All through last night and this morning 'Sea Stallion' was being towed by 'Cable One'. For the crew it is not much fun. With no duties on board it’s even easier than usual to get cold. To help keep the wind and rain off they’ve draped tarpaulins over part of the ship. This would be impossible when sailing but provides much needed cover when under tow. As Dylan points out, being towed could have its own risks. 'This boat is designed for sailing, taking the waves at its own pace. We’ve never really tried towing it in big waves.' The unnatural way it moves when being towed also makes some people seasick. Even the skipper, Carsten, is feeling queasy until he applies an anti-sickness patch behind his ear.
The main dampener, though, is just the fact of being towed. Many of the crew are still bitterly disappointed at having to resort to towing, even though they understand the difficult position Carsten was in. 'I had the axe in my hand and was just about to cut the rope, so we could sail' says Danish crew member Bue in frustration. The mood brightens somewhat around midday when it is announced that they would sail once more. A gentle wind is now blowing from the north and Carsten decides that he definitely doesn’t want to arrive in Orkney on the end of a rope. So the tow rope is released and the sail raised.
The mist made it look like a ghost ship
By mid afternoon an eerie mist has formed. From 'Cable One', 'Sea Stallion' looks like a ghost ship – a shadow out of the distant past. Far from being the fierce sea they were expecting, the North Sea has been very flat and calm. Progress is slower than expected with the sail sometimes flapping as the ship is rocked from side to side. Expected arrival time becomes later and later and now it looks like they won’t arrive until early Wednesday morning. The crew are already thinking about what they’ll do when they arrive in Orkney. David is looking forward to a fried breakfast, for Diarmid it’s a beer and lots of white bread (he hasn’t developed a taste for the Danish dark bread), and for Solvej a hot shower. The arrival will be bittersweet, but everyone is glad they’ve had the chance to sail at least part the way across the North Sea. Next year 'Sea Stallion' returns from Ireland to Denmark via southern England, so there will at least be another chance to sail the North Sea in a Viking ship.
