A day on Papay

Regatta day in Westray is a big day in the island's calendar. Unfortunately with Pixie in full cruising mode she's not spritely, we carry 200 liters of water, have a 20 kg windlass and 65 kg of anchor and chain, we have an outboard, wind generator, radar pole, dinghy etc we also only had a few days on Westray, so to spend the day racing would have been a missed opportunity to look around the island. While all the boats were racing we went to the RNLI stall on the pier, bought some raffle tickets and cakes and set off on our tour of Westray. The reason I'm backtracking slightly is that I usually buy tickets for the RNLI raffle out of support for what they do rather than to win a prize. Although having said that I did once win a gallon of Famous Grouse in an RNLI raffle some years ago. The first prize (and I thought only prize in this raffle) was a hamper full of goodies from Westray and Orkney. There were however some more prizes in the raffle as we found out that evening. A gentleman came down to Pixie with a box that we'd won in the raffle! With some excitement I opened the box and found a pair of mugs.



They don't go with anything else on board Pixie, but we'll remember where we got them from.

That evening we went to the pub where we got chatting to the crew of Harmony, before leaving them and going the the Westray Regatta Dance. Kirsty was disappointed she didn't know any of the dances, I was slightly relieved. While at school, Scottish pupils are taught Scottish country dancing on the run up to their Christmas Dance. So being brought up in England I didn't have the foggiest was was going on. It was all very impressive that a full age spectrum of the community can hit the dance floor, dance in coordination with each other without crushing each others feet in the process. Everyone seemed to know the dances and it had a really good friendly atmosphere. We cycled back at gone 1am in darkness with no lights on our bikes. There was no traffic around at all. Not something I'd recommend in other parts of the country though!

The next morning came far too early, although it was 9am when we woke up. We had to catch the 11am ferry to Papa Westray. The harbour master also works on the ferry over to Westray's smaller neighbour. We took the bikes and just after we arrived it started to rain. If the next ferry wasn't until 1700, I think we'd have gone back to the boat there and then. It was a cold and miserable ride up to Holland Farm where the rain finally stopped. We took the bike down the track to see the Nap of Howar, the oldest standing homstead buildings in Northern Europe. Similar in age an appearance to Skara Brae, it didn't have a fancy visitors centre or paths that must be adhered to, instead it was in a neatly mown field and we were free to walk around and into this ancient monument, and really get a feel for the small space inside these two small stone buildings.



The we retraced our step back to Holland Farm where we had a look around the small but facinating Bothy Museum. It gave a really good insight into how life would have been on a farm on Papa Westray in the early 1900s.



From there we cycled down to the beautiful white sandy bay of South Wick, where we left the bikes and walked alongside the turquoise waters with seals keeping an eye on us.


Back on the bikes again and we went to the airport, where the shortest scheduled flight in the world lands at 2 mins from Westray it's in the Guinness book of records. Next it was off to St Boniface Kirk before heading to the RSPB reserve at the north of the island. We sat in the hut on the hill looking at all manner of birds from Skuas and Gannets to Red Shanks and Oytercatchers. All too soon it was time to catch the ferry back.

This morming we pottered about on the boat before we left Pierowall at around midday to catch the southgoing tide to Ferness Bay on Eday. Only around 12 miles away, it puts us in a nice position for getting to Kirkwall tomorrow. The wind was 6 knots at the begining, but we were in no rush so we sailed down wind reach the heady speed of 2.8 knots until the wind incresed to 8 knots then we were sailing gently along at three and a bit knots. Once clear of the skerries we went through the unsurveyed waters towards Stanger Head, home to Puffins and lots of othe sea birds. We'd been told the it's possible to sail close to the cliffs, but I still kept a few hundred yards off them, although apparently if you keep outside the creel buoys you'll be in plenty of water, but don't blame me if you crash your boat!

The breeze picked up to 10-12 knots and we had a really nice sail today, and if you've been following the blog you'll know how much that means because they have been far to few of them over the last two months. With the wind on the beam and the tide under us we could have kept going for hours, but Ferness was too few miles away and we got there in no time. We dropped the sails and were just about to anchor when I noticed a big red mooring buoy to the south east. In Orkney visitors buoys are red, and sure enough we'd found ourselves a visitors buoy that we didn't know about. We tied up to it and have spent the afternoon relaxing on board.