Sunday 17^th September, 2006

Anchorage Bunessan

Position 56°19.300 N 006°15.100 W

Distance surveyed 47 nm

Today was another beautiful day with clear skies. As there was not enough wind to raise sails we had to keep Silurian's engine running throughout. This helped us cover the area that we needed to survey.

Life on board now revolves around a well established routine: Observation, data recording, feeding Alex. Although we saw a few seals, lots of birds and some beautiful landscapes, whales and dolphins are still eluding us. Hopefully we'll have better luck tomorrow.

As we arrived in Bunessan, a grey seal was waiting for us and had a great time winding me up. It would come near the boat for extended periods of time and disappear as soon as I brought a camera on deck. It would of course reappear 30 seconds after the camera was put away. The game lasted for a good 90min.

During the “seal episode”, Duncan, Ali and Alex took the RIB and went ashore to see a ruined croft.

Later that evening Rob took a group of us to the pub where Ali became most excited by the concept of toilets requiring no heavy pumping. Whilst the rest of us shared her excitement, we also managed to enjoy a few drinks. We hadn't really drunk much, but Rob mysteriously disappeared on the way back to the RIB. I was walking next to him along the road when a fairly large and extremely luminous truck arrived at full speed. To the untrained eye it would have looked like Rob had fallen through a fairly small yet extremely deep hole. This is what the truck driver must have thought as his laughter was marginally louder than the sound of his 500bhp engine. However, the speed at which it happened clearly demonstrated some serious SAS training skills and I can only assume that Rob ran for cover.

Phil, Volunteer, Switzerland

# posted by HWDT @ 2:09 AM