Date: Friday 25th July, 2008

Anchorage: Scarp

Position: 58° 01’.000N 007° 05’.900W

Distance Travelled: 65 NM

Dear Blog,

What a trip this is becoming! Another great, if demanding, day today as we motored out into the Atlantic, across 30 miles of lumpy sea to the Flannan Isles. This is a desolate, beautiful group of islands, home to thousands of gannets & hundreds of puffins & nothing much else. A magical experience, further enhanced by a number of excellent sightings. It started with a brief encounter with common dolphins who seemed uninterested in us & moved on quite quickly, then as 2 teams of volunteers were changing watch at the mast a minke appeared, less than 50 metres from the boat, greeted by 4 gasps & then 4 calls of “sighting!”. This was a whale with somewhere to go so the sighting lasted only a few minutes before we saw it dive & could not re-establish contact. Next Cormac spotted a “blow” in the distance, which he described as the biggest he`d seen in his years of experience. Sadly we never found the animal itself which must have been one of the large whales which occasionally visit these waters.

A brief encounter with a basking shark as we rounded the Flannans gave us the opportunity to look straight into its massive gape, but this proved to be our last sighting for several hours until the end of a long day was greatly enhanced by the amazing experience of a close meeting with 7 or 8 white-beaked dolphins. These beautiful creatures treated us to a display of aquabatics, a juvenile proving the star of the show.

Supper & a walk on the beautiful island of Scarp brought us to the end of a bonnie day, but I must not close without a mention of today`s catering. Conditions in the galley at midmorning grubtime must have been horrendous, nonetheless a team of no less than FOUR intrepid cooks produced hot potato-cakes & soup amid much clanging & hilarity. Supper was a great curry (pity your blogger undercooked the mackerel starter!) & the evening is just concluding with large helpings of Cormac`s wonderful carrot cake, washed down with hot chocolate &/or a glass of malt, all accompanied by much merriment and not a little hysterical giggling.