Goodbye Scotland, Greetings England

 First a postscript to the last post about the Great Storm of 1881.  Yesterday late afternoon we were told about an extraordinary sculpture in Eyemouth. It is called ‘widows and bairns’ and shows all the women and children anxiously looking out to sea, waiting for their husbands and father to return. Each woman and child is represented and it is incredibly sad and moving. 

The first shot is from the back and then the second shows a small section from the front in detail. 



At lunchtime today we set sail for Holy Island.  I say sail, but in fact we were motoring again as there was no wind.  When we passed Berwick we lowered our Scottish flag and raised the flag of Northumberland.  It was not long after this when we heard a call from Susan J on Channel 16 to the Coastguard reporting they had rope round their propellor shaft and needed assistance.  We soon heard that a lifeboat from Berwick was coming to help them.  We reported that we were near and could offer moral support.  The RNLI were tremendous once again and Susan J was freed from her ropes and able to continue to Holy Island.  We were touched that the lifeboat crew came over to thank us (not deserved!). What a lovely bunch of people they were 

Apologies for the brevity of the video:

It was rather special to arrive at Holy Island by sea - something I had never done before.  After a bit of trial and error we were fairly satisfied our anchor would hold and Richard (husband of the Vicar of Holy Island) came over in his rib to take us to the Vicarage for supper.  To my surprise I managed to make the transfer, which was great - otherwise I would have missed a marvellous meal and great company. Thank you so much Richard and Sarah. 

We got back to the boat and wondered if the water we were anchored in was deep enough not to ground us at low tide, which was due later this evening. We are at ‘springs’ which means a large tidal range between low and high tide and we are fairly near the shore.  Roger went back to old and trusted technology (like Hornblower he says) and ‘swung the lead’ to measure the depth of the water. It was decided that all is well. 

This is a beautiful spot and a lovely end to a great day. 






Eyemouth to Holy Island         21 nms




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