Lowestoft

We are still in Lowestoft. We have had a few days of strong winds but are hoping for some reasonable weather to let us get to Ipswich in time for the Gaffers big gathering. In the meantime we have been enjoying the hospitality of the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club. They have a marvellous clubhouse purpose built in 1903. 

There are quite a few Gaffers here on the marina berths waiting for fairer winds. There are a few interesting resident boats here too.

The Omega is a Harrison Butler design, built in 1939. Harrison Butler was another talented amateur yacht designer, in his case the day job was as an ophthalmic surgeon. A number of his boats survive, and there is an active owners association.

Lowestoft!

We have been keen to make progress South, as it wouldn't be good to miss the OGA 60 celebrations at Ipswich next week, and the weather forecast is looking very uncertain. So we and several other Gaffers headed out on Thursday morning. We left from Scarborough, and took the fair tide to Flamorough head. The rest of the day was spent motoring into light winds. We have to be constantly alert to avoid fishing floats that might get entangled in the propellor. Some floats are well marked, but some are almost invisible and some of them look very like a seabird sleeping on the water. They are hard to avoid in daylight and almost impossible at night. Fortunately by the time it got dark a breeze had sprung up so we didn't have to motor and try to spot the fishing buoys at night.It was a nice night to be at sea: clear sky; there were lots of ships at anchor off the entrance to the Humber, but not many on the move to worry about.

The morning found us off the Norfolk coast, but we didnt get into Lowestoft till late afternoon. A stiff southerly wind for the last couple of hours made entering the harbour quite difficult. There is a real gathering of gaffers here now, and Bonita tied up to the lovely Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter Letty -built in 1905 and recently beautifully restored - two old ladies together.

We are at the marina run by the very hospitable Royal Norfolk and Suffolk yacht club. This is my first visit to Lowestoft since coming here  long ago as a student in my 15ft Sunspot cruiser after a slow crossing from Vlieland in the Dutch Frisian islands. The harbour still seems to be very busy despite the decline of the fishing fleet.

Here we say goodbye to Hugo who has helped us down  from Blyth but has now run out of time

 He will be returning home rather more speedily by train.

Scarborough

We left Whitby when the swing bridge opened at 8am and sailed the 15 or so miles down the coast to Scarborough. We had fair tide, a breeze off the land and no rain, so a pleasant sail and were in the little Old Harbour at the end of the morning. We were welcomed by the crew of Susan J who arrived last night. Indian Runner, Letty, Onward and Moon River all arrived later today.

I hadn't been to Scarborough before but it is a lively town full of holiday makers and lots of grand buildings near the sea front. There are boat trips around the bay, and the picture shows a pirate ship returning to harbour with its crew after its latest adventure.

A little known yachting connection is with the yacht designer Albert Strange (1855-1917). He was influential  in popularising yawl rig, as suitable for gentlemen yachtsmen who sailed without a professional crew. A number of his pretty boats are still sailing. It turns out that though he designed lots of boats, this was just a hobby. His day job was as the Principal of the Scarborough School of Art.


We walked up to the castle overlooking the town. The castle was very large and the remains dominate the town. It dates from the time of Henry II and the massive masonry is still very impressive.

There is a fine view of the harbour from the castle.The Old harbour with Bonita in is the one nearest the beach.

We did a few other useful jobs, and as there is apparently no fuel available in the harbour, we took a taxi to a fuel station to fill up a few cans of diesel. 

After it got dark we welcomed in the marvellous  Barbara in Moon River who had sailed all the way from Amble today singlehanded. She was welcomed on Susan J with tea, cake and whisky.

Whitby

We left Blyth early this morning - about 4.30- to catch the tide. Our all weather crew are D, and Hugo who is getting to grips with the principles of sailing. Unfortunately as we were motoring out of the harbour the engine suddenly started producing ominous sounding grinding noises. Fearing the worst, we turned round and went back to the yacht harbour. It turned out that the cause was the pulley on the cooling water pump touching the engine bearer when under load. I replaced the belt that drives the pump with a new one and that seemed to cure the problem. We set out again an hour or so later.

Sadly it was rather a frustrating sail. There was very little wind and there was a heavy swell left over from several days of strong northerly winds so the boat rolled around a bit. We motor- sailed most of the way so it was lucky the engine was OK.

We approached Whitby harbour shortly after low water, and I was anxious that there might not be enough water in the entrance, especially as there was a 2m high swell breaking on the shore. However we radiod the Harbour Master and he was confident there would be enough water. He was right of course: the depths went down to 0.5m under the keel at the shallowest bit but we never touched the bottom.

We tied up waiting for the swing bridge to open to go into the inner harbour, and were joined by Indian Runner, who had come today from Hartlepool.

The picture shows Bonita waiting for the bridge. Ahead of her is the Endeavour Bark, supposedly a copy of Captain Cooks boat. James Cook is one of Whitbys most famous sons.There are several supposed copies of the Endeavour of various shapes and sizes in Whitby. They look as though they might be good for a trip round the bay but none really suitable for exploring the South Seas.

Blyth 2

Today we enjoyed the NE area OGA Party Port events, despite almost constant rain. In the morning we had a very informative guided tour of the club lightship (LV50) which dates from 1879. She is heavily built of wood, with iron strapping to enable her to withstand the worst weather in exposed locations. Her first posting was to the Seven Stones rocks off Lands End. She gave service as a lightship until 1952 when she was sold off and bought by the RNYC as their clubship. She had around 7 crew who did stints of two months on her at a time. Lightships became a practical proposition with the large scale manufacture of heavy chain in the early 1800s, but have now been replaced with modern automated aids to navigation.

The picture shows the cabin with widespread use of iron reinforcing straps.   

In the afternoon with went to see a local boat building facility, the Blyth Tall Ship project where they are building a large replica Zulu, a type of fishing boat popular about 100 years ago. We were impressed by the quality of the work being done there. They also have the tall ship Williams 2 on the quay by the yard.

In the evening we were joined by Hugo, who will be sailing with us for a few days. We had an entertaining supper on the club lightship with the Gaffers. The evening was greatly enlivened by singing sea shanties with plenty of audience participation.

The lyrics of the song written by the irrepressible Claudia Myatt give a flavour of the evenings entertainment.

Blyth and Seaton

This morning D and I walked the few miles from Blyth down the beach to Seaton Sluice.

This is a small tidal harbour that was a major coal exporting port in the eighteenth century.

It seems an unlikely place for a major port today, with restricted tidal range and difficult access from the sea. The harbour had almost completely dried out at low water and today the only boats to be seen were a few small shallow draft fishing boats which were all aground.

In Blyth, gaffers continued to arrive all day and we now have about 10 round Britain boats here. Several local boats have also arrived

 Next to Bonita is berthed a beautifully restored sailing coble from 1946, the Royal Diadem II. She has a lug sail and unusually her original Kelvin diesel engine. 

The coble was a traditional fishing boat which was common on this coast. Strong but lightly buit, they could be kept in small harbours or pulled up on the beach.  In the evening we had a reception on the clubship and were welcomed by the Mayor. Everyone at the Club has been very friendly and gone out of their way to make us feel welcome.

Royal Northumberland Yacht Club, Blyth

This morning at Lindisfarne we woke to a

Moderate northerly wind so without hesitation we pulled up the anchor and were swept out to sea. Unfortunately the wind then fizzled out so we motored

most of the way, inside the Farne Islands and continuing along the coast. There was some excitement when we heard on the VHF that Susan J, a few miles behind us, was disabled as they had caught a line round her propellor. They had to be rescued by the lifeboat; luckily the lifeboat crew managed to free the propellor and Susan J, Dave and Julie continued on their way.

We ended up on the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club marina in Blyth, arriving at the same time as 'Onward of Ito'. Blyth used to be a busy port exporting coal. The coal is now gone but there is still quite a lot of commercial traffic with the yacht harbour tucked into a corner. Its a good place to stay for a day or two with a warm welcome from the club members. We had supper in the yacht club with Onwards crew.

The club headquarters are in a venerable wooden lightship dating from 1879, apparantly the oldest timber lightship in the world. Maintaining her is clearly quite a burden for the Club but still she looks very well looked after.

The Gaffers are having a rally here over the weekend so we will stay here and have a couple of days generally catching up with things.

Here is the RNYC clubship dressed with flags to welcome the Round Britain gaffers.

Lindisfarne

After more than a month in Scotland, Bonita is now back in English waters and our Scottish courtesy flag has been folded away till whenever it might be needed again. This morning we turned Bonita around in her berth with help from Edgar towing the bow round with his dinghy. We then left Eyemouth shortly after low water. The narrow entrance channel was completely blocked by a dredger at work, but we called him up and he seemed happy enough to stop work to let us pass by.

We had hoped to be able to sail but found a light head wind so motored the 20 or so miles to Holy Island (Lindisfarne). Of the Gaffers, Barbarossa, Onward,Recipe and Hilda are here too. You have to anchor inside the island and when we were here 10 years ago we had the greatest difficulty recovering the anchor as it had fouled an old mooring cable. We put a tripping line on the anchor today and hope things will be better when we go tomorrow. D and I rowed ashore to have a look around and see some of the reminders of the earliest days of Christianity in England and stories of the exploits of the early saints.

The picture shows D with St Cuthberts Isle in the background where the saint lived for a couple of years.  We also managed to get fish and chips in the Crown and Anchor, at a time in the evening when most pubs have stopped serving food. 

The pictures show Barbarossa, Onward of Ito and Bonita at anchor off Holy Island, all with a black ball in the rigging as the daytime sign that we are anchored.

The last picture taken at dusk shows a calm sea and our riding light lit and hoisted in the rigging in case any other vessel should arrive in the dark. Most boats today have electric riding lights-or none at all- but Bonitas riding light is a proper parrafin hurricane lamp that is of unknown age but certainly many decades old. As darkness comes we are surrounded by the sounds of the many seals calling to each other as they go noisily about their business.

Lindisfarne

After more than a month in Scotland, Bonita is now back in English waters and our Scottish courtesy flag has been folded away till whenever it might be needed again. This morning we turned Bonita around in her berth with help from Edgar towing the bow round with his dinghy. We then left Eyemouth shortly after low water. The narrow entrance channel was completely blocked by a dredger at work, but we called him up and he seemed happy enough to stop work to let us pass by.

We had hoped to be able to sail but found a light head wind so motored the 20 or so miles to Holy Island (Lindisfarne). Of the Gaffers, Barbarossa, Onward,Recipe and Hilda are here too. You have to anchor inside the island and when we were here 10 years ago we had the greatest difficulty recovering the anchor as it had fouled an old mooring cable. We put a tripping line on the anchor today and hope things will be better when we go tomorrow. D and I rowed ashore to have a look around and see some of the reminders of the earliest days of Christianity in England and stories of the exploits of the early saints. We also managed to get fish and chips in the Crown and Anchor, at a time in the evening when most pubs have stopped serving food. 

The pictures show Barbarossa, Onward of Ito and Bonita at anchor off Holy Island, all with a black ball in the rigging as the daytime sign that we are anchored.

The last picture taken at dusk shows a calm sea and our riding light lit and hoisted in the rigging in case any other vessel should arrive in the dark. Most boats today have electric riding lights-or none at all- but Bonitas riding light is a proper parrafin hurricane lamp that is of unknown age but certainly many decades old. As darkness comes we are surrounded by the sounds of the many seals calling to each other as they go noisily about their business.

Eyemouth

After days (or weeks) of wind that was too much, too little or in the wrong direction, today was better. We had a westerly, force 4 to 5. We started the day in Tayport, and there were a further 8 or so gaffers in Arbroath a few miles up the coast, all waiting for an opportunity to make progress South. We left at 5.30am to get the tide down the river Tay. The Arbroath contingent had to wait for the lock gate to open at around 11am.

Everyone had an excellent sail though there was quite a lot of swell crossing the Firth of Forth. We are now in Eyemouth, so this busy fishing harbour has had the benefit of a sudden influx of gaffers.

All the boats seem to have made a very quick trip, but some of the speeds quoted by enthusiastic owners sound as though they might possibly be a  bit hopeful. Everyone had a good sail though.

Eyemouth is a bustling little town with plenty of history. We were here 10 years ago and the dockside area has been developed and improved since then.

The picture shows one characterful Eyemouth resident: this huge seal is kept well fed with scraps thrown by the fishermen. He is said to be blind, but he is still quick enough so that he usually gets to the fish scraps before the seagulls do.

Discovery in Dundee

This morning we went by bus to Broughty Ferry where the local lifeboat station was having a day of festivities to raise money for the RNLI. Among other excitements was the rescue of a dummy that had jumped - or maybe he was pushed- off a bridge into the sea. It was all well organised and there were plenty of children looking at the exhibits. 

In the evening we went to Dundee where the Gaffers had a private guided tour of the Discovery. This is an antarctic exploration ship, built in Dundee in 1901 and occupying a prominent position between the station and the river.

The Discovery had a very successful career and was used in several important expeditions. She has massive wooden construction and is enormously strong. Unfortunately it is hard to prevent rot in heavy timber construction, but we were impressed by the efforts being made for her preservation. We enjoyed looking round her, though I think our volunteer guide struggled a bit with some of the Gaffers more technical questions.

We then had supper in a gallery overlooking the ship. 

This is the culmination of our visit to Dundee, ably organised by Alison and Julian Cable, who  also arranged our very successful visit to Oban earlier this month.

Yesterday's stormy weather seems to be passing on, and we hope soon to be able to make progress heading south.

Tayport again

The picture shows some of the very many dolphins that accompanied us into the River Tay yesterday. The tides are very turbulent in the entrance to the river and maybe that makes it easier for them to find fish.

This morning we woke up to a moderate breeze, but the forecast was a bit grim - easterly gales and plenty of rain. We thought it would be wise to move the boat at high tide to the sheltered harbour of Tayport on the other side of the river. Our old friends Edgar and Else on their lovely steel yacht Windbreker are here too and they went into Tayport just ahead of us. They were with us on the 2013 round Britain cruise, and on our trip to Holland in 2014: it was lovely to see them again and admire the many improvements to their boat. 

In the evening it did indeed blow hard, with a gale from the east and plenty of horizontal rain. We had a curry in the excellent Bell Rock restaurant and on getting back to the boat were grateful to be moored head to wind in a secure harbour.

Broughty ferry

Our crew was greatly strengthened by the arrival of D yesterday and this morning, after a cooked breakfast ashore and some essential shopping, Allan, D and I decided it was time to move on. We left the tidal harbour of Anstruther at about 11, around an hour before high water, and headed south across the Firth of Forth to have a look at Bass rock.

This is an extraordinary isolated rock that is the home to millions of seabirds. 

Without any preditors, we wondered, do they lead untroubled carefree lives  or maybe is there rivalry between different species or trouble between neighbours who push their luck by encroaching on other birds territory? 

We could not answer these questions. We had a brisk SW wind and had a reef in the mainsail most of the time. After  inspecting Bass rock we crossed St Andrews Bay and entered to mouth of the river Tay. This is surrounded by notorious sandbanks, prone to constant movement, but we eventually threaded our way in, tacking against a blustery wind. This evening finds us on a buoy of the Royal Tay Yacht Club, on the North side of the Tay, at Broughty Ferry a few miles from Dundee. I have never been here before, but D used to sail dinghies off the beach here many years ago with her friend Angela.

We hope to meet up with some more Gaffers here tomorrow.

Anstruther

Allan joined us yesterday and having never sailed in Scottish waters before was keen to see some of the coastline. We have to be back in Dundee at the end of the week for the Gaffers gathering but that should give plenty of time for a bit of exploring. So we left Tayport this morning  at high water and headed down the Tay. We had a range of options of places we could go to depending on the weather, but the wind was light and variable and we didn't want to do a lot of motoring. We sailed round Fife Ness into the Firth of Forth. Anstruther was the most practical place to head for but I was a bit anxious as the harbour dries out at low water and reading the pilot book it was hard to find out where a boat like Bonita could berth safely. We tried to contact the harbour master but he had long since gone home. With Allan on the helm we got into harbour at half tide without touching the bottom. The picture shows the approach to the entrance. 

We found all the berths indicated as being suitable for a larger boat were occupied by local fishing boats. We eventually tied up alongside a large motor boat. Bonita will probably touch the bottom at low tide, but it all seems to be soft mud, so I hope that will be OK.

The picture shows our bit of the harbour, with the town behind, before the rain set in. We had supper in a restaurant certified as providing the best fish and chips in Scotland. It was certainly very good, but I suspect we might have seen other places with similar certification while on our travels.

Dundee

Today Tim and I left the boat in Tayport and took the bus the few miles to Dundee. There is lots to see there. We went to see HMS Unicorn as Tim has been involved in consultancy work concerning her preservation.

The Unicorn is a unique survivor. Built for the Royal Navy as a wooden frigate in 1824, she was never used. On completion she was roofed over to keep the rain out  and stored afloat so if needed she could be put into service at short notice. This never happened and she was soon made obsolete by the coming of steam power.  She has a number of interesting features, including iron diagonal straps that were used to reinforce the later wooden warships. She is afloat in a dock near the city centre, and is looked after by a passionate team of volunteers.

The pictures show her afloat and still roofed over, the gun deck, and an internal view of her bilges which I thought were surprisingly dry considering her age. The diagonal iron straps can be seen in the view of the bilges.

This is a view of the rail bridge over the river Tay, opened in 1887 By each of the bridge supports there is the stump of a support from a previous bridge. This was the rail bridge which partially collapsed in 1879 while a passenger train was going over it during a December storm. The bridge was less than a year old at the time. The subsequent enquiry found poor design, poor quality control and poor maintenance were all factors. The remains of the old bridge were all removed apart from the stumps of the piers. The lessons learnt were used in the design of the current Tay bridge and the Forth rail bridge opened in 1889.

Sadly Tim now has to go home tomorrow after getting us all the way from Inverness, so Bonita is awaiting new crew.

Tayport

In the morning we walked around Arbroath. The town has a long history and is the site of a large ruined Abbey. It is also where the declaration of Arbroath was produced in 1320. I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of it before,  but this was part of the Scots struggle to rid themselves of English influence. It seems the Abbot was a friend of Robert the Bruce, the scottish king at the time. There is a recent statue  commemorating the declaration featuring the King and the Abbot. The

original document still exists in a museum.

We also learnt about the building of the Bell Rock lighthouse, completed in 1810. This is the oldest offshore lighthouse in the world, and was built on a rock 11 miles offshore. It represented a huge technical achievement at the time.

We left the harbour when the lock gates opened after lunch and had a pleasant sail down the coast and into the River Tay. There are formidable tidal streams in the river and we were worried that we might get swept along out of control. However we are now in the little harbour of Tayport, across the river from Dundee. Unusually, this is a harbour looked after by volunteers, and it seemed well looked after and we were made very welcome.

The picture shows a view of the harbour and across the River Tay to Dundee.

Arbroath

We left Stonehaven at low water ( 1 m under the keel on the way out) and motored all the way to Arbroath as there was no wind at all. The coastline along this stretch is more pretty than spectacular, but with a large ruined castle on a cliff top near Stonehaven. The entrance to Arbroath is surrounded by rocks, and once in there are a couple of tight right angle turns before getting to a perfectly secure inner harbour.

Also here are Tony and Sally on Step Back in Time, and a tall ship.

She turns out to be the Kommandorum, a Baltic trader built in 1891 but now used for adventure holidays.

Arbroath is a lively well kept town, well known for the Arbroath smokies, a smoked haddock with a strong flavour. Lots of places in the town sell them, and so clearly we had to sample some as well.

Stonehaven

We left Peterhead at about 8am and started out with a pleasant moderate offshore breeze - unusual on this cruise so far. We were sailing in company with Tony and Sally on Step Back in Time. We were heading for Stonehaven, about 35 miles due south. We passed by Aberdeen, as this port has the reputation of being too busy with oil industry traffic to have much space for yachts. We were surprised to see very little seaborne traffic entering and leaving Aberdeen.though, but we did see lots of helicopters coming and going.

Our pleasant sailing breeze had been forecast as 'variable,', and to prove the point it changed round to being a head wind for the last few miles. We motored into the little harbour at Stonehaven.

The picture shows Bonita tied up to a fishing boat, herself up against the harbour wall, and Step Back in Time outside us. We had a look around the town. It's clear there is much more wealth here than at Peterhead, with more fancy shops etc. Presumably this comes from being an Aberdeen commuter area as, unlike Peterhead, there seems to be no heavy industry. Peterhead has many businesses servicing a large fishing fleet, whereas in Stonehaven the fishing boats seem to be few, small and old. Peterhead has however invested in facilities to attract yachtsmen, whereas the facilities at Stonehaven are fairly basic. We did however find a reasonable quality restaurant close to the quay.

Peterhead

Tiring of the attractions of Inverness, Tim and I were encouraged by a slightly better forecast of westerly winds force 4-6, and so we extracted ourselves from the marina at about midday. The wind proved to be towards the top end of the predicted range, with a bit more added at times. Bonita for much of the trip was running under just mizzen and staysail, and doing more than 7 knots at times. There was a boisterous following sea with a fair amount of spray and water on deck

We covered the 90 miles to Peterhead in about 16 hrs and got in about 5am.

Peterhead is a pleasant quiet town
dominated by the fishing port in the old harbour. There is a large more recent breakwater enclosing a larger area of water. It turns out construction on this was begun in 1888, though not finished for 70 years. Unusually much of the work on building the breakwater was done by convict labour, and a prison was built for the purpose above the harbour. This is no longer used, but has been turned into a museum. I don't remember looking round a prison museum before. Tim bought a souvenir mug.

There seem to have been only the toughest type of prisoner sent to Peterhead, and no doubt many of the guards were pretty robust as well. We heard the story of the triple axe murderer who spent 22 years in the prison, much of it in solitary confinement, who since his release has it seems been a reformed law-abiding character. 

 The harbour the prisoners helped to build is still providing a valuable service today.

  There don't seem to be many dainty fish restaurants in Peterhead, but we had a fish and chip supper in a cafe with Tony and Sally from the lovely Gaffer  Step Back in Time.

Inverness(2)

Tim arrived last night as a very welcome all- weather crew. This morning we woke to light Westerly winds but the forecast was not good - west force 7- 8, maybe gusts of force 9. Its easy to decide to stay in port when the wind is howling in the rigging, but I find it a much harder decision when the weather seems OK but the forecast is uncertain. However after some thought and looking at different forecasts -all much the same- we decided to stay in Inverness today, and later on the wind did indeed blow quite hard as predicted.  Bonita would most likely have been OK running with a force 8 behind her, but entering harbour could be difficult and it seemed an unnecessary risk.

  We looked around Inverness and it's amazing second' hand bookshop.

  We bought some souvenirs......

  We visited the museum and art gallery.

  We went to see an Indiana Jones film -whatever the strengths and weaknesses of Indiana Jones, it doesn't give you much time to worry about the weather outside.

Let's hope for better winds tomorrow.