Date: Tuesday 22nd July, 2008

Anchorage: Cabost, Loch Harport, Isle of Skye

Position: 57° 18’.100N 006° 20’.900W

Distance Travelled: 49 NM

We left Arisaig this morning with what looked like a promising start. On the way out we saw numerous seals lounging around on the rocks trying to dodge the rising waters. Just as we were exiting the channel we had the first sighting of the day – a basking shark off the starboard side and very close to the shore.

What a difference a day makes though! After the glorious sunny start yesterday, we spent most of today drifting around in fog and appeared to be sailing towards the end of the earth! The sightings were more sporadic and the conditions were more challenging at times. However, we still managed to spot a further basking shark, a few seals, a porpoise and a couple of common dolphins but unfortunately they didn’t stay and play as they obviously had somewhere better to be.

The main theme of the day was birds. We undertook our recognition training before we headed off in the morning and all set about putting it into practice armed with binos and a clipboard. This added an extra dimension to the spotting and to the trip. Very early on we spotted 2 bonxies attacking a tern, to steal its recent catch, typical behaviour of these pirates but something we wouldn’t have picked up on before. Throughout the course of the day we managed to tick off almost every bird we had learnt about and we had numerous kittiwakes joining the mission by circling the boat and keeping us company in the fog.

Despite the bizarre weather, we (well the crew anyway!) managed to sail Silurian for a large part of the day. This got reasonably challenging at times due to the wind direction and a trawler who seemed to try and chase us backwards!

Our home for the night was a town called Carbost, at the head of Loch Harport. We anchored, had a good dinner of pasta with mushrooms and pine nuts, accompanied by roasted vegetables. Then the majority of the team went ashore in the RIB for a pint in the New Inn, where we had a wonderful evening listening to an Irish singer called Gavin Moore, who we can all whole heartedly recommend listening to (www.gavinmoore.com, in case you’re interested….)!

All in all it was another good day aboard this fine vessel and although not as exciting as yesterday, our science team seem more then happy with the results. Roll on tomorrow!