Speedwell of Rhu Ship's Log

25 th of July 2011 - Chasing the tall ships

We decided to wait for the tide to be in our favour before leaving Burravoe, so had lunch first. When we switched on our AIS we saw that the tall ships still seemed to be in Lerwick. This didn't surprise us too much as the weather had been dreadful. They were gradually leaving the South Mouth (Sooth Mooth) and we assumed, correctly, that the race from Lerwick to Stavanger had been delayed by a day. We sailed south under genoa. Unfortunately we arrived in Lerwick after the race had started and the tall ships had all left. There were still a few yachts moored around the harbour and the small boat harbour had enough yachts still present for us to need to raft up. We found a lovely boat called Rapscallion. With the wind blowing us off and very little space to manoeuvre, we took a few goes to get our lines on to the other boat. My throwing appears to have got worse, so fortunately the crew on Rapscallion were able to help.

Over night another boat rafted on us. However, Andy and I were ready at 6am the next morning to help Rapscallion leave. It was possible for Rapscallion to slip out from between our lines and for us to pull Speedwell in to the pontoon without the people on the boat outside us being woken. They were a little bit confused when they eventually woke.

We had a useful day provisioning and washing, ready to head south the following day.

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