WOW! What a morning! We awoke bright and early to a beautiful, calm and sunny day and prepared to set off – we had a lot of ground to cover today. As we motored out towards the Treshnish Isles, thoughts of the recently sighted minke were still fresh in our minds, and when we spotted some harbour porpoises soon after starting surveying, I had a feeling we might be in for a special day… Soon after, eagle-eyed Marcus gave the shout – ‘MINKE! OFF THE BOW!’ and all eyes were on the water… What happened next made us all feel very privileged, even those of us who regularly work in these waters. An adult minke whale and two juveniles were feeding in quite a close area – one of the juveniles was extremely inquisitive about ‘Silurian’ and kept
kept swimming underneath, treating us to close up views.



After spending some ‘quality’ time with these beautiful animals, we thought we’d had our share for the day, until someone asked whether or not that was a Risso’s dolphin they’d just seen…A Risso’s dolphin?!?! Surely not, our luck couldn’t be that good… But it was, and a solitary juvenile Risso’s approached the boat and swam past, giving us plenty of photo opportunities.

The calm waters with views for miles soon became a distant memory as we sailed into fog. As visibility went from fantastic to 200 metres in about ten seconds we all eyed the radar with concern and optimism, did it actually work and if so, how big did an object need to be before it appeared as a blip on our instruments? The land disappeared from sight and we headed off for Iceland.

But we of little faith, within thirty minutes we emerged unscathed from the fog of doom to see Coll and Tiree clearly in sight. However, anyone on effort at the bow barely regained their bearings before the spray up over the bow was enough to freeze the (legs) off even the bravest brass monkey. The wind was now howling across the bow so that there was some reluctance to switch watches to the one which was sheltered behind the folded sail. Casual sailing clothes gave way to layers of oilskins, thermals and wellies.

But our trauma was lightened by a cry from the ever watchful Penny who had offered herself up as a human sacrifice on a double shift: "basking shark!" she yelled with authority. Martin pulled us to a virtual halt as we watched two fins coming towards us, in fact so close the white of the mouth was clearly visible as it idled past the boat, a juvenile which was still large enough to give you a big fright if you had been in the water. It was very inquisitive and had a few good looks at us before basking off into the sunset.

A late anchorage but well worth it for the day’s excitement.
Position at anchor: 56 33.754’N, 06 42.727’W
Distance covered 64 nm
Weather: clear skies but windy

Log by: Bev