A 100-year-old fishing boat has returned to the port where it spent four decades catching lobster and haddock.
White Wing ME113, a 33-foot Baldie, stopped off at Gourdon, Aberdeenshire on its way back to the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther from the Portsoy Boat Festival.
Maritime enthusiasts have gathered for a glimpse of the old boat – a variety of the Fifie lugsail design popular on the east coast of Scotland – where it will remain until later this morning.
The visit was arranged by the Maggie Law Maritime Museum.
Tom Carnie, president of the Gourdon museum, said: “We asked if it could call on its way past to Portsoy for the boat festival. We were too late on the way there, but the crew called with it on the way back.
“We had quite a few people along to see it. It came in about 15 minutes early, so there were about a dozen at first, but then lots more people headed down. One or two tourists have been round about it as well.
“The skipper of the boat (Bob Flann) is from Gourdon. The Quayside Restaurant and Fish Bar gave all the crew complimentary fish suppers which they were very appreciative of.”
The boat was built in 1917 by Jas Cadger at Gardenstown for John Ritchie, of Whitehills in Banff.
It was owned by the Ritchie family until 1942 when it was sold to Andrew and David Lownie, where it was used to fish for haddock and lobsters until the early 80s.
In 1986, it was used by the BBC in a TV programme called The Shutter Falls, filmed in Portsoy. It was about the Scottish herring fishing industry and the life of photographer Robert Adamson, who worked in the area.
The BBC paid for the boat to be acquired by the Scottish Fisheries Museum, where it has been painstakingly restored.
It is now taken to harbour events across the Scottish coast. The boat was at the reopening of the Forth and Clyde Canal in 2001 and the opening of the Falkirk Wheel the following year.
