Anchorage: Taransay
Position: 57° 53’.500N 007° 02’.700W
Distance Travelled: 45 NM

After an early start and a hearty breakfast, we headed back out to sea leaving Loch Roag with the Callanish stones standing behind us. However, before that, Mat went ashore to try to buy milk – we’d be led to believe there was a shop nearby. No shop, but an extremely helpful man took pity on our poor First Mate, and gave him some milk from his own fridge, and half a dozen delicious homemade scones thrown in for good measure. It was all we could do to tear Mat away from a morning spent drinking tea in the front garden…
Passing Gallan Head we made our way back down the west coast of Lewis above a sea valley where we had a sighting of a really small minke whale within 50m of the boat. Soon after this we came across a basking shark busily feeding on plankton. No sooner had it seen us than it disappeared through the waves with a splash of its massive tail. After this the spotting became more tricky as the swell rose to approximately 2.5 metres. This also made eating soup a difficult task if we didn’t want to wear it on our faces! Despite this we managed to see the odd porpoise and seal. Along with the increasing swell the sunshine fought its way through the clouds eventually turning into a glorious day leaving many people with a beetroot complexion. We dropped anchor next to Taransay the island where the television series Castaway was filmed. We had a trip to the island in the tender, where two brave team members went swimming in the sea and the less brave members went for a stroll along the beautiful white sand beaches, watching a seal bobbing in the bay, as the terns dived gracefully into the water around it. We returned to Silurian where our skipper Dave had prepared a delicious traditional Scottish meal of haggis, neeps and tatties. This was eaten like gannets by the majority of the crew but Laurel, our Canadian companion was a little more hesitant as this was her first time trying haggis.