Tayport to Peterhead

Dundee's V&A

Atmospheric interior

... on my 68th birthday. 

Planning passages is feeling increasingly like cheekily inserting 100 miles or so into weather which really wants us elsewhere. It was clear that we were't going anywhere on Thursday 30th, with strong northerlies forecast for the whole day. I spent a jolly hour rewiring the switch panel so that the downlight now doesn't come on with the nav lights and the steaming light does. Also I discovered that the anchor light was wired to the tricolour light switch, so for two night passages we have been sailing with no red or green lights. I have emailed Olly to telly him what I think, no response yet....

Relabelled switches

Later we took the bus into Dundee to visit the V&A and do a bit of shopping. Apparently locals have been disappointed with the V&A which said it was going to hold four big exhibitions a year and now has only one. Still, there was a fantastic display of kimonos which Erika and I both enjoyed very much. The V&A is a striking modern building inside and out and has a great atmosphere and an attractive restaurant, where the cheese scone was great and the coffee disappointing. I also enjoyed an installation of 12 hours of webcam footage of Piccadilly Circus, with crowdsourced captions of what people might be thinking. Or indeed what the buses and traffic lights might be thinking. Twelve hours is a bit excessive but a few minutes was god fun.

Then it was off to Erika's favourite outdoor shop, Tiso, to buy some gloves. (Her partner is Scottish so she knows vastly more about Scotland than I do). I have had many pairs of sailing gloves over the years and I don't like any of them. They are mostly designed for rope handling rather than to keep your hands warm, especially in wet conditions. I splashed out on a pair of Sealskinz and will report back. After an exciting half hour in Lidl we headed back to Tayport. I'm far too scared to go into a Scottish pub, but again following Erika's lead we ended up in the Bell Rock, which looked grim outside but had a dining area separate from the scary bar, and served good Indian food.

Friday 31st looked as though we could head north. I am really seeing the value of map-based apps like Windy that let you see moving calmer patches which, with luck, you can track north. We left an hour before HW, around 9am, and very little wind and mostly from the SE all day, although there was a northerly swell left over from the day before which was a bit trying. With the tide with us we made excellent progress, less so when it turned, and at exactly 1730 the forecast northwesterly arrived, mostly at an angle which meant we could motorsail well but it would have been too tight to sail. For most of the next 90 minutes we were concentrating on passing Aberdeen which is full of huge supply ships, workboats, ferries and much more coming and going. You can go in there in an emergency but it's not really a place for yachts.

Aberdeen is there somewhere

Lidl macaroni cheese for dinner and we pressed on north, slowly. Finally we turned in towards Peterhead around 2330 and dropped the main. Erika went forward to full it don and was once again smitten by an appalling headache. We can only assume it's caused by the lifejacket pressing on her neck, as it's not dissimilar to David Jibb's experience in 2021 (wearing the same lifejacket) when he fainted in the cockpit.

Erika was then unable to do anything and we were approaching the very busy harbour, in the dark, with thousands of lights, only a few of which were actually navigation lights. We were called by port control just before I called them. Really hard to understand the accent (apparently they all use to speak Doric) but fortunately they were just saying "come straight in after that ship". An additional small excitement was that the binoculars had come apart again after the glue failed. I was totally dependent on the chart plotter, which has been temperamental lately and froze exactly when I needed it most. Thank the lord for our autopilot which took us almost to the entrance with no fuss while I restarted everything successfully. Once we were inside the harbour and out of everyone's way, Erika was able to clutch the tiller while I very quickly rigged a couple of lines and a couple of fenders. And then straight into a rather exposed berth, a brief hiatus while we were blown off sideways and then Erika was able to retreat below, after being sick a few times, while I tidied up. 

The waves blowing straight at Kalessin's sugar scoop stern produced what the boys used to call "sloshy sloshy" noises. Fortunately I think Erika was beyond caring. She was really unwell and although she didn't say at the time, at one point thought she'd have to call 999. It's now Saturday afternoon and I'm hoping to do another shoehorned-in passage, overnight to Lossiemouth, but unless Erika makes a miracle recovery I fear we might be in Peterhead for up to a week.

Distance run: 79 nautical miles