Round Britain for the RNLI Blog

Up at 7am I was greeted with what looked like the perfect day for my reintroduction to the sea… sunny, dry, warm and no wind. So after leaving the shower key and my berthing fee in an envelope in the marina office letterbox I set out for the first of the two locks out of the Caledonian Canal. It seemed a little strange having to think about tides, waves, overfalls etc and all those lovely things we have to consider when at sea. It felt good to be moving again.

Through the locks and out into the Moray Firth and under Kessock Bridge with the lifeboat station on the north shore I was doing 22kts in completely flat, glassy water. Wouldn’t it be great if it stayed like this all the way but I knew that the chances of that were almost nil and I was right. Never the less, it did stay smooth and fast for most of the way to Whitehills, some 60 miles.

When almost at Whitehills I had to make a decision to stop there or continue on to Peterhead. I had fuelled to allow me to continue on and with the weather good, the sea state planeable and neap tides for my rounding of Rattray Head (a well known area of rough water) it was a situation that I couldn’t waste and so I decided to continue. As I passed by the entrance to Whitehills, and spoke to the harbourmaster on the radio, I felt a bit disappointed that I wouldn’t be stopping there. I had heard many good reports from other “Round Britainers” of their warm welcome and good hospitality. Perhaps another day.

I pushed on past McDuff and Banff and towards Fraserburgh where I reached a bit of a milestone in the trip for this was the furthest north I would travel and almost at the same time it was the half way point in miles too. I let out a little cheer and gave the boat a little pat of thanks for getting me that far. Downhill all the way now but still ahead some of the most challenging parts and in my celebration I reminded myself of that fact just to keep my feet on the ground.

As if to remind me itself the sea decided to stop being so benign and it started to get a lot rougher. No big waves really just very disturbed and a 1-2m swell was coming in from the North Sea too. I had planned to see what Rattray Head was like on the inside route because I didn’t fancy going 4-7 miles out to avoid the overfalls and often an inside route exists. But with the sea cutting up as it was I started to feel that a return to Whitehills might be necessary. However, it turned out nowhere near as bad as I thought it might. The sea was rough on the surface and it made for very slow passage at 5kts but there were no big nor standing waves and I passed Rattray Head slowly but easily just half a mile off. I was relieved to get that part behind me. If I had gone in to Whitehills and had been delayed there for a few days then it would have been back to spring tides and it may not have been so easy.

Travelling almost due south now I went on towards Peterhead and after getting permission to enter the harbour by radio I entered the sanctuary of the harbour. This is a busy port for supply ships for the rigs offshore and the harbour has ships all around in various states of loading and unloading. The marina is tucked away in the far corner nicely out of the way and a welcome sight. I approached my berth thinking of other things and not concentrating and I made a bit of a dog’s dinner out of coming alongside but no harm was done except to my pride but that mends quite quickly nodays. My sponsor for the next leg is Bon-accord Training, and Sheila and Brian welcomed me to Peterhead. Also there was Alf, a member of the YBW.com forum, and his boat, “Navigator” was on the berth next to mine so it was a double welcome. I washed the boat down and had a quick chat to Alf and then dashed off the spend the evening with Sheila and Brian. Only when I got to their car did I realise that I had left Alf to tidy up the hose. Sorry Alf. I hadn’t made the best of impressions on my arrival to Peterhead. I won’t let this kind of thing happen again I promised to myself later.

So, collecting at ASDA Tuesday and media photos and interviews lined up for Monday. Let’s hope the weather holds for my next leg south later in the week.