Findhorn
At a Glance
Contacts
Royal Findhorn Yacht Club: 01309 690247 www.rfyc.co.uk/
Findhorn Boatyard: 01309 690099
Findhorn Pilot: 01309 690802 or 07747840916
Many sailors are put off visiting this Bay because of the bar and
its fearsome reputation. This is a shame because when approached
in suitable conditions the bar is not a big problem. There is no
doubt that, in Northerly winds and seas, it looks very daunting;
even in light winds, if there is a residual Northerly set to the
sea, the breakers over the bar are very scary; but the careful
mariner, with proper planning, who arrives there with one or two
hours of flood remaining and no swell, will wonder what all the
fuss is about. This place is no different to any other tidal
choke point on our coasts, do it wrong and you'll get caught out,
plan it properly and it's no problem.
There has been a settlement here for centuries and at one stage
when trading boats were quite small it was a busy little port. When
the boats got bigger the trade moved elsewhere. Over the centuries
there have been two or three villages, each one being devoured by
the sea in its turn as, no doubt, will the present one, one day.
As it stands today it is a lovely little village isolated by the
MOD with its large airfield at Kinloss inland; there is only one
approach from the land between the airfield and the bay which tends
to give an insular feel to the place and there is no railway
history here so it went from the horse and cart to the motor car
with nothing in between. Fronting the bay are some very well
endowed houses with picture windows looking across the bay with
driveways for their cars coming in from the back and driveways for
their boats going down to the water's edge!
There is no industry apart from tourists who tend to visit mainly
at the weekend unless they take up residence in one of the many
holiday cottages or caravans. The caravan site used to be a Mecca
for touring caravans but the owner has decided to give up the
touring part of his business so that has died out. There is the
Findhorn Foundation to the South of the village which hardly
impinges on the village at all; its visitors come from the South,
the entrance is the first habitation they come across so they
proceed no further.
When you get to the village itself either by passing the Settlement
or coming across the Bar you find out what Findhorn is all about;
boats!! This is a small paradise for us yachties; whatever the
time of day there is something going on; from a skipper sculling
ashore in his tender for the papers or morning communion with
nature to a full scale racing day with everything from fast Olympic
class boats to Mirror dinghies, teenagers scorching across the
water with the crews hung out on trapezes, Mums or Dads with
toddlers, barely able to walk, handing the jib sheets of a Mirror,
and even Grandads manfully attempting to show they aren't too old
for it!!
What has happened, and is still happening, is that the estuary of
the Findhorn River has slowly been cut off by sand being scoured
from East to West along the shore of Burghead Bay to the situation
we have now, a large shallow bay which fills and empties with the
tides through the narrow entrance. This inward and outward flow is
strong enough to prevent the total closure of the entrance and so a
sort of balance has been reached; "sort of" being the operative
words because the sand is still being scoured from the beaches to
the east of the entrance and it has to go somewhere so a second
"coastline" is being formed outside the entrance and this will
eventually close off the bay altogether but until then it is still
possible to navigate a sinuous passage into the bay.
This bar does to a certain extent protect the passage inside it
from the sea until you get swells in excess of about one and a half
meters when it will break over the bar into the passage and make it
impassable.
The bay has developed into a habitat for numerous species of birds;
there are salmon and sea trout for the anglers (who need a
licence), seals can be seen, there are ospreys in the forest to the
West and they can be seen of an evening hunting. You cannot help
but be enchanted during your stay here.
Findhorn
Approach
You should not plan to come in here in winds above F4 from the North.....
..... or in any sea conditions lingering after strong
Northerlies. As a guide, if the wave height is predicted to be over
1.5 meters the sea inside the bar will be very iffy. Your approach
should be made in the last two hours of the flood, with a shallow
draft boat you can make it much earlier but for a first time visit,
why make it more stressful than necessary? From this year (2018)
they do not intend to lay the landfall R/W buoy so you should make
for the position it was in and then proceed as below.
This is the end of your planned chart plotter route; the rest is by
mark one eyeball as the channel into the bay is very changeable and
the Fairways Committee monitor and mark it from season to season
and sometimes even from month to month. Typically the first buoy
will be a PHM followed by a green buoy. That PHM (the Outer Bar)
will be somewhere to shoreward of the IP and that is all you can
say about it; you need to look from the SW to the SE of where the
Landfall buoy used to be because it (the PHM)can move as much as a
mile along the coast from year to year.
There is now a series of aerial shots of the approach and directions given by the George (the pilot, photographer and sailor who goes in and out regularly) Look for this on the Royal Findhorn website at:-
Navigation 2018 amended July (rfyc.co.uk)
Caution; the "Old Bar" he refers to is the old
Old Findhorn Bar a bit along the coast from the present day
Findhorn Bay entrance
Obviously you head for that and on the way you'll be searching for
the green "Scaup" outer buoy. You'll probably identify that with
about a cable to go to the Outer Bar buoy; it'll be somewhere
between East and South East of that. There is only the one SHM
these days (2022)
Once you have rounded the red Outer Bar Buoy you will be in the
channel and if there is any northerly set to the sea you will have
some white water close to your port side and will probably see
white water ahead, on the other side of the channel beyond the
green buoy you are heading for. It's just a case of rounding that
Scaup buoy, ignoring the threatening water to port, and keeping the
three fixed pole markers to port (one of which is meant to be tide
gauge but looked the same as the others in 2012 Ed Note -
subsequently discovered that was because I was at the top of the
tide!)) on the way to the red East Buoy at the entrance to the bay.
Give the poles a good 15 metres space as the sands have drifted a
bit to the West.
Most of the diagrams of the channel and the written advice gives
the impression that the next green buoy is somewhere to the SE of
the East Buoy at the entrance; in 2012 it wasn't, it was north of
east of the buoy and on the port quarter as the red buoy was
passed!! That year it was necessary to turn round the East PHM
immediately and then pass about a boats length inside the Inner
Channel Green buoy. In actual fact, in 2012, it was possible to
pass over the bar between the western and eastern pools in the bay
with a shallow draft boat, but don't take that for granted as there
are rocks at the northern end of that dividing bar as shown in our
photo.
There is a diagram of the channel in our photo gallery; this is a
free hand approximation and gives only a rough idea of what the
channel looked like in the summer of 2012, it most definitely is
not suitable for navigation, it is not to scale, the positions of
the markers are only approximate and may have been moved
significantly. The main advice is to follow the buoyage in place on
the day you arrive and discard any preconceived ideas of where they
will be; all the cruising pilots give different advice which has
been found to be misleading in parts; read them by all means but do
not rely on them implicitly as the buoys can be moved at any time
and may have no relationship with the diagrams in those pilots.
UPDATE 2022. It's near the end of June and they haven't been able to get out to lay the Outer PHM due to weather. From the latest satellite images that the "straight in" channel "A" is becoming deeper over the years and is a viable approach in settled weather for two hours either side of HW. Be aware that the ebb tide through the entrance is severe and after HW + 2 it will take a lot of power to get in.
£ GMT
Waypoint
Charts
Rules & Regs
Hazards
Tides
Berthing
There are four visitors' buoys in the trots beyond the Boat Yard pontoon........
........(there are no berths on that pontoon.) The alternative,
if you can take the ground, are the RFYC piers just outside the
Clubhouse. The south side of these piers are unsuitable if there
is a SW wind blowing across the Bay. There is water and an electric
box at the root of the Northerly of the two piers (which has a
pontoon on its North side for use by dinghies only) The RFYC is
very welcoming but you will need to contact them to gain access to
the electricity point so it would be an idea to liaise with them in
advance of your visit.
They have no scale of charges for the use of the piers or the
electricity but would like you to make a donation to their funds.
It's all very informal but your stay here will be much enhanced by
your relationship with them.
Marinas and Mooring
Inverness Marina
Marina Office
Longman Drive
Inverness
Inverness-shire
IV1 1SU
Facilities
Showers and heads at the yacht club, water and electricity on
the North pier only. No fuel but you may be able to purchase
petrol from the yacht club if they have any to spare (they run
about four outboard powered boats on race days and keep a fuel dump
for them). Other than that there is petrol station 2 to 3 miles
away at Kinloss which also stocks Gas and one 907Gaz cylinder
There is a small supermarket and Post Office in the village with a
very good bakery next door (which also has a café with
Wifi)
There is a regular bus service to Forres which has a Tescos over
the bridge and roundabout at its western end. That bus service
actually stops at Tescos so, if that is all you want, stay on the
bus through the town centre; it'll save you three quarters of a
mile walk!
The boatyard has a café and a small chandlery; they can
also help with outboard repairs.
The caravan site will allow you to use their coin-op
laundrette.
What to Do
Two pubs both of which do excellent food but are crowded at the
weekend in the summer. The yacht club has a café which
can be well recommended and opens early enough to make their
breakfast worth while..
They are open from about 0900 until about 1500 every day apart from
Mondays and Tuesdays (their weekend) Sundays they have a lie in and
open at 1000!
If you visit here in the middle of July the Yacht Club has a whole
week of racing with associated fun events for the family when the
tide is out and something in the club every evening (quizzes and
the like)
History
Local Business
Uncategorised
Inverness Marina
Marina Office
Longman Drive
Inverness
Inverness-shire
IV1 1SU
Stitch it & Fix It
1 North Road
Kinloss
Forres
Morayshire
IV36 3YA
Stitch N Awl
12, Main street
Portsoy
Banff
Aberdeenshire
AB45 2RT
Tide Information for findhorn
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