Our original plan was to spend a few more day exploring the northern part of Shetland. Such as the island Unst and hopefully make it up all the way to Muckle Flugga. The island that is, not our friends boat. Muckle Flugga is also the northern most light house in the UK. A very isolated but fascinating place on the map. However, the westerly winds forecasted for Friday which we had planned should have taken us home now turned in to be a sever gale on the grib files we downloaded. Not knowing what would come next we decided to take off in a rather light south to southeasterly wind. We sat course as close to Lindesnäs as we could and hoped for the best. However, the wind direction deteriorated and the wind force increased and along with that came the rain. Finely we found ourselves in an east to southeasterly wind force 4 - 5 with a possibility to hit force 6 and the waves were starting to build up and we were heading right in to it and had about 200 miles more to go to nearest land in the east. Every fiber in my body tried to tell me that this was all wrong. I believe the pigeon who rested on our solar panel had the same feeling. After about 50 miles beating against wind and waves with the rain just pouring down on us we decided to give up. We made an almost 180 degree turn back to Lerwick. What a difference! All of a sudden we had a nice "downhill" ride making around 7 knots. Even if the rain continued with some thunderstorms to add to the excitement the comfort on board, both mentally and physical turned from awful to rather nice as I hit the bunk and Mona took the first night watch. Around 5 o'clock on Wednesday morning we were once again safely mored at the Victoria pier in Lerwick outside a dutch yacht. We had completed a 90 mile detour from the Out Skerries to Lerwick in our attempt to get back to Norway. Well, at least going back was nice sailing and it felt good that we made the decision. It's always a mental ordeal to make such decisions when you're out there trying to get somewhere, but when the thought process has started it's normally the right thing to do.
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