Another day another port

Our time in Lossiemouth flew by, as time seems to when the sun is shining. We did a few loads of washing, Kirsty treated herself to a hair cut, I paid the berthing fees, replaced the gas bottle and finally found a copy of Yachting Monthly. It's been quite strange not reading Yachting Monthly for so long. The last copy I bought was in Bangor, in June, and I haven't been able to find another copy until yesterday. Having been a part of every issue since I joined in 1999, and seen the issues put together, it's weird seeing a strange issue on the shelves. It's also weird having to find a copy and pay money for it.

After lunch, Kirsty and I walked around quaint Lossiemouth. The sun was out and the weather was hot, so ice creams were required.

In the afternoon Kirsty's parents joined us, and we sat chatting in the cockpit until we went for dinner. We finished up with drinks on board until Elke and Dave went back to their hotel.

This morning we had two options for a departure time. We had to leave Lossiemouth with enough water to get out of the harbour, and time our arrival in Cromarty Firth so that we had the tide with us as we enter the narrow entrance. We came up with two times 0130 in the morning or 1330 this afternoon. No prizes for guessing which time we chose!

We had a bit of a lie in before Kirsty's parents joined us to say goodbye. We topped up with fresh water and then I set about moving the fuel filter. I'd already moved it from the back of the engine to the front to make it more accessible, but this time I moved it lower down. Whether moving the filter back to a position it had been before might have caused the air leaks, or whether moving it lower would make the life of the fuel pump easier by not having to pump diesel up from the bottom of the tank when the fuel is low, I don't know. Willem the mechanic from Gairloch suggested I move it lower down at some point, so this afternoon that's what I did. As usual it took longer than expected, but we still left on time.

One of Pixie's traits is that she doesn't like going backwards, well not in a controlled way at least. The good news is that it's predictable which way she will turn when we put her in reverse, the bad news is that she will only reverse to port (left). This made coming out of the berth interesting. Luckily Lossiemouth harbour is very sheltered, unluckily we needed to reverse to starboard (right) so Pixie would be pointing the right direction to go out of the harbour forwards. As we reversed out of the berth, what I thought would happen, did. Pixie ended up between the rows of pontoons facing in the wrong direction. So I then had to turn her around so she was facing the right direction. It must have looked strange to anyone not familiar to how prop walk effects the way a boat handles. The easiest way to describe it, is to imagine reversing out of a car parking space in a car park in a car that will only reverse to the left, when the way out is also on your left. Therefore you have to do a 7 (or more) point turn in between the rows of parked cars to get you car facing forward so you can drive out normally. It all went to plan in the end, and as soon as we were out of the harbour we got the sails up. The forecast was south east and the wind was from....north east, while we were going north west, and it veered to east when we were going west. The sun was out and for a few hours to start with we were both in our shorts.



We poled out the genoa and ran dead down wind for 6 hours before arriving at Cromarty just after 1900. We had hoped to stay on the small harbour for the night, however when we arrived there was a small motor boat on the pontoon in the deepest part of the harbour and a yacht with its tender tied alongside. Where is a harbour master when you need one? There could have been enough room in the harbour for a couple more yachts if it wasn't for the actions of those skippers. Such a shame as it looked like a nice little town. I wasn't about to take Pixie in such a small harbour with no clear place to moor so we opted for one of the yacht clubs visitors' mooring instead. The view isn't bad, though it would be better if there weren't a few half built oil rigs in the Firth. Even so their size form a distance is still impressive.