A day in Arbroath

We thought we might have left on the early morning high water around 0600. Bruce, the marina manager, who controls the gates that keep the water in the marina when the tide outside falls said he didn’t work that early so wouldn’t be opening the gates. That left us with the option of leaving on the afternoon high water. We thought we might comfortably make it to Stonehaven, so I telephoned ahead to Stonehaven's harbour master to make arrangements. ‘Ooohh! The water’s flat here at the moment, but a Force 6 is expected and it’ll soon pick the sea up; you won’t want to sail in that! Even if you did make it’ he continued ‘ if you were in the harbour you’d probably ground at low water with these spring tides’. ‘Great’ we thought. So with encouragement like that we decided not to sail and had a day in Arbroath. We walked into town for a coffee, we bought Arbroath Smokies for lunch, went grocery shopping, and Rob made some flapjacks. We gazed out from the marina at the flat sea and windless atmosphere and wondered why we hadn’t sailed. Roger arrived on the early evening train and we dined on Rob’s pasta bake.

Tomorrow is another day.

Jan and I eat our Arbroath Smokies