… of doing nothing at all. We’re actually on what is called a “positioning voyage” between a drop-off point for one group of passengers and a pick-up for the next. But as I know some of the people who lease the ship, and it’s actually travelling in the direction that I want to go, we’ve been allowed to leap on board.

But there’s no entertainment and nothing organised to help pass the time.So luckily I have plenty to do.

And talking of plenty to do, last night I settled down in my comfy cabin to watch a film, but I think that I lasted less than 5 minutes before I switched everything off and went to sleep.

Not for long though. At 04:15 exactly the ship hit a heavy rolling swell and the change in rhythm awoke me immediately. It was difficult for me to go back to sleep but I must have done because I was awoken by the alarms.

And if I went anywhere on a nocturnal ramble, I really have no idea at all.

By 06:15 I was up and about and 06:30 saw me, mug of coffee in hand, on the open deck at the rear. We sailed through a procession of oil rigs a windfarm or two and the odd ship here and there, but nothing of any great excitement. There was no land visible.

During breakfast, some land became visible on the port bow. It seemed that through the night and early morning we had been travelling across the mouth of the Moray Firth and now we had struck shore again somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Wick.

A couple of us stood on the wings of the bridge admiring the view and taking photos. Duncansby Head and John O’Groats were quite interesting, and one of my photos even picked up a couple of people watching us from the cliffs;

Past the lighthouse on the Pentland Skerries and into the Pentland Firth, threading our way through the Orkney Islands. Apart from the numerous lighthouses, we saw plenty of former military installations from when the British Royal Navy was stationed here, a couple of ferries out of Scrabster, a trawler or two and a big gas tanker.

There were plenty of inhabited places too but I’ll need to refer to a good map to identify those, so it will have to wait until I return home.

The weather had started off very misty and hazy and many of the long-distance shots were veiled in a kind of fog. But by now the weather had improved and some of the photos, even taken at full-reach with the big zoom lens.

But it wasn’t to last. We were enveloped in a sudden and dramatic squall that passed our way like a cyclone and disappeared just as rapidly.

We passed the Old Man of Hoy and into the open ocean of the North Atlantic. That was the cue for a heavy swell, and also the cue for lunch.

A couple of my fellow-passengers are cinephiles and they wanted to watch a film, so I repaired to the observation lounge on the top deck to attack a great pile of photos.

There wasn’t all that much to observe out here in the wilds, but I did notice a couple of islands away to port. I’ve no idea what islands they might have been because apart from Rockall, which neither of these islands resembled in the slightest, I’m not aware of any islands out here.

That’s something else that I shall have to check in due course.

Away in the distance was a ship. I couldn’t see it too clearly as it was so far away, but it seemed to have what looked like a crane on the back. if it was indeed a crane, it might well be a supply ship of some nature and might even have some connection with the islands that we had just passed.

At our evening meal I asked if anyone else had seen the islands but apparently not. I managed to track down an atlas but that wasn’t a great deal of help.

Later that evening our cinephiles wanted to watch another film so they pulled all of the curtains. I retreated once more to the quiet of the top deck lounge where I could at least see anything that might be going on and to carry on with the photos.

I did manage to see a ship – away in the distance – and so I’ve no idea what type of ship it might have been. Not even cropping and blowing it up (the copped photo, not the ship) could give me much of a clue.

Later still though, there was a huge ship away to port, and that was easier to identify once I enlarged the photo that I took. That was another cruise ship, but one of the big ones with 10 decks and about 3,000 passengers. I’m glad I’m not on that.

Just before going out of bed I stuck my head out of the door. And I’m glad that I did because I was treated to the most glorious sunset – one of the best that I have ever seen. And there was only me out there to enjoy it so I had it all to myself.

Back in my cabin I settled down to try to watch a film but after about 10 minutes or so I gave that up, turned everything off and went to sleep. And quite right too.It’s amazing just how tired you become when you have been doing nothing all day.