Yachting Monthly – September 2019

HUGH STEWART

started sailing after

he joined the Royal

Naval Reserve and

was lined up as crew for

offshore races.

Family circumstances then

dictated dinghy sailing but he

sought adventure with a

couple of Hobie Cats. He

bought Mikara, a 33ft

Hallberg Mistral, 16 years

ago and he and his wife

Wendy have cruised

extensively in France,

Holland, Scandinavia

and particularly in

Scotland where Mikara 

is kept.

They have twice

circumnavigated Britain, on

the second occasion doing

so the long way via Norway,

Shetland and Orkney.

‘A sunny place for shady people’ is how Somerset

Maugham once described Monaco. Orkney is the

opposite; a shady place for sunny people. Orcadians

are some of the friendliest folk you will encounter,

and we had been enjoying their warm hospitality

to the tunes of many a fi ddle band in the Folk

Music Festival, washed down with a dram or two

of Highland Park. We had also visited the amazing

5,000-year-old Skara Brae Neolithic settlement and

the museum dedicated to North West Passage

explorer John Rae. It’s

diffi cult to leave Orkney as

it has a magnetic pull, but

now it was time to set sail

for the Western Isles, via

Cape Wrath.

Our yacht was our

1960 designed, Viking

manufactured, 33ft

Hallberg Mistral, Mikara,

a strongly built composite

with wooden superstructure

on a GRP hull. I was sailing

her with my wife Wendy.

The two of us have sailed many miles in this boat

but rounding Cape Wrath still brought a frisson of

foreboding. The very name, Cape Wrath, conjures

up images of Norse gods hurling thunderbolts at

ill-prepared yachtsmen. The name is indeed Norse

but derives from the word ‘hvarf’ meaning simply

‘turning point’. Thankfully, treated with respect

it proved to be free of thunderbolts, even in

unhelpful weather.

In an ideal world we’d have waited for a soldier’s

wind which would allow a direct passage of about 112

miles from Orkney to Stornoway on Lewis;

achievable in 24 hours, and in summer mostly in

daylight. But diaries dictated timing and we might

have waited forever. The predominant wind is the

WSW which has blown over 2,000 Atlantic miles to

get there, so even in the summer months there’s a

50% chance of Force 5 or above and the likelihood of

a gale. Our forecast was WSW Force 5-6, bang on

the nose.

We were two days short of neaps but, even so,

Orcadian tides still sluice between islands at a

fearsome rate. We cast off from Stromness to time

our passage through the Sound of Hoy at the last of

ABOVE Time your

departure from

Stromness before

the last of the ebb

to avoid overfalls in

the Sound of Hoy

BELOW When

rounding Cape

Wrath keep 3-5

miles offshore

Our zig-zag plot looked like a goat track up

a precipitous mountain as we tacked to and fro

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RITES OF PASSAGE