Yesterday I visited the Portsoy Sauna, otherwise known as the Seminar on Matters Maritime.  A good range of entertaining speakers kept a a very warm audience from snoozing ( well mostly – I did notice a few of the more senior members resting their eyes ). During the lunch break I wandered down to the harbour for a breath of fresher air and to see if any of the visiting boats had arrived. A treasure awaited on the quay wall in the old harbour – ‘Aluna Ivy’was on display, allowing a good look at some excellent craftsmanship by Ian Best .

 ’Aluna Ivy’

     

 If you are interested get along to the Portsoy Traditional Boat Festival and have a gander.

I was delighted to see that fellow HBBR member, Roddy Hill, had arrived as evidenced by his Stephenson Weekender ‘GreyGoose’ dried out in the Old Harbour. Look forward to seeing him in action again on Saturday.

The weather forecast is looking reasonable so, if you are in the area, why not pop over and enjoy a fantastic day of music, food, and above all boats – Old Boats, Newish Boats, Wooden Boats, Metal Boats and a few plastic boats as well. From what I saw it is shaping up to be another excellent show – and if the rest of the family isn’t that into matters maritime then there are plenty of other attractions to distract them whilst you attend to the important stuff. Full detail here, this can be a time consuming website – there is a lot of fascinating stuff here – although sadly no street map of Portsoy identifying the various venues – an inexplicable ommision since the souvenir programme has a very good one – so the artwork has already been done. Knowing where events were would have helped enormously yesterday following a late arrival after a three hour drive being held up by interminable processions of agricultural machines.

5th July update – my selection of snaps from my visit on Saturday 4th July is here