19/07/2009
Yesterday Phill and Sunny striped the carbs on Zapcat2 and the lower carburettor float had distorted and was hitting the bottom of the float chamber causing the cutting out, and with a good lubrication of cables and linkages has sorted the sticking throttle at low rpm, the plan for today is to get to Wick and then to move on to Banff for a overnight stay.
JOHN O GROATS
Getting away was the first thing sunny and i had been up until 1.30am fixing the wiring on the black Peli case and the thought of been up and ready or 7.30am did not look good? But we were ready. Getting away it was soon obvious that we were not going to see much as the sea fog was down we were heading for Wick, Sunny was following close as the visibility was only now 100 yards or so, 30 min in and guess what yes Zapcat 2 was again starting to play up with a lack of power we looked for a place to stop, i found a slipway at Portskerra looked easy on the map but as we got close all that we could hear was braking waves and as we were getting really close all to be seen through the fog was rock face?
There was a small opening through the rocks and behind this we could make out the head lights of the van above the rocks, as we surfed in on the swell the rocks opened up in to a natural made small harbour with a small channel leading to the slip way, Phill quickly had a look at the floats in the carbs, and we got going, still with the thick fog, the engine again started to lose power and Sunny diagnosed it to be probably electrical, not wanting to waste time we got ourselves in to Castletown a small harbour and fitted 3 new coil packs, with the problem now hopefully fixed we headed back out into the fog the only good thing was the sea state was good with just big rolling swell we were now pulling a steady 28 knots and making up ground we were heading for the notorious Pentland Firth with no idea of what was up ahead, we were hoping to get some clear visibility as the only indication of headlands was the sat-nav and the eddies that built up giving us a rough ride, fortunately for us we were running with the tide as the Pentland Firth can run a good 15 knots this was going to help us and as if by magic the fog lifted and i could see John O Groats at this point i had so much emotion running round and i knew that if Gina was tracking us on the web she would be the same, i had tears in my eyes, we were now flat out to get round that corner and head south, to round that point was just un believable i was beside myself all i wanted to do was to call ‘G’ but believe it or not i had no phone and no camera! So it was sunny and the phone that took care of the photos.
SUNNY AT THE TOP
This major milestone under my belt i called the coast guard to say we were now making a straight line for Banff where Sharron had kindly organised us moorings and a place to stay, this was a straight line for 60 miles in a mixture of weather and sea conditions, but we were on 10 to 15 mile stints with a short brake to stretch the fingers, we moored up in Banff harbour and got changed Sharron and Mum met us in the harbour and we all had a great night talking boats / zapcats and life.
Tomorrow is another day and heading south.