Week 6 29th June to 5th July

Wind NNW 4-1 Cloudy

Arbroath has a lock into the harbour that only opens 3 hours either side of high tide. It was closing at 1:30 that afternoon and not reopening until the next day. There would have been nowhere to moor nearby so we departed from Eyemouth at 3:30 in the morning. We had a good sail for most of the journey except for the last two hours and arrived at 12.30.

After lunch we did some laundry then had a wander around the town.

Wind Southerly 2 light and sometimes variable

We left Arbroath at 8:30 and had a slow but gentle motorsail, arriving at Stonehaven at 4:30pm

Carron Fish bar story https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-33588382

We only had a short time in Stonehaven, but, mars bars apart, it had some nice little eateries, a 50m heated outdoor pool, a pretty seafront and friendly harbour. It was a useful stopping off point about halfway between Arbroath and Peterhead.

Winds 2-7 NW and W. Cloudy with rain showers

We left Stonehaven at 8:30AM. We were advised by the yacht that rafted on to us that it was best not to leave too early to enable us to take advantage of the better tides nearer to Peterhead.

It was a little bit brighter but still windy. We did some chores and managed to keep the washing attached to the boat for long enough to dry it. (The marina tumble dryer decided to stop working).

Late afternoon we walked to the cinema in Peterhead to see the new Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny film. Hard not to admire octogenarian Harrison Ford in this action packed film, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge was enjoyable as con-artist Helen Shaw. The film critics don’t seem to like it but if you enjoyed the first few films of the franchise, this is very much in the same style. It was a nostalgic and entertaining two hours.

The Hollywood Reporter review summary https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/indiana-jones-5-review-roundup-1235495961/

We thought we would have a bite to eat after the movie but the only place the harbour master could suggest was “spoonies” (The Cross Keys which is the local Wetherspoons). It was our cheapest meal out, two meals and two pints for £15. Richards small fish and chips was quite good.

We decided to stay another day in Peterhead to allow the winds to subside further and to check Captiva’s batteries. There was no electric hook up in Stonehaven and when sailing spectacularly on Saturday without the engine, the autohelm kept going to standby because of insufficient voltage in the house battery. The batteries are 5 years old so we have decided to buy some new ones. An engineer visited us and hopes to meet us in Whitehills with the new batteries.

After meeting the engineer we wandered to the tourist hotspot of Peterhead, the Prison Museum. HMP Peterhead operated between 1888 and 2013 and was the most notorious prison in Scotland. It was a grim but interesting place to visit.

https://peterheadprisonmuseum.com/

We wandered further along the road to a small village called Boddam where Mr Google said we might find a good lunch. We enjoyed a large fish pie each in The Bistro restaurant of the Seaview hotel. We caught a bus back to Peterhead, replenished our food supplies before returning to Captiva.

Winds 1-3 NW Grey with rain showers

We left Peterhead at 6AM, a little later than other boats, although we now know why they chose to leave earlier (more later). There was a swell as we travelled North which made the going a little uncomfortable. Maisie had to be in her cabin for the first few hours. The good winds enable us to make good progress and we had the benefit of the tide with us.

Coast Peterhead to Rattray and Kinnaird Heads

Once we had gone around Rattray and Kinnaird heads the swell and winds started to ease. We had left the North Sea and were in The Moray Firth. We have now reached the most Northerly part of our journey around Britain. We shall now be heading South and West (homeward bound).

Walking around we got chatting to a fellow sailor from the Netherlands, who had also just arrived from Peterhead. Over a beer or two we found out he is sailing around the North Sea from The Netherlands via the British East coast to Norway then home again.

Winds 1 Easterly Fortunately felt a little warmer than the forecast of 13 degrees, cloudy with rain showers

So…….

We intended to leave at 7:30 but as we tried to turn in the harbour we ran aground. Fortunately the crew on Hereward (Rose and friend) helped us to pull Captiva back towards their boat and then we turned her around using ropes. Apparently the corner of the harbour silts up with sand. A coffee and wait for the tide to increase (low tide 8:10AM) was muted but with a depth on the charts of 1.5 metres we decided to try to leave (now 7:50AM). We comfortably turned out of the harbour this time and then……….

We ran aground again!!

We were unable to throw a rope ashore to the harbour wall to Hereward crew, so the lovely Rose fetched her wetsuit and took a rope ashore for us. By this time the harbour master had arrived and between them all we managed to tie up to the harbour wall then gradually pull ourselves along the wall. By 8:45 we were afloat again and quietly left Whitehills.

Lesson learnt, always chat to the lovely harbour masters, who are very friendly and keen to share good advice. He was suprised that we got stuck with our depth of 1.5 metres but they have a lot of sand movement.

A relieved Richard

We arrived at Lossiemouth near to high tide. The harbour is relatively shallow (0.4m above mud at low tide) so we shall be carefull with our timings : )

The engineer arrived with the new batteries and they were quickly installed. We then had a wander around lovely Lossiemouth, a pretty town with long sandy beaches.

We are recognising boats from other harbours we have visited on the East coast. A consequence of there being fewer yachts in this area. It is great catching up with people and getting tips about the places we plan to visit. We had a good meal out this evening with the gentleman from the Netherlands (We think his name is a Dutch version of Dave?) The restaurant was the Salt Cellar and we all had Aberdeen Angus steak. Richard and Dave had theirs with haggis.