If you remember from my last post we are in Kirkwall, Orkneys for two nights to wait out a gale. Weather intermittent sun and rain but the wind blew hard from the south for the entire time and since we were on the northern side of our dock we were being blown away from our mooring, well that we had doubled our mooring lines.

One advantage of being moored for two days was the opportunity to find the town’s laundromat and clean up a 2 week accumulation, bliss…

uesday afternoon and we’re moored at the dock in Kirkwall, Orkneys and battoned down tight with extra lines at the bow and stern. Tell you why in a second.

We spent Sunday in Lerwick, a cold, wet day with nothing open. I had looked forward to finding a laundromat and getting my two week backlog washed and dried and on doing a Google Maps search discovered that while there was only one laundromat to serve the town, nonetheless there was a laundromat. I took a taxi from the docks with my bag of laundry, making sure to keep the taxi window open! and arrived at my destination only to discover that it was closed on Sundays…

Left Norddepil, Faroes at 6am, all hands on deck to raise sails. Very fresh westerlies but a change coming in the next 36 hours so Gijs wanted to get to sea early to have a clear run to the Shetlands before the winds changed. All sails raised, a quick breakfast and on watch at 8. Breeze very fresh from the West and as our course was roughly East South East down came the normal jib and up went the large jib as well as the main and mizzen topsails, Tecla then carrying her full suit of sails; large jib, foresail, main and mizzen sails and main and mizzen topsails. It was a downwind run and the ship blasted its way through the swells and waves at between 8 and 9 knots all day.

Saw whales in the afternoon, two who appeared only momentarily a couple of hundred metres to starboard, fin whales I think…

I’ve had some email question asking about the ship, requesting some pictures of the interior and some more about the daily routine.

You need to know that we are not on watch when moored but only when at sea. So breakfast is usually around 7 so that the 8am watch can eat before their watch. The 4am to 8am watch also eat then with a couple of permanent crew standing watch in their place and then switching before the 8am watch comes on. Breakfast is done by 8 and if you’re not on watch and sleep in, you lose…

Torshavn on a Sunday is very much like Toronto the Good used to be 50 years ago, nothing open except the odd restaurant and cafe and very few people to be seen. Captain Gijs had arranged for a minivan to take most of my cremates on a drive around the island to see some of the local landmarks. I pulled something in my hip when we were raising sail and have been managing it with Advils and Tylenol but I didn’t feel up for a long day sitting in a van so decided to stay behind and write my blog and work on some pictures. As it turned out many of the places that the van visited were on Gijs’ sailing itinerary so we will end up visiting them by sea as well as by land and so I won’t have missed anything…