Arbroath to Stonehaven

We arrived in Arbroath on Monday evening, ready to head out as soon as the harbour gate opened in the morning. This would not be until 10.55, so we had time to shop and for Julian to get the running lights working again.

The gates opened a few minutes early, but we were not in a desperate rush so I did the engine checks and was surprised to find less oil than I expected. There was still plenty, so I turned the engine on. We were being blown into the berth, and it took Julian a lot of patient manoeuvring to turn Robinetta round to head out of the inner harbour.

The wind had been forecast from astern, and light. There was more wind than we had feared, so we got the sail up once we were clear of the harbour and its surrounding field of crab pots but the direction was as bad as expected. Sailing was very hard work on a dead run, and we could not get any wind into the jib, but we did manage 3 hours of sailing without the engine on before the wind went too light to use. We were only making 1½ knots against the tide, and the arrival time at Stonehaven was showing as midnight, so we put the engine on.

There was a lot of bird life about, guillemots razor bills, puffins and gannets were all abundant. The cliffs were full of nesting birds, and the sea has rafts of resting guillemots and gannets. 

Unfortunately the sea also had some unwelcome jetsom. I spotted it from Robinetta (one of the advantages of being so close to the water) and circled back so Julian could fish it out with a boat hook.

Stonehaven castle

 Our arrival time at Stonehaven had been forecast as anytime between 8p.m. and midnight when we were sailing. Luckily this improved hugely under motor as the tide turned in our favour around 4. By the time we reached Stonehaven we were doing 5½ knots, and we entered the harbour just before 7. This was only an hour before low water so I circled the outer harbour carefully looking for the best approach to a vacant berth by a ladder. The depth below the keel in the harbour was never less than 0.9m, but our along side berth only gave us 0.5m. That was plenty, given there was no swell in the harbour, so we moored on long lines for and aft, with a loop of rope tied through the ladder to make a centre line that we clipped on to to keep Robinetta near the ladder.

I cooked on board, then we set off to look for pudding. A member of the life boat crew stopped for a chat, and told us that the only place that would be open was an icecream parlour called Auntie Bettie’s that was all the way round on the other side of the bay. We had a lovely walk there, along a board walk with information boards and quirky sculpture, and areas of benches to sit and chat. Stonehaven has obviously been trying hard to improve its waterfront.

The icecreams were lovely, and afterwards we dropped into the Marine Hotel for a drink before heading back to Robinetta to sleep.