Whitehills

Contacts
Harbour Master Office 01261 861291 Mobile 07906 135786
Buccaneer Chandlery 01261 835199 Mobile 07734 874750

Whitehills was the second harbour on this coast to fit substantial pontoons, following on about eight years after Lossiemouth. It had a good deep channel and was accessible 24/7 so made an ideal stopping off point on the way round from Inverness to Peterhead, with Lossiemouth as an option if required. Unfortunately over the last couple of years the entrance has begun to silt up a little and they now say that it is accessible to deep draft boats for only HW ± 5 hours. Unlike other harbours on this coast, dredging has, hitherto, been unnecessary but unless they do something about it in the next couple of years (which means finding funds) their access will become even more restricted. Update 2018: They have been able to dredge here and they now advise that deep draft boats can get in 4 1/2 hours either side of HW For the cruising 1.5 meter draft boat the harbour is still, except for especially low Spring tides, accessible 24/7 and it is still the preferred dropping off harbour for many of the boats plying this coastline although an increasing number are using Banff, which is now back in business after a prolonged period of rebuilding.

The original village was the group of terraced cottages built end on to the sea to the west of the harbour; the fishing boats landed their catch over the beach and they hauled the boats up between the cottages in the winter storms. In the early nineteenth century the Seafield Estate built the present harbour and by the mid nineteenth century there were between one hundred and two hundred boats operating from here and the lifeboat station was built in 1860.

The Whitehills Harbour Trust was formed in the late nineteenth century to maintain the harbour which supported the fishing folk until the mid twentieth century but then, as the trade migrated to the larger ports and the stocks ran down (or were sold to the EU!), the fishing declined and the decision was made in the 1990s to convert the harbour to service the leisure industry.

This was achieved at the beginning of this millennium and we have the present day situation. They have packed in as many berths as possible and if you are a berth holder it can be a tricky place to get into but the provision of visitors' berths on a pontoon in the first basin has made their access fairly uncomplicated. (This pontoon does not yet show on Google Earth).

Right up until the early 1920s the accommodation still consisted of unserviced, "But an' Ben", terraced cottages but then improved housing was built by Banff council as part of their "slum clearance" (which shows just how primitive those original cottages were) and the present village slowly developed.

Today the village is largely a dormitory/tourist village; most of the inhabitants do their shopping and banking in Banff as there is little provision for this in Whitehills. The fish market and processing plants have closed down and the original fish market is now a harbour "asset" available for hire.

Many people make reference to the "Whitehills Sailing Club" which is, in fact, incorrect; when Whitehills opened its pontoons in 2000 the larger draft yachts in Banff (which was still a drying harbour) moved here; Banff had a Sailing Club in those days and to this day the yachts in Whitehills are members of the Banff Sailing Club which basically is a two harbour sailing club and very often races starting off Whitehills finish off Banff (which is fun for the Race Officer!!)

The harbour website can be found at http://www.whitehillsmarina.co.uk/