Weather or not

We were all set to go this morning at 0730 as soon as the lock gates open.  However on visiting the 'facilities' block which overlooked the harbour entrance, we noticed spray blowing over the harbour wall and a large breaking swell rolling through the entrance - uh oh, the wind has not changed to SW and abated as forecast - quelle surprise.  (Yes, the pictures we took make the sea look flat, so we're not publishing them - you had to be here.)

We consulted the Harbour Master: "it'll blow like this all day".  We sounded opinion of other visiting yachts: "you don't want to be going south in this".  We waited until 0930 (the lock gates shut at 1000), and it was no better, so decided to be prudent and stay another day in Arbroath ... there are worse places to be weather bound.

Bell Rock Signal Station - now a museum

Coffee in the snazzy cafe overlooking the harbour;  a very interesting hour in the Bell Rock museum (Bell Rock was one of the 'Stephenson Lighthouses' for those who may have read the book of the same name); the most delicious smoked salmon from the 'smokie' by the harbour for lunch in the cockpit; a little lite shopping, particularly to replace our broken thermos (the guarantee will be in a file in a box under a decorator's cloth somewhere in a house far away); fixed a broken cockpit locker lid with some ad hoc joinery, and fixed the Navtex so it started receiving navigational information again; family phone calls; decided not to take on 100L of diesel (half our tank) here, because the wall where we would have to moor threatened many oily & rubbery marks on our lovely clean hull.

We invited a German couple who were moored by us to come aboard for drinks and chat -  they are from Bremen, in a Westerly Merlin, and he sailed it from Ijmuiden to Lowestoft single-handed - they are heading for the Caledonian and then the Western Isles, returning in August.  We introduced them to ginger wine, then gave them a shot of Laphroaig as a taste of things to come.