12th June (28 arrivals)

Harbour News

Whitefish totalled 4600 boxes from 5 Anglo Spanish vessels. The Anglo fleet continue to target hake, ling and monkfish along the shelf edge; a large proportion of the Anglo fleet is currently tied up waiting for markets to improve. The Scottish whitefish fleet is working either in the North Sea or around the Northern Isles, there is word that these boats will be heading west in search of haddocks in the next few weeks.

The shellfish sector has enjoyed very good fishing across all sectors, in particular the local inshore boats and the visiting offshore prawn trawlers have landed good shots of quality animals from the North Minch.

The non fishing sector saw the very welcome arrival of the cruise ship Marco Polo, originally scheduled to visit Fort William the skipper decided to come to Ullapool on a beautiful Saturday morning. Carrying 750 mainly British passengers the Marco Polo lay at anchor for 12 hours whilst the ships compliment enjoyed the delights of the village. Many thanks once again to our pipers Kayleigh and Angus and the Visit Scotland team of Chrissy and Jan, much appreciated. Other non fishing sector visitors were the Marine Scotland research vessel Scotia and the luxury cruise ship Hebridean Princess.

Transport Minister Keith Brown announced last Friday that a new faster, greener and more reliable ferry is to be built for the Ullapool-Stornoway route. The new vessel will take approx 2 years to build and is due to come into service in the summer of 2014. Within the press statement it was recognised that both Ullapool and Stornoway harbours will require infrastructure works prior to the new vessels arrival, very welcome news particularly given the current tough financial climate.

Tickets for the Feis Rois ceilidh onboard the Tall Ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl are slowly selling. Please support this not for profit event as Tall Ships will only become regular visitors if they feel it is worth their while due to local interest. There are hundreds of alternative destinations in Europe for ships to visit and lack of local support will only lead to them altering their future itineraries.