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.