Macduff
28th March 06
Where’s that?
Every year, Just as the birds are headed back north, I’m headed south. The boat needs a paint. An MOT. A bottom scrape. The bits fixed that you lot broke last summer. And Macduff is the place to do it.
11hrs south of Orkney and across both the Pentland Firth and the Moray Firth. Both bits of jabbly water at that time of year. Forecasts get studied, tides checked and then for the off.
This year was a nice enough trip compared to most, but there again it is later in the year than I normally go.
It was an early start: left the pier at 6 just as the first of the light was appearing over the horizon. Leaving atthat time makes you feel like a naughty kid sneaking away from the scene of a crime before anyone has noticed!!
Navigation is easy enough. Pick up Angus at Lyness, nip out the flow, round Duncansby and then 80Nm due south. The oilrigs break the monotony half way through as they are passed en route. Those are the ones (Beatrice) you see from the road on the drive up: it is strange to see them as far inside the boat as they are off land when driving!
With a max range of 40ish miles, land is spotted on the radar long before visual and it feels like an eon before it ever arrives.
We missed the tide going into the harbour: in spring tides, the bottom hour will see the Halton grouded at the harbour mouth, a stunt I pulled in error the first year I went. So we waited untill the water came in just as the sun was setting.
Tied up in time to meet Bruce and go for a beer.
Angus and Bruce left me to take the Sunrise home (she had come down two weeks earlier and was painted by now) whilst I tended to the Halton.
