The radio was concentrating on 3 stories. Murray is in the Wimbledon semis against Nadal tomorrow. The public sector are on strike today and they had to close a power station at Torness because of jellyfish blocking the filters in the water cooling system. My thoughts were with the public sector workers fighting for their pensions.As I will be collecting mine when i get back it seemed pretty close to me.
There was a lot of bird life today. The rocks were covered in bird colonies. There were big groups feeding at sea and downy guillemot youngsters were bobbing about and vulnerable. They didn't seem to be able to dive like the adults and so sat around screaming when I passed by too close.They seem such easy targets for the gulls.
One of the little ports I passed was Pennan, where they filmed Local Hero. Its still got the red telephone box which features in the film though I couldn't see it from the shore.
I imagined Rattray Head to be cliffs like most headlands, but its just a series of sand dunes. It is the shallow water off it which causes the bad conditions as the tide can kick up a bad swell. Today it was no problem and I just coasted through.
Just beyond Rattray there is a gas terminal and the charts show all the pipelines that come ashore at that point. Probably not a good place to try and anchor!
Peterhead is a very major port with the marina tucked in the corner. When I radioed in to enter the marina I had a polite ticking off for not having asked a mile out to enter the harbour. I checked the pilot book and it says as much there but I missed it.I felt a little small and entered my berth with my tail between my legs.
A friendly Dane took my line as I came in and got talking . He invited me to joining the crew for a can of Carlesburg. There are 40 boats on there way over from Denmark and they are all going to try and fit in Whitehills. Its such a small place they'll need a stacking system.The skipper was thinking about going through the canal and heading down the Irish sea to do a partial circumnavigation. He has 6 weeks. I said he should be able to do it in his very flash Walstead 42.
kelvin finally arrived nearly 2 hours after me. It had taken me 7 1/2 hours to do the 40km so doing it in 2 hours less than the Sadler made me feel pretty good at how well Hylje had gone. I had poled out the genoa and raised the no2 jib as well as the main so she had lots of sail.
The latest progress map looks like this. Tomorrow I shall use these good winds to move onto Stonehaven or Aberdeen.Tonight though Kelvin and I will go looking for fish and chips. i shall try not to comment on the speed of Sadler 26s.
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