KTL 8 :11 – Orkney

to downlod this film please click the vimeo logo on the bottom right of the frame above - that will take you too the vimeo page for the film - there you wiill find a download button


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This is about -KTL 8 - Orkney and Shetland, Dylan Winter's Blog, KTL 8 Scotland, KTL Video Logs.

33 Responses to “KTL 8 :11 – Orkney”

  1. 9 March, 2016 at 9:40 amJonK says:

    Am I the only one to chuckle at “Meths” on the Tap-List?

  2. 9 March, 2016 at 9:44 amdylan winter says:

    you might well be

    D

  3. 9 March, 2016 at 10:03 amPeter Truelove says:

    That’s the spirit. P.

  4. 9 March, 2016 at 10:37 amjack says:

    Thanks again Dylan. As always, up to you excellent professional standard. Your films draw the viewer in at such a comfort level I for one completely forget all the frigging hours you put in to producing these films….. that, as the Aussies say, is top draw! Tappin’ time.

  5. 10 March, 2016 at 1:08 amJack Tilley says:

    Thank you for the very interesting film i am really enjoying watching your hard work in maintaining a high level of interest you show towards sailing.
    watching all the way from Cyprus at 3 o clock in the morning

  6. 10 March, 2016 at 6:45 pmJes says:

    I downloaded off you tube and it came out backwards!! Hey?

  7. 10 March, 2016 at 8:41 pmdylan winter says:

    aha

    sorry Jes

    you inadvertently stumbled into a loop designed to encourage youtube freeloaders to pass over a paypal tab

    explanation here

    http://www.keepturningleft.co.uk/blogs/a-hearty-welcome/

    there is a link to the compressed youtube film on there

    deepest apologies

    D

  8. 11 March, 2016 at 4:06 pmTony Mindling says:

    Another delight, Dylan. Summer in Scotland looks like a winter’s day here in California – hardy folk, and hardy you and Jill. Well I recall the companionway position from sailing San Francisco Bay on my Dad’s partners boat when I was a kid – so cozy. But often received the comment, “Only boots and Marines stand in companionways” – whatever that meant! Enjoyed the bit on tides and gravity. I like it that there are still so many great mysteries to understand.

  9. 11 March, 2016 at 4:16 pmdylan winter says:

    standing in the companionway is the best place to be

    especially when the stove is going

    when in Katie L and she is steering herself through a chop it feels as though I am wearing the boat. I am really in contact with her standing in the companionway with a coffee in my hands

    Jill is a good one isn’t she?

    A keeper I reckon

    I am still head over heels in love with her

    D

  10. 12 March, 2016 at 1:06 amBERT says:

    And so you should be, she’s one in a million!

  11. 12 March, 2016 at 2:09 amChris says:

    Wonderful Dylan…”ape-fisted approximation…” very nice along with so much else.
    Jill had her saunter on heading down the beach in one shot. How fun. You both seem to take a lot of joy in your travels. A keeper indeed.

    Love the companionway myself and it is aften a good place to lodge those who are discomfited by the heel and motion of the boat but don’t want to mis anything.

  12. 12 March, 2016 at 7:14 amdylan winter says:

    dunno where it comes from. I usually work at the computer until three when maggie appears at the side of the desk and wines at me until I take her for a walk. It is good for both of us. I talk the script through with her while we walk through the woods.

    I think a lot of wives might justifiably complain about spending summer wearing waterproofs – she loves swimming in the wild places and had to wait until we got around to Handa before getting one – but it was a brilliant swim so worth the wait…..maybe

  13. 12 March, 2016 at 10:34 amEade says:

    I had a giggle at that!

  14. 12 March, 2016 at 11:05 amdylan winter says:

    It is sort of working

    I put the vimeo version up on the 8th

    and has now had 830 views

    I released the backwards youtube film on the 10th

    that has now had 1500 hits

    the fwds version just available through this web page

    http://www.keepturningleft.co.uk/blogs/a-hearty-welcome/

    has had 150 hits

    I reckon that the film has been properly watched about 900 times.

    you can see what has happened to taps

    in this image

    http://www.keepturningleft.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/ktl-revenue.jpg

    it looks good but we are only talking about a few taps a day.

    The project is currently delivering half a million eye minutes a month to youtube.

    I am doing it right for some blokes –

    but not doing it right for enough of them – I assume that by now anyone with a small yacht will have stumbled across the films – most look at some of them and then move on. Some blokes watch them a lot

    a proportion of those who watch them a lot chip in.

    current income would appear to be around $50 a day. That is better than it was for DVDs at this time of year – but then December and January were pretty flat. So going to paypal taps has produced a more even spread of income through the winter. Income is slightly down compared to the best DVD years – but then I no longere have the jiffy bags, boxes, printing, postage, reproduction and mastering thing to deal with.

    As the summer comes I would expect that to dwindle to nothing because all sensible sailors are sailing. Jill says we have enough in the sailing kitty to get us through until august. It still feels very hand to mouth. But then that is the nature of the journey. My boat is as good as she can be given the funds. Every penny goes on sailing and cameras.

    I should write this up in a cohesive form

    the story of the journey from giving it away, to paying for downloads, then to DVds in jiffy bags and now back to free but with the occasional proffering of a tin cup.

    All very interesting I think.

    I have no idea where the digital journey will lead me next.

    Dylan

    “To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… ‘cruising’ it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.” -Sterling Hayde

  15. 12 March, 2016 at 2:36 pmTed B. (Charging Rhino) says:

    I’ve always liked that with a tiller’d boat you can sit in the front-end of the cockpit under the dodger, or stand in the companionway, and still steer. …Versus a big-honking Destroyer-wheel and binnacle in the far-stern of the cockpit where you get wet…and where you have to stand on the cockpit benches just to get around the da**ed-thing. I would be hesitant single-hand an aft-cockpit sailboat on a long journey with a binnacle-and-wheel unless it had a decent-functioning autopilot, preferably with a wind-direction sensor.

    That said, binnacle-and-wheel set-up are fine for larger center-cockpit sailboats where you are closer to the center-of-gravity and can safely get-around the wheel to the controls.

  16. 12 March, 2016 at 6:45 pmChris Rayner says:

    I am spoiled, I have a nice tiller for sitting up to windward on sunny days, and a wheel in the cabin. With a seat, for conning the boat when it’s miserable.

  17. 12 March, 2016 at 7:06 pmdylan winter says:

    I fear that is the way to go in Scotland. I did try to find just such a vessel but failed and went back to a Centaur

  18. 13 March, 2016 at 10:06 amCharles says:

    Thanks for this film Dylan; most enjoyable. Maybe I’ll get my trailer sailer up there one day…

    As others commented, I too enjoyed the “ape fisted approximation” quote.

    You refer to the Higgs as the “God particle”; I assume you realise that Higgs used that name in the “oh gawd” sense, rather than implying any supernatural involvement? In fact I think he wanted to call it by a less repeatable name ;)

    Does the Higgs Boson help the average sailor to understand tides any more than mighty Kraken’s ventilation?

  19. 13 March, 2016 at 10:22 amdylan winter says:

    you know I think the big man idea is a good one

    far simpler to understand

    a bit like storks delivering babies

    the single concept avoids all those difficult follow up questions

    I like the Higgs “Gawd” concept – I did not know that

    However,

    I assume that anyone who has the haziest understanding of physics and geology must soon realise that the whole god concept is not without a few flaws

    either he does not exist

    or

    if he does exist, he almost certainly does not care that much us

    D

  20. 13 March, 2016 at 8:15 pmNiall Moran says:

    really liked this one – felt quite melancholy (or maybe just my mood) and it was good to see the yellow blob in the sky :)

  21. 13 March, 2016 at 10:48 pmJJ says:

    Hi Dylan,
    I agree with all the compliments about your latest release.
    Something caught my ear in your commentary, and further to Charles’s comment re his trailor sailor – did you say that you’d been to Orkney with Jill in the E-boat ?
    If so, did you trail it up, and where did you launch from and how long did you spend up there ?
    Especially interesting as I sat next to a chap at the RAF club talk who said he’d sailed round Britain in a Wayfarer dinghy in a series of separate weeks.
    If all true, then I think I’m now inspired to have an ambition to trail up there one fine Summer when I have more time.
    Warm regards,
    Jeremy J

  22. 14 March, 2016 at 7:07 amdylan winter says:

    we towed the eboat up to the NW scotland twice

    company Sierra 1600CC

    sailed around the west coast and hebs

    had a marvelous time

    for one of the weeks there were four adults and a golden retriever aboard

    must have been bonkers

    there are magnificent slips everywhere – absolutely everywhere

    D

  23. 14 March, 2016 at 11:19 ammichael says:

    Beautiful photography!
    Thought the music was too florid for your type of film, the more laid-back, folky and peaceful kinds in your previous videos is more suitable in my view- but that’s just personal taste I suppose.

    The word ‘rost’ pronounced as ‘roost’ got me thinking that it possibly derives from the Scandinavian ‘røst’ which means ‘voice’ (the pronunciation would be more ‘roest’ but there isn’t really an equivalent sound in English). You also describe one of them as murmuring in the background, or something similar, so possibly they were referred to as ‘voices’ in the past because of the continual noise they make. There are quite a few other Danish /Norwegian descriptions of land, as seen from the sea, with human-like descriptions: nose, throat, ear, mouth etc. and some of these are still used in English place names (Ness, -or, etc.) Just another piece of essentially useless but interesting conjecture …

  24. 14 March, 2016 at 12:16 pmdylan winter says:

    I too think the music might be a bit grand for this sort of sailing

    The first mix had a much less intrusive sound-track

    the sailing sequences started to look a bit flat

    although it makes no sense to say that.

    feel free to copy the sailing sequences to another bit of music

    always open to suggestions

    the Colm Mac chap has two albums – lots of good music to choose from

    He gets the adsense royalties from youtube

    so that is a good thing

    by my reckoning he, or his record label, are up about eight dollers because I have used the music

    Good Eh!

    as for pronunciation – who can say what the right one is now. I assume more people say it the way it is written than people who say it the way most Orcadians would.

    The North Sea was one heck of a cultural stirring pot. Just imagine how fast words and sailing related technology would move. You can see from these cultures that a boat that was light and could move fast was of so important that a tweak made in Norway one year would have spread to East Anglia within a year.

    Man I love this island.

  25. 15 March, 2016 at 7:27 amTed B. (Charging Rhino) says:

    Magnificent sailing environment — though a bit cold. No wonder you didn’t take Katie-L up there, definitely too small and light for the conditions. I’m surprised there weren’t more boats about, but you are (were?) 550-miles north of London on the same latitude as Hudson Bay, Canada..

    I’m a wimp, I’d want something like Drake Roberts enclosed center-cockpit Westsail-42 Paragon for extensive sailing in Northern waters. (If I had the budget !!) Though his piloting standing on a box with his head through a hatch in the canopy like a U-boat captain bugs me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKPfU-4eGxc&index=1&list=PLOhEGypVYJG3lBpf9rrfVubIvHHfc9She

  26. 15 March, 2016 at 8:30 amdylan winter says:

    You are dead right Ted, it is a brilliant place to sail. There is a bloke up there who has a large planing 25 footer – asymmetric and bow sprit – completely stripped out. He says he lives there because the sailing is so good.

    Katie L would have handled it all I think.

    It would have been tougher on Jill and I when living aboard attached to a pontoon but she is a great little boat. I have watched some of Drakes films and emailed him backwards and forwards a few times. He has a drive to carry on adventuring – but his boat is way too big for me. He tends to do some long passages and then holes up for a few months. He has overwintered in iceland and is currently in Stornoway so his toughness is a taken. He edits his films on a lap top – quite a challenge I would say. But his sailing is crossing larghe bodies of water then staying somewhere for a long time. I just love sailing way too much to cling to a pontoon for too long.

  27. 15 March, 2016 at 7:58 pmChristopher says:

    Dylan – I appreciate the sentiment and would not want to defend Google inc. However some of us simply use Small smart phones and have nice big smart TVs with YouTube apps. These don’t behave like a web browser and let you click on an alternative, or for that matter support Vimeo. For us it’s simply a video to watch backwards. This does not diminish the estimable quality of the visual experience but the narrative is s bit weak.

    I’m sure I heard a clear reference to devil worship in there.

    Toodle pip. Christopher

  28. 15 March, 2016 at 9:03 pmdylan winter says:

    I agree.

    I am amazed at how the folk music survived. Jill has been watching Trapped on telly – an Icelandic drama. I sound like a native speaker. The next question is – if you run icelandic backwards does it come out as English

    The digital story of this journey has been me trying to squeeze past the ever decreasing gaps left in the google offering. At one time I made money from adverts. That died. Then I made money from selling DVds, that died. Then I found that by driving people through the website I could get some of them to click on a paypal button. Now in the age of apps that door is slowly closing and google will not allow links that work.

    I am full of admiration for the excessive cleverness of google. It is like playing chess against a computer that learns really, really fast.

    Open to all suggestions for future income streams. However, the backwards film did manage to bring a few more into the fold of MOB tappers. 60 blokes hated me enough to press the dislike button. But half a dozen new names tapped in.

    We now have enough in the lily M paypal acccount to get me through to August. Any money that comes in will be well scattered through the small harbour economies of the far west of scotland. Not an entirely bad thing to do.

    D

  29. 18 March, 2016 at 6:59 pmDave Barker says:

    Enjoy your videos so much Dylan. I get drawn into them and it reminds me of, when I was a lad, going to “the pictures” and then feeling a total dis-connect with reality when I came out at the end of a film. They even make me think that perhaps I should do something similar. I know I won’t because I have too many different interests, not enough time and besides I’ve now become too soft living here in Portugal. It takes a great deal of focused enthusiasm to do what you and Jill are doing – great stuff.

  30. 18 March, 2016 at 9:01 pmAquaplane says:

    Very good.

    Last summer was crap though. I’m not saying it’s ever as warm as South Coast sailors would find comfortable but last year wasn’t normal. we had fresh snow on the tops when we were in the Caley on the first of June, you need to be hardy, sad but true.

    Was it neaps when you came down the Sound of Luing? Those numbers you were quoting we regularly see in the sound of Jura and up towards the bottom of Lismore, it’s interesting sailing with lots of swirly bits. If it’s about the same up there I’m tempted to go up for a look. Of course the crap weather and midges compensate, you can barely see the scenery for the clouds of insects or rain.

  31. 31 March, 2016 at 5:26 pmAndy says:

    Marvellous, marvellous, cheered up my day, now on my list of places to go.

  32. 4 April, 2016 at 4:14 amTed B. (Charging Rhino) says:

    The new interactive map is wonderful, and it makes following where you are sailing easier — especially around all the islands in the Orkneys. While I’ve read plenty of military histories that reference Scapa Flow, I somehow never had a sense of the true scale of the place, What a wonderful and invigorating sailing ground.

    Though I’m astounded that even in Summer you’re typically the only boat on the water. So different than the Solent or the Essex and Suffolk rivers…

  33. 4 April, 2016 at 8:29 amdylan winter says:

    I am pleaased Peter forced me to make it. As for Scapa flow, it is a brilliant place to sail – never seen anywhere as nice – but not warm

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