Portsoy Traditional Boat Festival

 

There were not nearly as many boats at the festival as expected. Isabella Fortuna was the only big local boat in the old harbour, and the other boat that was open to the public was Nova Spero, a wooden hulled fishing boat built at Arbroath in the 1970s. She still looks like a deep sea fishing boat, with steel superstructure and wooden decks, but inside this shell she is now fitted out to take 12 guests around Scotland, visiting out of the way places in luxury.

Nova Spero

 

There were lots of locally built rowing boats. Banff and Cullen both have schools and it was great to see young people learning life skills by building boats.

The music and food were as good as ever, and the sun shone on both days so no one minded the strong winds on Saturday that set all the flags flying. 

Last time we went to Portsoy Robinetta behaved impeccably while lying against the harbour wall. This time she did not seem to like it much. She dried out bow down on Friday and Saturday mornings, and Sunday was even worse, as she grounded too close to the wall so we had to have help from Isabella Fortuna's crew and a couple of the security guards to tie her hard back against it to avoid her falling over into the harbour. Friday and Saturday evenings were better as we were awake and could position her as she touched the sand although the bow was still low. Our last drying out, on Sunday evening went perfectly. Not only were we on board as she grounded we had three guests in the cockpit, and their weight meant the bow stayed up beautifully. Our guests were the skipper of Salcombe Lass, who had entertained us the previous two evenings, and two young Norwegians who were over at the festival to demonstrate their boat building skills.

Robinetta was awarded the best traditional boat award, so now we have a lovely ceramic clock for the living room as well as the dining room.