24th Jan– 17th Feb (34 arrivals)

Harbour News

Slightly busier times with 34 arrivals for the period.

Whitefish landings totalled 8200 from 2 Scottish trawlers, 1 Anglo Spanish freezer gill-netter and 11 Anglo Spanish liners. The Scottish fleet continues to fish the shelf edge for monkfish and saithe with decent marks of mixed fish across the grounds. The Anglo fleet have had excellent returns for their efforts with hake and ling both plentiful, unfortunately as is always the case when fish are plentiful the market collapses with some Anglo vessels tying up for a few weeks until prices improve.

A crew member onboard the Spanish liner Sylvanna had a brush with death when he slipped and fell between the pier and boat sustaining head injuries before falling into the water. Thankfully the skipper, crew and harbour staff were on hand and quickly recovered the unconscious man from the water. The casualty was flown to Raigmore where he is making a full recovery after 4 days in intensive care. Many thanks to the local volunteer coastguards, emergency services and harbour night shift staff for averting what could otherwise have been a much more serious incident.

The shellfish fleet have worked away well with the offshore crabbers landing good shots weekly and the local prawn fleet reporting decent catches and prices.

The non fishing sector saw the fishfarm tank ship Viknes landing farmed salmon on 3 occasions, the MCA tug Anglian Earl in twice for stores and fuel and the pelagic trawler Charisma in to pick up their skipper.

Scrap Metal Amnesty

Ullapool High School young engineers are constructing an electric car to enter in the annual Greenpower IET Formula 24 endurance races www.greenpower.co.uk/racing/formula24/. Given the complexities of design financial assistance is required to complete the project and Ullapool Harbour would like to organise a scrap metal amnesty to raise funds. In the first instance please email kenny@ullapool-harbour.co.uk or phone 01854 612091 to organise collection or drop off at the pier. See separate advert for further details.

Tall Ship News

Trips to St Kilda on the Wylde Swan have been eagerly snapped up with both 3 day voyages now sold out. The four sponsored sail trainee places have also been filled with high school pupils and the 2 overnight voyages are also filling up with eager young sailors. The 7 day tour of the islands has a few spaces left; interested parties should contact the harbour office for details. For those that have missed out this year a list of names will be kept in the hope that Wylde Swan will return in 2013 for another series of adventure voyages.