For family reasons, Thursday saw us fly back to Orkney leaving Quickstep in Baltasound Marina.

Thank you to the folk from Flugga boats and the harbour master for all their help.

Viking Ships!

Last year on our way back from Norway we only spent a night in Balta Harbour, Unst and then continued our journey home to Papay via Skeld. This year however we are waiting for the right weather to cross to Norway and so we have got some time to explore the island.
Today we walked north from Baltasound towards Haroldswick and its been nice to see the island from land instead of sea. We stopped in a scenic spot for a quick picnic of Stockans Oatcakes, Chilli Jam and cheese!
On our walk we found the Skidbladner, a full size replica of the Viking ship, Gokstad. At 24+ meters long and 5+ meters wide she certainly dwarfs Quickstep! A beautiful example of a clinker built Viking ship she stands impressive next to a reconstruction of a traditional Viking Longhouse.
The Gokstad would have seated 32 oarsmen and carried up to 70... so a bit more space than Quickstep too! The Skidbladner was restored with the help of locals, with the longhouse traditionally built by locals too, sourcing materials from not only the island, but Scotland mainland and in fact birtchbark from Norway. Walking down the brae towards Skidbladner and the longhouse makes for striking viewing!
Unst is rich with Viking history, home to many Viking longhouses, thirty or more in the islands.
We also did a quick interview for Radio Shetland explaining a little about what we are doing.
The weather, although calmer than previously forecasted, still remains windy and suitable weather windows seem to disappear as quick as they appear! So for the next day or two at least we will continue to explore Unst. Although the enforced stay is no great hardship!!

Living in Unst!

Looks like we might be here for a while. The weather is set to stay around force 5/6/7/8 for the next few days.

Took the opportunity to explore a bit today in the rain and wind, lovely walk though!

Hopefully in the next few days we will try to see the north end and west side of the island

For now...we shelter aboard in the calm of the harbour.

Heading north along the coast of Shetland

Heading north along the coast of Shetland

Cruising past Fair Isle before we entered the more confused seas.
Someday we will visit Fair Isle too!

Saturday night clouds in Papay.
Didn't look good for leaving the next day and as it happens it was!

On our way

A couple of months later than planned we have tied up the loose ends in Papay and arrived in Unst, Shetland the first leg of our journey.
This morning at 7am we left the mooring in Papay and headed to the most northerly harbour in Britain, Baltasound in Unst.
Although winds remained between force 1 and force 3 the full moon and spring tides together with unsettled weather over the past few weeks made the sea confused, especially around the north of North Ronaldsay and Fair Isle.
We made good time tying up at around 2pm virtually a year since we last were in Unst on our return from Norway in Papay Arctic Adventure part 1.

The more eagle eyed of you might have noticed the tracker showing us leaving papay a few nights ago, we went on a shake down cruise to North Ronaldsay. We stayed on the visitors mooring for the night and explored the island before returning to Papay for the final adjustments aboard.

Weather forecasts suggest we might now be spending best part of a week before the next weather window for the main crossing, in fact force 7-9 look likely! We look forward to exploring Unst as we didn't have time last year.

Thank you to all our sponsors, friends and family who have helped make the adventure possible.

Please also help us raise money for both the RNLI and the RS by donating using the charity account as seen on the right of the blog.