Harbour News

The harbour has once again been fairly quiet with the majority of whitefish vessels either working east or north and landing into Scrabster.

Whitefish landings totaled 2240 boxes from 3 Scottish and 3 Spanish vessels with monkfish being the main target species. 

The shellfish fleet has seen a vast improvement with both the crab and prawn vessels  making good landings of top quality animals.

The non-fishing sector saw the MCA tug Anglian Prince call in on 3 occasions for a crew change, fuel and repairs.  FRV Scotia anchored in the bay to drop off scientific personnel, the vessel is currently conducting the annual west of Scotland demersal trawling survey.

Many thanks to all of those that sent in contributions to the Harbour Christmas Card Competition, we received 45 entries and after much deliberation have chosen a winner and runner up.  The winner is Joanna Wright from Ullapool for an original watercolour of small boats in the harbour, and the runner up is Joe Firth-Bernard aged 7 from Achiltibue for a very eye catching painting of Santa’s Reindeer. Many thanks to Sheileagh Luyken the traveling art teacher for once again encouraging the primary school artists to take part.

Ullapool Harbour held Trustee interviews in October for 3 seats on the board, with the newly appointed or reappointed members taking up office on Tuesday the 1^st of December.  Ms. Fiona Macdonald and Mr. Sandy Osborne were reappointed, Mr. Alistair Fraser was newly appointed and Mr. Roy Macpherson was co-opted for 1 year.  This week the harbour said goodbye to Mr. Alan Britten who served the harbour tirelessly for 9 years starting back in 1976.  All at the harbour would like to thank Alan for his input over the years and wish him a long and happy retirement.

As mentioned previously Ullapool Harbour are very keen to increase their share of the lucrative summer cruise tourism market.  The recently formed marketing group Cruise Scotland (CS) received funding from Scottish Development International to undertake an infrastructure survey of all CS members.  The firm of GP Wild Ltd were engaged to carry out an in depth survey, meet relevant stakeholders and assess the services and excursions on offer at each port.  I am delighted to report that the Ullapool meeting was very well attended with 8 local representatives putting their views to the panel.  Ullapool is ideally located for cruise tourism particularly the smaller adventure ships, there is however a need to form a cruise management group to coordinate ship arrival, meet and greet etc. At some point over the winter Captain Iain Dunderdale will be invited to Ullapool to give a talk at an open meeting to describe the Invergordon success story, meeting details will follow in due course.  Hopefully interested parties will attend the meeting and from this a steering group will be formed to take things forward.

Aged 15-25 years by July 2011, interested in a life changing challenge crewing aboard a Tall Ship sailing the west coast of Scotland then contact the harbour office or check out the sail training website. www.sailtraininginternational.org   

No sailing experience is required just an enthusiasm for fun and adventure.  Having attended the International Tall Ships meeting in Istanbul in November it became apparent that the success of Ullapool’s bid will depend on the number of suitable trainees the area can provide.  Please contact the harbour if this type of adventure interests you, there will be a dedicated Tall Ships page on the harbour website soon with regular updates of how things are progressing.