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…

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…

We left Reykjavik on Tuesday night, we have been sailing steadily since then and arrived at Torshavn, Faroe Islands this morning Sunday at 7am. At 10:30 last night we passed the lighthouse on the outermost Faroe island, whose name I can’t remember, and we were demonstrably in Faroe waters. Our expected arrival time was around 10am, on our watch, but when I awoke at 7 this morning to have breakfast and get ready for my watch I could feel the way coming off the boat so I knew all was good. It’s been an exciting couple of days sail….

It’s been a while since my last post, March in Kenya to be exact, and I’m going on the road again, or more precisely, on the sea.

One of the places that I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time are the Faroe Islands, which for those of you who aren’t quite sure, are located in the North Atlantic, SE of Iceland and NW of the Shetland Islands which are north of Scotland.