Jean says: After a few weeks of incredibly calm weather and protected sailing, we were back in big seas and gusty winds. Today gave us a flavour of what's to come when we head round the corner tomorrow morning. It took us a while to adjust back to having to work quite hard on the helm, but we sailed for most of the journey and tacked our way up to Kinlochbervie, the most Northerly harbour before Cape Wrath. Kinlochbervie is anther serious fishing port, although today there's not much evidence of fishing going on. Do fishermen have the weekends off or are they like farmers and make hay when the sun shines, so to speak?

We sailed for much of the time in the company of Joe, David and Andrew on Dawn Treader, and they're rafted up to us in the harbour tonight. They're not sure yet what they will do tomorrow, but there's something reassuring about having someone else doing the same passage. Hopefully, they will decide to accompany us.

Our plan is to leave at 6.00 and be rounding the Cape at 10.00 to catch the East going tide. If we don't like what we see, we'll turn back, which will mean the end of the attempt to get round the top, because this is our only maneagable weather window. If that happens, we'll set off back towards the Caledonian Canal and resume our original plan. If we think we can cope with the conditions, we'll head for Stromness and be there by 22.00 tomorrow night.
Then the Pentland Firth is beckonning, but we'll cross that firth when we get to it. We don't want to enumerate our poultry before they incubate.

Cape Wrath actually means 'turning point' as opposed to a place of violent anger and rage, as I'd previously thought, but knowing that doesn't make it any less daunting to go round it. We've re-christened it 'Cape Fingers Crossed'.

All we can say is that we bet you all .........





(By the way that's me in the middle and Bob's the one on the right just behind)