be met with a back eddy down to 1.5kn and had a worsening foul tide the whole way up to Aith Hope (I'm starting to understand these hopes now) which we never got to anyway because we had started to go backwards. I'm out of breath now, anyway, we had to head off to the Southwards and make enough distance so we didn't end up on Swona's beach. This we did, reaching out into the firth with 50 degrees of tidal offset. Reaching the middle of the firth we set a couse to take us between the islands of Swona and Stroma and stopped. The tide was now doing nothing. I was rather dissapointed to be honest. At least I could put the fog horn on for sailing, that made a change. Yes the vis had dropped now to less than a mile and occaisionally a lot worse and we had crossing ferry traffic. After an hour the tide did pick up and quite rapidly. The wind was no longer enough to keep us clear of Swona and the good old Bukh was started. The vis was steady at a mile, anyway it's not as if I had a choice now is it?

The water started to behave rather oddly. We speeded up and slowed down, it boiled away and then went mirror calm. I tried to get some of them in the photos but I don't know if it comes across.

This was more like it and the water really started to move in the narrows between the islands. We maxed out at 13.1kn with a boat speed of 3.9kn. So what's that? About 9 knots of tide, just off neaps if I remember rightly, wicked. I wouldn't want to do it on a nasty day. You need power and plenty of it to counter act the eddies and currents.

The fast ferries were on their return journey by now and I had to make sure we were not in their way. Things happen quickly at two or three times normal speed. We rounded Duncansby head mid stream with the Pentland skerries and headed south, still clocking a respectable 9 knots. All of a sudden I realised the fog had gone and looking back the whole of the firth was in one bank, weird.