Date: Sunday 27th July, 2008

Anchorage: Kyle of Lochalsh

Position: 57° 16’.900N 005° 42’.700W

Distance Travelled: 35 NM

This one’s from Susie the Science Officer, with the final blog of what’s been a truly fantastic trip for weather, landscapes, animals and not least the brilliant volunteers we’ve had onboard. Morning came today with clear blue skies over our pretty anchorage, as we set out into what it soon became apparent was porpoise soup. Sighting after sighting was called as little fins popped up all over the glassy-calm sea, the sun glinting off their bodies as they mooched lazily past the boat, seemingly half-asleep in the sunshine. As the calls of ‘Sighting!’ came one on top of the other, our team kept their cool, steadily logging data with calm professionalism – of course. In the words of Coll ‘I don’t want to blow our own trumpet or anything. But we did alright.’

The sun got warmer and brighter by the minute as we carried on south towards Kyle, resulting in an outbreak of shorts-wearing rarely seen west of 5 degrees. Then through the haze, around the top of Raasay, Coll spotted some dolphins, which weren’t quite run of the mill. They weren’t interested in the boat, and made it extremely hard for the perplexed science monkeys to work out what they were. But we finally got a good enough look to confirm they were Atlantic white-sided dolphins, mostly seen in deeper water off the Continental shelf edge, and never spotted before in these waters by this Science Officer.A minke whale, a basking shark and many more porpoises followed, not to mention a poor-old grey seal, which posed as a buoy for a good ten minutes before anyone noticed it blink.

And then the engine stopped. Sabotage by the volunteers who didn’t want to go home? Sabotage by the crew who didn’t want to lose them? Any which way, Skipper Dave and First Mate Paul swiftly diagnosed a fuel problem, and set about fixing it, whilst the rest of us lolled in the sun listening to porpoises blow around the boat. Natalie busied herself in the galley making chocolate brownies. We finally arrived at Kyle, to a clean up of the boat, a lovely meal, then a return to the boat for a wee dram, and a few more of our trademark stream-of-consciousness conversations, which bare little resemblance to reality, and owe a lot to a week at sea, in beautiful places and excellent company. Farewell! Come back soon!