Nordsee ist boredsee

The 27^th of June was ideal for us to leave as there was a 4 day window with gentle wind. With tales of 10 metre waves from our Belgian neighbours who had sailed through the storm the night before, it was decided, we´d rather no wind than too much, and we would use the engine if we had too.

I had also been doing some very clever research on Youtube, and managed to find a video of huge waves almost destroying a container ship which had been haunting me for a few nights, so this seemed to be the calmest sea potentially for a few weeks.

After filling up every cannister we had with diesel, buying instant soup incase we couldn’t cook (gross by the way) and doing last minuit adjustments on the engine we were ready to leave our least favourite harbour in Norway, and cross over to the Orkney Islands!

Unfortunately we had told our families that we were headed for the Shetland Islands by mistake, and this caused some confusion in the family whatsapp group as my grandfather was tracking our crossing and keeping everyone updated. This wasn’t the only time they were worried, at one point we were out of tracking range and appeared still for several hours, just as a rescue ship drove by our last seen location… but this was all laughed about later over cups of tea.

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Baking on the North sea
For crumbs I am sorry 
As we rocked left to right, I couldn’t hold tight
The bread  it just tumbled free

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Our first evening was lovely and sunny, wavey as well because of the storm the night before, but beautiful, and the sun set at 23:10 which is utterly ridiculous. Niels started the night shift waking every 30 mins to check the sails and for other boats, and we swapped around 4am. The wind had disappeared by this point and we motored until 6 am.

28th- The sky was grey and grizzly, yet somehow this had no effect on the pale turquoise colour of the water, it looked completely artificial! Throughout the day we rested and stayed mostly inside, we ate lentil stew and watched the oil platforms come nearer and nearer. We sailed until 5pm, but had the engine on all night.

In the morning, 29^th June, the sun shone warmly, we even put sun cream on and hung out our wet clothes. I made banana bread and Niels made apfelringe again. There were many oil platforms with crazy flames shooting out of funnels, and long legs like robot spiders, it was totally surreal seeing them up close. By this point we had spent 3 nights and 2 full days at sea. Day blended into night blended into day and we felt relatively rested, but sleeping instantly when we´d lie down. At some point a small group of dolphins swam and played near the boat and we both got very excited, but they would disappear as soon as we got the camera out… cheeky things!

 We had to use the engine almost all day as strong wind was coming on Friday that we were trying to avoid, but we kept the mainsail out when we could, more for stability than speed – the boat rocks allot less when it´s out. That night was our last night on the North sea, and as the Orkneys got closer and the fishing boats became more, we saw land, and drove into a tiny fisher harbour with a few small boats. We had to calculate with the tide for the first time on our journey, as it rises and falls around 3.5 metres. One fishing boat was completely rusted to the wall, but was gone by the time we woke up, she was called “hopeful” and you would have to be!

After sleeping for two hours we decided to sail the last 70 miles to my Grandparents in the Kyle of Tongue, arriving early in the morning on the 31^st of June, almost exactly 1 month since leaving Germany.