Day 28

We were up early to catch the tide and to go round the infamous Rattray Head. We were lucky as it was so calm. We then turned West would you believe! heading along the coast towards Inverness. We had a wonderful sail, the sun came out and when we passed Troup Head we saw masses of birds, Gannets, Puffins and Guillemots - I only wish we could have been closer to shore to see them more clearly.

I have been trying to photograph a Puffin, Gullemot and /gannett - this is the best I could do for the Gannett.

I do admit to being a little sad at times. Before we left I downloaded a map of the UK onto my tablet so I could see where we are. I know we have lots of charts on board but like Shane Spall who had an AA road map when she did her trip, I wanted something too - hence my map on my tablet. I opened it up when we were sailing along so I could see what places were called and I have to post this picture

This not only showed me the coast but the GPS within my tablet allowed the programme to show where we are at sea! We are the blue arrow - Technology is wonderful!

We were heading for Banff. We read up in the Scottish Guide and the almanac as to when we could enter as there was restricted water in at the harbour entrance - we were fine for a draft of 1.8m 4 hours either side of high water. Our draft was 1.5m and we were 3 1/2 hours before so should be fine. Paul telephoned the harbout master who said we should be ok. We were just approaching the harbour and the phone went - it was the harbour master "Do you have enough water?" he enquired! Well we did think you are the harbour master and you should know your harbour! We told him we needed 1.5m and hesaid we should be ok. We went in very cautiously and the depth went down and down, we then very gently bumped the sandy bottom. Paul tried to reverse out by no good. I took Jazz down below and tied her up so she would not get under our feet. I then put fenders out each side - the harbour walls were close! There was a slight swell coming in through the harbour and after about 10 minutes we were lifted over the sand and into the harbour - we were very relieved!

Banff is beautiful and we are so pleased that we decided to stop here

A view from the bridge out to sea.

We had a very pleasant walk into MacDuff the next village.