Stornoway

31 May 2015

After a beautiful day and a restful night we left Kirkwall and set course for a number of remote and uninhabited rocks and islands. It started with Sule Skerry and Sule Stack (Sule = Gannet), a small island with a lighthouse and a rock next to it. And as expected, it was full with Gannets, but also common murre, razorbills, terns etc.
We tried to anchor, but the swell was so high that this was not possible. So we set course to (North) Rona, an island about 40 NM north of Lewis. Here we could anchor and with a bit of clamber, we reached the island.
It was full of different bird species and gray seals. There were the ruins of St Ronan’s Chapel from the 8th century, it is considered to be the oldest untouched Christian building in the UK and certainly one of the three oldest known structures of the Celtic church.
As soon as everyone was back on board we headed towards the first island of the Hebrides: Lewis. The weather reports on the radio spoke of winds up to 10 Bft and the grib files on board confirmed this. The decision to seek a safe haven was easily made. The first safe harbour was Stornoway, so we arrived there just before midnight.
Today we stayed in the harbour and we arranged a Stornaway-day with movies about sailing the ‘Peking’ and the ‘Oosterschelde’ and lectures about meteorology, stability and the history of Scotland. Besides all this our guests had time to make a nice walk through the area and the port.