Anchorage: Loch Roag
Position: 58° 11’.500N 006° 45’.300W
Distance Travelled: 55 NM

The forecast didn’t look too great for today, so we opted to stick our noses out of Loch Roag and work our way up the west coast of Lewis as far as conditions would allow. In fact it wasn’t too bad at all, and it wasn’t long before we were joined by a couple of groups of white-beaked dolphins and some basking sharks. The wind was quite brisk, and we had a bonny sail up the coast; as we turned to make our way back to Loch Roag, Marcus heard some distant dolphin whistling on the hydrophone. We weren’t sure how far away the animals, were (they sounded like common dolphins), but when Susie went on deck to have a look, a sharp spot from hawk-eye Natalie revealed that the whistlers were indeed commons – about 30 of them leaping and splashing, about a kilometre from the boat. It’s seldom your average common dolphin can resist a little bowriding, and soon the group joined us, surrounding the boat and accompanying us on our way for a while. We carried on for home, but as we neared Tiumpan Head, we were somewhat delayed by running into a bit of a feeding hotspot, as gannets dived, the odd minke popped up, and we were spoilt for choice over where to look for our next basking shark sighting. What had started out as an unpromising day ended up in a brilliant adventure which made us late for tea. After eating we went ashore to have a look at the ancient standing stones of Callanish. Over 4000 years old, the alignment of the stones seems to relate to observations of the moon (as opposed to Stone Henge, which relates to the sun). We all indulged in a little ritualistic dancing at the spot, although more to evade midge-attack than through any spiritual fervour. After a bit more island-bagging, we returned to the boat, with Natalie intent on baking brownies. Unfortunately, exhaustion after the day’s excitement sent all the crew to bed before the cake was out of the oven, so they’ll have to wait to eat it tomorrow. Except, of course, for today’s blog writer, who is still awake…yumyumyum.