Ten days and 1,500 miles into circumnavigating the UK in an 18ft speedboat, Ian Furby and his mate Dobbo risk falling at the final hurdle
DAY 10: 19 JUNE 2021
STROMNESS, ORKNEY TO BERWICK-UPON -TWEED 215NM
Having already covered over 1,500 miles in nine days from Yorkshire to the Orkneys via Dover, Land’s End, Dublin and Cape Wrath, we now had just 330 miles and two days to complete my circumnavigation of the UK in the target time of 11 days.
There was just one problem: while the forecast for tomorrow looked fine, the next five days after that were a write-off.
We looked at charts and made some calculations. If we straight-lined it from Stromness to Yorkshire, rather than hugging the east coast of Scotland, it was only around 290 miles. At an average speed of 18 knots that would take 16 hours. It would be a hell of a long day but it was doable. Just. We decided to go for it, leaving at 3.30am to catch the flooding tide.
The morning came all too soon and, as usual, I was awake by 3am and itching to go. I made us a brew before getting our kit together and heading for Summer Buoys. By 3.30am we were underway, an orange glow on the horizon telling us the sun would soon be joining us. We edged out of the marina at 5 knots, taking care not to disturb anyone as we retraced our steps towards Scapa Flow. Free of the marina, throttle forward, the sea glassy, we were up to 28 knots. We reached Scapa Flow and the sleeping tankers; five miles done, 285 to go.
There was an eerie calm as we steamed on through the graveyard of all those scuttled World War I battleships. The sea conditions couldn’t have been better and before long we were passing South Ronaldsay to our port and powering on towards Duncansby Head. Poseidon was with us that morning. It was flat, flat, flat. My intended route during the planning stages was to hug the coast and head southwest from Duncansby Head to Inverness, before cutting the corner and making for Lossiemouth, then on to Peterhead for an overnight stop – a route of around 120 miles. By straight-lining it to Peterhead, we could cut it down to 80 miles but at the mid-point, we would be 40 miles offshore and a long, long way from land. In an 18ft boat, that’s going some.
Experience breeds confidence and today I was feeling confident. We went for it. The sun was up, blue skies, flat seas – all was good with the world. An hour or so later, something appeared on the horizon dead ahead of us. It looked like a massive block of flats. From a distance, it was hard to work out if it was an oil rig or a ship. It turned out to be a supertanker, heading right for us. As she was a little bigger than us, by more than 1,000ft, we decided not to play chicken and passed h
