Location: Cragaig, Bay, Ulva

Position: 56’ 28.029 006’ 95.760 W

Monday evening, at the end of the 2 great days of spectacular scenery, grand sailing, improving weather……but unfortunately little animal activity.

Yesterday was grey and windy but in among the waves we spotted 3 basking sharks,2 of them juveniles, but the contacts were brief as we were moving fast. At the end of a good day we were treated to an excellent curry by Graham, with fresh poppadoms etc. Conversation developed along interesting lines, though lubricated with much less alcohol than usual.

Today, began and continued with blue sky and a brisk breeze, encouraging the skipper to sail off us the anchor(he sailed us on last night),much to the mate’s consternation until he was reminded that we could now sell the engine on ebay. So, nearly 10 hours & 40+ nautical miles later we must be all of 15 miles from our anchorage last night on Coll. We’ve spent another day zig-zagging among the small isles but have seen nothing more than a single seal all day. However, the sailing has been fabulous, with instruction from skipper Glenn that you’d pay a fortune for.

At the end of a long day we’ve put Laura ashore on Gometra to collect an important skull from a stranded whale (previously identified as a very rare Cuvier’s Beaked Whale) and then landed on Staffa in perfect evening sunshine to enjoy Fingal’s cave and the view from the summit before anchoring at dusk in isolated Cragaig Bay, on the southwest coast of Ulva. This is otter-heaven and has the great distinction on a starlit night of being out of site of human habitation or manmade light, and the skipper’s playing reels and jigs on the pennywhistle.

We’ve just polished off a magnificent Risso’s (oops I mean Risotto), courtesy of Steven and several bottles of vino excellento, the conversation has ranged from extinct woodpeckers to female urinals (you don`t want to know, really!) via who knows what. So now I’m off to stargaze on deck, a quick nip of malt, and so to bed.

PS while I’ve written this the conversation has taken a serious turn for the worse.

Phil (HWDT volunteer)