Slightly overcast and no wind with calm seas. Today we paddle and circumnavigate the island. The island is full of caves to paddle in, arches and cuts in the rocks. We have also discovered that there is a subterranean passage we will see if we can find. Not much to say as the pictures tell the story.
So here’s the deal. We all had brought our headlamps and we had VHF radios. Matt went thru in his double first and let us know on VHF that it was good to go. I was next. What you don’t see in the picture above is that there is a pretty good sized swell going into the passage. The overall distance inside is close to a football field in length.
I popped on my headlamp after checking to see that is was on and headed inside. The outside light helps until you get to the first corner and then it disappears. So here I am rounding the corner, sloshing up and down with the swell and current and things are getting very dark. I still had my dark sunglasses on because they are prescription. So I pulled the glasses down in hopes to see better since I was unable to see anything at all, pitch black. Turns out my headlamp was on a very low setting and not helping at all. Pretty weird feeling being in a kayak, in a tunnel with swell and current and not being able to see anything. So, I started messing with the headlamp to make it go to bright. As luck would have it, it came on very bright right off the bat. But, go figure, as soon as I could see my surroundings, there was a wall right in front of me, like within a couple feet of my bow and the current was pushing hard. I had a brief thought of slamming the wall, going over and having to roll up inside the tunnel. Nope, not a good idea so some hard paddling and I made it into the center of the passage. Around the next bend I could start seeing light from the end and paddled hard. Once outside I could relax a bit. Pretty exciting for sure. Lesson learned – make sure your headlamp is on bright mode BEFORE going into a long subterranean passage. No pictures from inside the passage – too much going on to take any.
Papa Stour, what can I say – it has to be one of the neatest places I’ve ever paddled – what fun for sure.
Time to load the kayaks and get underway with our destination being Scalloway. We need to make progress heading around the south end of the Shetlands as the weather is not looking good for our final crossing to Norway.
We had a beautiful sail to Scalloway with nice seas, light winds and overcast sky’s.
OK, that’s it for this day. We’ll spend the night here and get underway in the morning to round the south end of the Shetlands and head north on the east side.