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Published: July 20th 2009
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Next stop Wick and for what it seemed like, it was an abandon town. On one of the first corner we past, there was a small beautiful but dead rabbit on the ground, with a tight red ribbon around its throat. Abandon may be a wrong word, since there were people there, mostly driving by or some crewcut kids on bicycles. All the building around seamed so dead, colorless and sad, though the raining light fog may have been a contributing factor, or maybe it was that three out of five stores we past had been boarded up and closed for ever as it seemed.
A positive surprise was the brand new, high quality marina. We asked the harbor officer, and he told us that the marina actually was just a week old. He could also tell us that one of the reasons that so many shops were closed, was due to huge shopping centers opening in the outskirts of the town.
The next day, the sun was up, and the town looked much better, it also was a bit more people in town.
We visited the old pultney distillery, were we got a nice tour and a taste
of their whisky (on distillery tours it is common to end the tour with a taste of the whisky they produce). Interestingly after the tasting the women that held the tour left the bottles on the table when she left us...
Later the same day we sailed a bit further south, and anchored right next to Dunrobin castle. Jørgen, Arne and Olav inflated the dingy and went in to land to see the castle. After ten that evening we left for a nights sail to Inverness.
We had to travel by night to Inverness, as we had to get inside the locks at high tide. But we had a problem, the boat were sailing to fast! We had to trim the sail badly so that the speed would reduce, the wind also disappeared at the end, so we went slowly in under engine power. It was Arne and me who were on duty from 00:00 to 04:00, the sun just came up before I went to bed. But I was awoken only an hour or so later by Jørgen, there were dolphins swimming around the boat! I grabed the camera and took loots of pictures, it was 20
degrees celsius in the water so it was tempting to jump in with them. The dolphins jumped right beside our boat. After they went on their way I went to bed and slept for 20 minutes before Jørgen waked me again, another flock of dolphines! This time a dolphin was bow riding for several minutes, I could almost have stretched my arm out and touch it. It was playing around a bit swimming from side to side, under the boat, suddenly disappearing and surprising us by jumping up in front of the boat again.
Anyway, after that I couldn't fall a sleep again and stayed on deck until we arrived at the lock.
We called at the lock keepers on the VHF, but they told us they couldnt let us in. There had been a storm the night before, were apparently the bridge had been damaged by the lighting, so it wouldnt open. We anchered up outside, and went to sleep for a while, made some breakfast, went for a swim in 1,5kn current, and after about four hours, we heard on the VHF that the bridge was fixed and we could go inside the lock. We took up
the anchor, had fenders out, and was almost at the lock, when a german boat came at full speed in from port side to get in before us. Ha had so much speed so we had to let him pass, we were shure that we had to wait even more, as the lock looked full, but luckely with a bit of shoe horning, there were room for us as well. A few lockes later, we were in Seaport marina, Inverness.
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