The Tyne to the Tay

Sun confusingly setiing in the northwest

Kalessin safely in Tayport

There are two attractive marinas in Northumberland, but after that the mooring options narrow down drastically. Winds were southerly but looked as though they would go northerly at the end of the week, so we needed to head off on Tuesday 28th - which would have been Sam's 84th birthday – to somewhere where we might end up staying four nights. Amble looked delightful, but was only 30 miles away. Berwick is a lovely town but tying to a wall in the Tweed Basin looked challenging, and also an email to them failed. Peterhead was a very long way and a straight line would take us well offshore into an area of stronger winds. I phoned Amble to book a place but then immediately changed my mind. We would change countries and head for Tayport, opposite Dundee on the river Tay. This meant we could make the most of the remaining southerlies and make another big stride in the right direction, without going quite so far offshore. The forecast was for the wind to strengthen for a short period in the afternoon, then ease off. Erika needs to head home around 6 June so really we need to get to Inverness by then if we can.

We left Royal Quays just before 7am and initially it seemed the gods were on our side. We went straight through the lock on free flow, filled up with a whopping 25 litres of diesel and were out in the nice calm river by 0705. We turned to sail north, with sunshine, wind SE, preventer on, both sails filling nicely and with the engine off by around 0945, and admired the resorts of Whitley Bay and the industrial heritage of Blyth. At 11 the wind was clearly strengthening and we put two reefs in the main. At 1345 it became less lovely, with the wind continuing to strengthen and heavy rain which was with us for eight hours. We dropped the main, put the engine on and trundled along wetly with just the jib. We passed between Bamburgh Castle and the Farne Islands - last time I was there, for the Mighty Hike in July 2023, it also rained for eight hours so perhaps this is a regular feature.

We turned the engine off for a couple of hours, then as we started to diverge from land put it on again. By 1800 we had crossed the border into Scotland and the Firth of Forth greeted us by becoming ever more rolly as we headed into the open water, although we did manage a hot meal which made us both feel better. By 2130 the wind had eased but the rolling continued. It's a particularly exhausting point of sail, and I was never more glad to have fitted the robust Raymarine Evolution tiller pilot which coped remarkably well. The waves were only about 1m so it was never dangerous, but it was impossible to relax.

As it finally got dark around 2200 I put on the navigation lights and discovered that our unreliable electrician had somehow wired in the deck floodlight to the same switch, either as well as or instead of the steaming light, I couldn't tell which. A brilliant white LED shining on the foredeck was not conducive to night vision, so I put on the tricolour instead - only supposed to be used when your engine is off. I wasn't convinced about that either as I could only see the white light, not red or green, but I couldn't get far forward enough to check.

Under the circumstances we were doing short watches of 90 minutes or so, although I'm pretty sure Erika did more time on deck than I did. The wind was supposed to go westerly but it skipped that and went straight to the north; I changed course to head a bit further to the west which at least made the swell more manageable. Soon after midnight I realised I couldn't see St Andrews, on our beam. Yes, just to make our night perfect there was thick fog. Impossible to tell the visibility, but certainly less than a mile. I handed over to Erika at 0100 with dire warnings about what to do if she thought we had run over a lobster pot (we didn't). And we slowed down to give ourselves a chance to see where we were going. By 0230 thank god the fog had gone and we turned safely into the Tay just after 0300, reaching Tayport marina at around 0500. It's a great little marina, run by volunteers, and has everything we need except electricity. So I'll have to stop this blog now as my laptop battery is already dying...

Distance run: 111 miles.