The owner of a boat that caught fire in a north-east harbour has said his entire family has been left in shock.
Hamish McPherson, who skippered the Ardent II before his son took over in 2000, last night described the moment that family members were alerted that their trawler was on fire while berthed at Peterhead.
Mr McPherson, who today runs a bed and breakfast in Hopeman in Moray, has owned the boat since it was built in 1986 and yesterday branded the blaze as “devastating”.
“We won’t hear the results of what happened until Monday at least,” he added.
“The Marine Accident Investigation Branch will be working on it today.
“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack trying to find out how it happened.
“It was a shock to everyone and my family.
“But the bottom line is nobody was hurt and nobody was lost. We can fix and replace boats but we can’t replace human beings.
“It’s devastating but we will go back to the harbour on Monday to see the damage and to try to find out what happened.”
At the blaze’s peak, 34 firefighters and six appliances from across Aberdeenshire were called in to battle the flames.
It was first spotted by locals at about 5.40am on Tuesday morning but crews were called back to Peterhead Harbour shortly after 8pm when the fire restarted.
In total, fire crews spent more than 24 hours at the dock making the scene safe for investigators to move in.
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch was due to be in Peterhead yesterday to investigate the cause of the fire.
Buchan police inspector George Cordiner said an investigation had been planned for Wednesday, but that had to be postponed because of the outside temperature of the boat’s metalwork.
Fire crews registered heats of 200C while cooling the boat.
The Ardent II was unmanned at the time of the blaze.