Arctic Monkey - Blue Planet Odyssey: Inverness, Scotland

Rainbows and Unicorns, pretty bright up here.

Teaching Zoe how to row.

We're now in Inverness, Scotland, the capital of the Scottish Highlands. Technically we're still in the Caledonia Canal as we have two more locks before we exit to the sea again. Headquarters for the final stopover is Seaport Marina. Here we handling the last items on our list before heading north to the Arctic.

First on the agenda was the heater. Alistair Mackay from Mackay Boat Repair Services came with a new heater unit. We discussed the problem and decided that swapping out the units would be the easiest and best solution. Alistair worked for most of the day and we tested along the way. By the end, all good and back to normal, no more leaking electrical. He called back a couple days later just to make sure everything was still OK. Highly recommended.

Next up was a small leak on the shaft seal only at 2,300rpm and greater. We think it's caused by the air pipe being slightly too tight. We've loosened it off and will test on the way out. We generally never motor at that high of rpm so its not critical and its not a gusher. John Macbean at Carley Marine has been great help, checking in on us and giving it a once over.

Zetty and Susie have been working diligently on provisioning and meal planning. We want to have enough food on board here to last us through the Northwest Passage which could be two months. This is in addition to the food for our passages to Orkneys, Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. We've rented ("hired" as they say here) a car and will be starting non-stop trips to all our favorite markets in the next two days. The list is long and we're still trying to figure out where to store it all. Glad I bought all those, (6), 100L dry bags on sale in Plymouth.

Our friend Ian Jansing arrived on May 26th and will be on for the rest of the trip. He and I will handle some of the Arctic boat prep, installing the polypropylene mooring lines, swapping out the mast head wind gauges, refilling gas bottles, installing some extra shelving, placing some chafe guards on the spreaders, re-rigging our fourth reef point and organizing contingency items. Our posts may be sporadic from this point onward, highly dependent on WiFi hotspots around various marinas and coffee shops.

We will be joined by another of Zetty's cousins, Chris Boot on Thurs. Chris is a highly active sailor on the Solent and has many ocean miles under his belt. He'll sail with us until we get to Reykjavik, Iceland where he has a return flight back to the UK.

I can't say enough about the Scottish Canals and the people that run them. The lock keepers are friendly and very helpful with local advice. The marina staff are wonderful and keep the facilities in clean working order. I would recommend this trip to anyone.

I was up at the top of the mast doing a little work on the wind gauges and there was a fella looking at the boat down below. When I got down he said, "Same thing happened to mine, eagle landed on it, broke it right off." He's on a boat on the next pontoon. Turns out the man is Alain Bateadat, owner of S/V Leava, from France. Alain did the NWP in 2011. We traded a few war stories, he told us that we had a good boat for the attempt. Small world.

And off we go....