{"id":6311,"date":"2009-07-27T15:07:51","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T20:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/shetland-islands\/"},"modified":"2009-07-27T15:07:51","modified_gmt":"2009-07-27T20:07:51","slug":"shetland-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/shetland-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"Shetland Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lerwick-Shetland-1-153\"<\/p>\n

We’ve made the eighteen hour passage across the North Sea to the Shetland Islands (dodging oil rigs and survey vessels along the way), and are now enjoying Shetland hospitality.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Lerwick-Shetland-1-128\"<\/p>\n

The berthing for yachts in Lerwick, the main city in the Shetlands, is tight this time of year. If you look carefully you will see Wind Horse<\/em> tucked in astern of the tug, with her bow overhanging the stern of the yellow sailboat into the corner. This is not a docking situation for the faint of heart or those with painted topsides!<\/p>\n

\"Lerwick-Shetland-1-126\"<\/p>\n

The little harbor is filled with interesting cruising yachts and historical workboats, of which this is one. She is a late 19th century fishing vessel and is very fine ended, should be a quick sailor, and good to weather.<\/p>\n

\"Lerwick-Shetland-1-117\"<\/p>\n

Of the same era, mid-19th century, but of Danish extraction, is this lovely restored fishing schooner. She is a much more powerful hull shape, probably not as quick as the Shetland ketch unless pressed hard off the wind, with the ability to carry more fish.<\/p>\n

You could not find a bigger contrast to Norway than the Shetlands. The density of population appears lower, there are lots of uninhabited anchorages from which to choose, and the land is low and rolling. There is a soft feel to terra firma which belies the reputation for weather which go with these islands (where 50 knots is a fair sailing breeze).<\/p>\n

The Shetlands have been home to a variety of prehistoric societies, along with bronze and iron age cultures. The Picts, Norse, Danes, Germans, and Scottish have all had a presence at one point or another.<\/p>\n

As if to demonstrate the variety of settlers who have made this their home there are cruising yachts here from Canada, Scotland, Britain, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the US. We’ll follow up with some interesting yacht details in a few days.<\/p>\n

Right now we are still mentally processing our Svalbard experience, and catching up with writing and design work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve made the eighteen hour passage across the North Sea to the Shetland Islands (dodging oil rigs and survey vessels …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}