Big ships and a yellow submarine

Monday 18th July 2011
On Monday morning The "Mir", a russian tall ship was docked at Hatston in Kirkwall and open to the public. It is the biggest of all the tall ships. A huge ship but not really as pretty as some of the others. Size isn't everything after all.
The crew were obviously very keen to give the tourists something to watch and even appeared to be showing off the local custom of betting on anything by having a race between a whelk and a crab across the deck.
Also at Hatston was a new Scot Renewable tidal turbine. Apparently this one is anchored by just one point to the seabed. This is supposed to allow it to swing so that it will face into the tide at all times. Good luck to them and I hope it succeeds. They do need to change the colour though if they do not want to be the butt of endless jokes.


More interesting than the Mir, was The "Pharos" which was moored on Kirkwall pier and was also open to the public. She is the boat belonging to The Northern Lighthouse Board and services all the bouys and lighthouses around the scottish coast. She is a very sophisticated ship, a complete change from the sailing ships also in the harbour and complete with helicopter.
The bridge wa a mass of high tech positioning equipment along with controls for ROV's, winches and cranes. There were desks for about six other operators in addition to the positions for the normal crew just steering the ship.

Pam had not come with us as she had a U3A committee meeting so we had agreed that we would go and see the Mir and then go round Kirkwall museum and then go back and pick Pam up. We went into the museum and I thought that I would just phone Pam and let her know where we were. She told me that not a single person had turned up to the meeting. Even the chairman had phoned to say he could not make it at the last minute. I therefore dragged John and Alex out of the museum after they had got as far as the first room and we went back to pick up Pam.

In the afternoon we all went to Stromness. There were several of the tall ships in the harbour and they looked really at home there. Stromness is more of an old fashioned traditional port than Kirkwall and they seemed to fit in well there.
We then had an amble through the town. It is Stromness Shopping Week this week. This is a kind of carnival week and the shops have special displays. I don't think that it is normally very good but with the tall ships being in port along with all the associated events there was quite a lot going on.