News from Mallaig Harbour: JuLY 2026
A bit like last month, the heatwave that has been affecting much of the rest of the UK seems to have passed us by in this corner, and fog was a bigger story for John and I, and many other members of the British Ports Association, when our attempts to get to Shetland for the Scottish Ports and Fishing Ports Meetings at the beginning of the month were thwarted at the airport by grounded flights. This was disappointing as we were looking forward to our trip to Shetland and getting to meet personnel from other ports in person, but actually ended up having to do the meeting online instead. The silver lining was a bit of extra time in the office to prepare for our AGM on the 12th June.
As usual for our AGM, I had put together some key facts about the Harbour over the last year. Turnover for the last year broke the £2million barrier. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider the costs associated with developing infrastructure at the Harbour, it actually doesn’t go very far! £5.247 million of seafood was landed through the Harbour in year ending March 2026; 61,260 tonnes of salmon were harvested; 35,600 of Aquaculture feed was shipped through the Harbour, and 8.18 million smolts made their way to fish farms from Mallaig in the year.
Unsurprisingly, with all the disruption to services, passenger and vehicle numbers on ferries were down slightly, to 270,000 passengers and almost 67,000 vehicles.
Our five new pontoon fingers, installed at the start of the financial year, allowed us to increase the number of overnight stays by yachts at the marina by around 200, to 1,933.
This year, Niki Robertson and Peter Hillier had served their three-year term. Both reapplied to remain on the Board and were reappointed.
Work is almost complete on the overnight ferry berth. I know I have been saying that for a few weeks now, but we hope to be finished by 11th July. We welcomed visitors from CalMac and CMAL on Tuesday 23rd, and were able to take them on a tour of what has been done. It is very exciting to have seen the berth taking shape over the last few months, and to now see it looking like an actual berth! As I am writing this on Friday 26th June, the FSV Scotia is going into the berth for a couple of hours, behind the MV Loch Bhrusda. This is the flexibility that the new berth will give us – allowing larger vessels to berth along with the ferries in the Outer Harbour.
The Lord of the Isles has made a welcome return to service this month, on 11th June, so we now have a full complement of ferries operating from Mallaig again, albeit with reduced capacity from having the MV Loch Bhrusda rather than MV Loch Fyne. Our visitors from CalMac and CMAL were in the area to meet with the Community Council and local business owners to hear their concerns about the lack of capacity at the start of the season.
The number of yachts at the marina seems to have ramped up this month, with some larger yachts visiting. This included, Road Taken, a 24m Canadian flagged yacht, which took up the whole of the outer hammerhead for its stay. There were some super yachts cruising our local waters this month, including one which sent passengers in a helicopter to play a round of golf at Traigh, but unfortunately, we don’t have the space to accommodate that size of vessel!
It feels like it has been a month of meetings this month, so we finished it off with something a bit different on Thursday 25th June. As part of RJ McLeod’s Community Benefit from the overnight ferry berth, we had organised a Men’s Health Session in Mallaig and Morar Community Centre. Claire Wortley from Change Mental Health gave a very relevant talk to us about mental health and wellbeing, and were able to offer blood pressure monitoring, cholesterol testing and body fat analysis courtesy of Claire Gunner, our local NHS Highland Health Improvement Worker and Tina Johnston, our local Pharmacist. We invited local businesses and our local Men's Shed and encouraged people to mix and chat by providing lunch and some (not so healthy) goodies. It was great to have people stop and take time for their health, and good to hear the chat around the room by the end of the session.
We followed this up by a trip to Mallaig High Schools to so some practical construction exercises with the new S1s, as part of their transition week. We had two different exercises, building with jenga blocks, or with drinking straws. The children had to make sure that their building came in on time and on budget, and to a certain specification. Both groups were very entrepreneurial – my group deciding that a well known burger chain would pay for advertising on their tower; and the other selling some jenga blocks to buy an easier material to make a roof from! Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to both sessions, including Emilia Zalupska, and Michael Osborne who are working for RJ McLeod on this job, and Christina McKitrick and Judi Crichton, who are the Social Value Leads for RJ McLeod.
Jacqueline McDonell