Jean Says: Wick was formerly a herring fishery. They used to have a fishing festival and parade every year, and a herring queen would be crowned. They stopped the festival when the herring fishing industry ended, but have recently reinstated this tradition, and the newly appointed herring queen gets brought into the harbour on the lifeboat. This year's event is going to be this weekend, but we'll have moved on by then, and are gutted.
The marina staff in Wick are super friendly, very helpful and obviously very proud of the service they provide. They even found someone to give Bob a lift to the Co-op. It makes such a difference to be given a warm welcome when you've been out all day and are tired, cold and hungry. We told them how nice we thought they were and they went off beaming.
The town itself has the look of a Lancashire mill town with its austere factory buildings and tall thin chimneys. It also has a bit of a French feel to it, and not just because of the red, white and blue flags they'd put up for their herring festival. Wick is not a holiday destination, it's a functional working town, and you can't buy a model puffin anywhere. There were some postcards in one shop, but they were of Scrabster, which is at least thirty miles away. I expect that we are the nearest thing to a tourist that they are likely to get.

Wick town centre at 7.00am looking a leetle French......(there's a rather shady looking garçon in the left hand corner).





Heading out from Wick across the Moray Firth to Peterhead, I saw on AIS what looked like a nameless, directionless cargo ship declaring itself to be doing 25 knots in our direction. I could see the shape of it in the distance, and watched it with interest and slightly more than my usual level of suspicion. Although it seemed to be getting closer, I was very surprised that it wasn't transmitting its destination, or size, or purpose in life. It was quite some time before I realised that the cargo ship was actually a large oil platform, and we were getting closer to it, not the other way round. I can't think why it would be transmitting that it was doing 25 knots, but strange things happen at sea.

The passage to Peterhead started quite well because the sun was out, but being a twelve hour journey, and being outside much of the time, we became quite cold. By the time we arrived in Peterhead, we were feeling a bit weary, and wishing that the weather would improve again. Joe, David and Andrew from Dawn Treader had arrived at Peterhead from Whitehills earlier, had spotted us coming in on AIS, and had very kindly come out to help us moor up and invite us on board for a gin and tonic (or in Bob's case two G&Ts). That's my idea of a support group!!

Wick marina