Around Cape Wrath

I have been a bit under the weather since Mike’s fine ‘Tarte poulet’. I have had  a virus I think that left me feeling sick and very weak but 4 days later I am back on my feet and bouncing around again.

We rounded Cape Wrath on Wednesday. Far from being wrathful (is that a word?!) we had a terrific sail in sunshine and 20 knots of wind from behind us. I hate to shatter the illusion of romance and danger of Cape Wrath but the name has nothing to do with the wrath that we understand, it is from the Norse word for ‘round the corner’, so round the corner we went to the north coast of Scotland. It felt like quite a milestone in my adventure.

We have had many goes at fishing without success; the cold start to the year seems to have delayed the mackerel coming in but we did finally have success and landed 4 mackerel and 1 pollock, a white fish similar to cod. Now this was a moment we had been waiting for, not just because we wanted fish for dinner or even the wine to go with them but so that we could try my new toy, a smoker! Out of its new wrapper it came looking very smart and shiny with two glistening mackerel on the grill.

 It is simply a tin box with wood chippings scattered in the base then 2 meths burners put underneath to heat the chips and the tin thus smoking and cooking in one. Unfortunately I had not read the instructions properly (no comments about males please) and had brought paraffin instead of meths; no matter, they both burn don’t they? Well, yes and no. The burners lit beautifully but 10 minutes later there were flames billowing out either side of the smoker and my nice new shiny tin was covered in thick black soot! 

Never mind, it was the fish we were after. Look good? Yes, but they tasted FOUL! Upon investigation, the paraffin heat had been so great that the chips had been burned to cinders thus smoking the fish not with tasty chip smoke but charcoal; they tasted rather like the bottom of the tin looked! Oh well, you live and learn; we will have to catch some more (if only it were that easy), we’ve already got the meths!

From the Cape we headed east to Orkney. It was our first windless day for a while so we motored the 35 miles to Hoy and the famous Old Man of Hoy, a very spectacular rock pillar famous with climbers.