Saturday 13 March

So El Vigo is snug at Burray. She'll be listening to the roar of the fetch from the Skaggerak. Long-distance water breaking on the other side of a man-made causeway which closes the sea-gate east.Churchill ordered a series of these defences to fight
the U-boats which could sneak into Scapa Flow.
 

We've jumped ship with our log of words, recorded sound and digital images.We'll be installing them aboard the "Reaper". Her skipper is planning a hop up to St Andrews and through the new lock-gates to the inner harbour. There for the duration of the Stanza poetry festival. She used to fish herring, powered by
two high, tan lug-sails. A lot of her catch would have been sold as part of the Baltic herring trade. That's right over there, just across the North Sea. I've sailed that route twice, once in El Vigo, but right now it looks like impossible distance. We've had a good look at Margaret's Hope, the settlement next door to Burray, as we beat against the wind to get an angle into our borrowed mooring. It looks like a Danish village. It's good to see some landscape again after sleet, hail, lingering mist and high spray. William Bremner meets us.The word is that Wick and the other harbours open to the east are closed.
 

 
We've something to share. Norman Chalmers has had the camera and keyboard out as often as the box and whistle. These photos you've been seeing were quietly shot, edited and sent by him. Niki has been recording sound throughout and planning a form the samples will take. Adrian, the surgeon, has been dissecting the Danish heater or organising hosepipe to bypass our ruptured water-tank.

So how is morale as we're leaving Orkney, with someone else doing the driving? It's good. There's a lull today but new gale warnings with another system approaching.We've had some great late-winter sailing but haven't taken any serious risks.

As a coastguard, I used to organise maritime rescue. A lot of our statistics were guys who were hell-bent on getting to a certain place for a  fixed time.

SESSION (at Ian and Kitty's)

The fiddle's chattering to the cauld wind
pipes and John's bass kicks.
Kitty and Norman's boxes
squeeze and shunt the
vectors of the session
Cooking on gasoline.
It's all bending fine.

The boat's moored in
whatever breeze.
Lines of only maybe arrivals
smudge in the backspray of
the jabble that shines out and up
from visibility, moderate to poor.

The sight of height is
only an idea of Hoy.
 

Listen to today's audio log from the El Vigo: