Getting Rocna'd

Remember how we said that the formerly trusty delta anchor was struggling in the masses of kelp and other weed around here? Well, to allow us to explore the nice anchorages and have a good night's sleep at the same time, we decided to get a new Rocna anchor. They are supposed to be good in such conditions and certainly will reset faster than our old delta when the wind direction / tide changes.

We showed you a picture of one before. Well, we hunted through the internet and found that getting one via the Nordhavn Europe folks was the best way. Of course, a 55 Kg anchor is a bit unwieldy and so you cannot just chuck it in the back of a parcel van with nice normal mail order things like stuffed toy penguins.

Sandie, the lovely office manager lady at Nordhavn arranged to ship the anchor to Mallaig for us. The carrier was to call us on arrival so we could meet them with a trolley and take the anchor. Of course, this relied upon the delivery driver actually following instructions and that is always a bit hit and miss. This time, it was a huge miss. Having waited around all day for "the call" that never materialised, we learned that the driver had delivered a packing case (why in a packing case rather than just on a pallet?) to the harbour authority workshops, not the pontoons. Hum, the workshop isn't a short distance away. Still, the guys here came to the rescue again. They arranged for the case to be brought around using one of the harbour forklifts:

They then even lifted it out of the enormous crate into the marina trolley and disposed of the packaging. Serious service!

We had the fun of dropping the existing delta anchor into the little "rubber flubber" dinghy (there were no easy spots for us to put the nose of the boat over a pontoon and drop the anchor straight onto semi-dry land), disconnecting it from the chain and then using the crane for the RIB to lift it on board the boat. The process was then reversed to put the new rocna into the dinghy:

and then attach it to the anchor chain. Amazingly, just as promised by the pictures of other Nordhavn 47s, the anchor fitted into the roller and stemhead fitting just fine. In fact it looks too good to sling into muddy rocky messy areas now:

We will have to rethink this anchoring lark and stick to marinas in future perhaps?

The harbour has a resident seal, named "Pimmy" after the harbourmaster so the local boatowners told us (not because they look alike but because they both have the habit of popping up in strange places unexpectedly). He is huge, mainly from the fish that he almost begs from the local fishermen. The crew witnessed him devouring mackerel at quite a scary rate - Norman, you have competition. Pimmy doesn't even wait for the fish to be battered and fried. 

When his mate the fisherman went back out to sea, Pimmy kept gazing hopefully at the empty boat berth: