The Festival of the Sea, May 2003 in Leith Docks, Edinburgh.
When we heard that the Festival of the Sea was being held in Leith docks in Edinburgh this year, it seemed appropriate to take Gamebird along. Having dipped her toe in salt water when we launched at Grangemouth for the opening of the Forth and Clyde canal and not come to any harm, it was time for her to extend her horizons a bit. We originally planned to have her craned in from her trailer but as this would present a problem getting the straps on and it seemed a bit tame, we turned our attention to arriving by sea. We considered cruising along the Union and Forth and Clyde canals but ruled this out as we wouldn't have time. We considered launching at Port Edgar, near the Forth Road Bridge, but our insurance company ruled this one out! We agreed on a compromise in that we would launch at Granton and cruise the mile to and from the festival, provided weather conditions were suitable.
Thursday morning saw us leave home at 7am with Gamebird looking her best on her trailer and making our way through the Edinburgh rush hour to Granton. We didn't even get a mention on the morning road reports. We had worked out our launching plan which would be a bit different from our normal in that I would be on board as the location did not lend itself to using ropes. All went well after the reluctance to leave her trailer was traced to the winch still being hooked on. I cruised round to the pontoon where we filed up with water and waited for our escort vessels - Ratho Princes and Loch Ness which had cruised all the way from Ratho and were making their way down the Firth of Forth. We ventured out of Granton harbour and had our first glimpse of the Forth - it is rather big when you are just a little boat. However, our escorts positioned themselves one on each side of us and accompanied us to Leith. The sea was not quite flat calm but Gamebird coped admirably and won praise from other narrow boaters for her performance. We entered the sea lock at Leith and wow, it was big! Having been on the Manchester Ship Canal I thought I knew what a big lock was like but this was something else. We found a spot just behind the Matthew, a replica of John Cabot's boat and I spent the time in the lock admiring the wood on the underside of her tiller. When we got through the lock we were escorted to our moorings by a marshal boat and we found that the three canal boats had been given pride of place among the private boats. It was a wonderful weekend with so much to see. Lots of tall ships, old and new fishing boats, big Navy ships, (Southampton, Thyme etc), a superb display of model boats, Britannia etc etc. Lost of stalls but not a chandlers in sight! Do yachties not buy bits and pieces for their boats?
The highlight for me was cruising the site on board Ralph Allardyce's clinker built wooden boat with it's electric outboard. We inspected the display boats from the other side and did a sail past of Britannia! We almost got caught up in a sea battle of model boats in front of the Scottish Executive building and we had to beat a retreat when the big boats were coming out to do a display involving Naval patrol vessels, rigid raiders, helicopters, a Nimrod and a Harrier.
It was great to meet again many boaters we have met over the years at various events, especially the "boys" from the Fishery Museum at Anstruther who had both The Reaper and White Wing there.
We left the Festival on Monday morning when we shared the lock with lots of private boats and two tall ships. Our escort back to Granton was a launch belonging to the Royal Forth Yacht Club and once there Iain retrieved the landy and trailer from Leith and after waiting for enough water on the slipway we did an almost perfect retrieval - just as well as we had quite an audience.
Gamebird was much admired over the weekend and we felt that she held her own in very exalted company.
For anyone else contemplating a sea voyage with their Sea Otter, our safety equipment included :-
lifebelt, life jackets for everyone on board, VHF, mobile phone, flares, charts, and a GPS system just in case we got seriously off course :-)
There are lost of photos on the photo page