Huge swell on the Monday

Another forecast we couldn't resist -only 10ft for the start of the weekend, but then 27ft and nuking on the Monday (50+mph). The plan this time was to head straight to Orkney to make the most of the smaller stuff. This time with Mark Bell again and Mike Archer.

Orkney North coast

Mike Archer

It was pretty small and barely surfable which was disappointing, lots of long walks, bit of a skunking..

Moo

The locals are ridiculously friendly on Orkney! 

Mike at Skara

Our first sail was at Skara Brae. Southerly wind and the righthand reef. I took pics and din't end up sailing as the wind swung SW.  

I did get out on the North coast though, when it went right round to Westerly.

Massive Monday

Big Monday and nothing much was happening.. we waited for the swell, we waited for the wind..  it finally started to kick in and I rushed out for 40 minutes sailing before we had to get the ferry. On arriving at the ferry port we found the ferry was cancelled! Apparently the high tide was the main reason (combined with the rapidly increasing and soon to peak 27ft swell)

So we went back to the north coast to sail again. But the high tide and massive swell was also our undoing, I didn't even try to get out through the shore break (logo high onto boulders)

The next ferry was at 6am the next morning, so we made sure we were on it as we all needed to be back at work.

Back on the mainland, we figured we had half a day to sail, so headed out at Sandside, which was actually going off! Some crazy gusts and very offshore, but very good swell wrapping in, definitely the highlight of the trip for me and finished off with half hour of surfing to myself (and about 20 waves!)