54 arrivals for the period
Whitefish has once again been very busy with both Scottish Trawlers and Anglo Spanish liners making regular landings of top quality fresh fish with 10,000 boxes landed for the period. The Scottish trawlers Harvest Hope, Adventure and Ocean Endeavour continue to land good hauls of haddock from Rockall, and the Anglo fleet working long lines along the shelf edge land quality hake and ling weekly.
Shellfish landings have also been reasonable with a number of visiting prawn trawlers and the Orcadian crab creeler Heather K landing weekly.
Non-fishing with 16 arrivals was unusually busy. The survey vessels Bibby Tethra and Proteus were day running along with the dive support vessel Moorfowl. The salmon farm support vessels Viking Atlantic, Tie Venture, Inter Caledonia and Ronja Pioneer called in for layovers. The luxury French cruise ship L’Austral arrived on a sunny Sunday with passengers seeing the village and Scottish scenery at its very best. The Dutch Tall Ship Tecla arrived back from St Kilda and stored up before departing on a 22-day voyage to Iceland via Stornoway, Shetland, Fair Isle, Shetland, Orkney and the Faroes. The Tecla with 8 paying guests onboard (including our very own Harbour Assistant Phil Shaughnessy), reached Faroe at the weekend under engine power due to a (most unusual) lack of wind. The Wylde Swan returned from a 7-day island adventure last Saturday having visited Jura, Islay, Iona, Skerryvore, Tiree, Canna and the Shiants in glorious weather. On a highlight-filled trip, landing on the remote Skerryvore reef (pictured) was arguably the pinnacle. Wylde Swan will not return in 2017 due to other commitments but she will definitely be back in 2018 for adventure trips to St Kilda and other Scottish islands. Tecla will return next year and is planning a 7-day circumnavigation of Skye as one option alongside a number of St Kilda cruises. Interestingly a 12-hour return trip to St Kilda by motor boat is priced at £248 which makes the Ullapool Tall Ship 4-day offers at around £440 a real bargain.
Ullapool Harbour: West Highland & Islands Local Development Plan: Main Issues Report.
In response to the draft drawing published in last week’s Ullapool News, Ullapool Harbour Trust reiterates that there are no fixed plans to develop a marina at this present time. As with any business the harbour has a desire to grow and improve and in the past few years, a range of design templates have been produced to tease out ideas and challenges prior to committing to anything definite. As an example, twenty different design drawings were produced for the ferry infrastructure project, one of which included a proposal for a reclaimed car park on the west beach. The car park extension had a number of iterations including a one-way system using West Argyle Street as the entrance. Clearly both these ideas were never taken up. In the past number of years, UHT have requested our engineers, Wallace Stone, to produce a series of draft drawings of possible marina plans to ascertain the visual impact, cost and vessel capacity. The drawings produced so far have not been made public as the Trustees decided that all four versions were either too intrusive to the village or did not provide a good overall solution. When the Trustees do decide to look at developing further major commercial or leisure infrastructure at the harbour, a public consultation process will take place prior to any decisions being taken.