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.