Whitefish totalled 2700 boxes from one Scottish and ten Anglo Spanish landings. The Scottish fleet have been largely absent so far this year with boats tending to land in Scrabster or Peterhead. The Anglo fleet are fishing very well with boats landing high quality catches weekly from the shelf edge. The Anglo boats come and go like clockwork despite the terrible weather – tough guys.
Shellfish landings have been limited mainly to the two offshore crabbers landing weekly. The prawn twin riggers Headway and Ocean Trust worked away as weather permitted and the local fleet did likewise.
The non-fishing sector was limited to the fishfarm support barge Sara Maatje V sheltering from the weather.
Ferry works are progressing well. The Terminal Building is due to be handed over to the ferry operator in the next couple of weeks, provided Building Control determine everything is to their liking. The Linkspan replacement forges on with the main concrete supporting structures starting to take shape. The replacement Linkspan has been fully fabricated in Poland ready for final inspection prior to being painted. The Linkspan equipment will be taken by sea to Ullapool and offloaded onto a specialist installation barge at the end of April. A new substation which will provide power for all the new harbour equipment arrived on the 25th February and was connected to the grid on the 27th. Once again UHT would like to apologise for the inevitable inconveniences projects of this scale incur.
Wylde Swan St Kilda trips are selling reasonably well. For anyone interested please check out the harbour website for details. The Scottish Isles Adventure trip is sold out. The sponsored trip from Ullapool to Kristiansand for 16 UHS students and 2 chaperones received a boost this week with combined donations from the ferry infrastructure contractors totalling £2,140! These funds will be used to cover travel costs home from Norway with the harbour sponsoring the voyage. While in Ullapool the Wylde Swan will, as in previous years, undertake a day sail for 37 lucky UHS pupils. We’ll circulate details nearer the time.