Wednesday 22nd October
We had a Discovery Voyage trip this morning which is quite late in the year for us to be running this four hour trip. It was a cracker of a morning, starting clear and calm with a hint of low sunshine. Quite soon after leaving the harbour we started picking up fins in the distance,…
Thursday 16th October
Similar conditions to two days ago with a gloomy grey sky and choppy easterly sea, but the wildlife was more forthcoming. We went a bit further east this time, and as we sailed past a few gannets peering down at the sea, they started to dive. Then porpoise fins started rushing through the waves, and…
Tuesday 14th October
It was a tricky day with low grey light, and a brisk easterly wind which made things pretty choppy. We had a fast sail though! Seabirds were mainly loosely scattered with no focused feeding going on. The Manx shearwaters have all gone now, leaving the gannets, guillemots and razorbills. Some distant dark looking waders with…
Saturday 11th October
It was a very tuna-jumping type of day today! We started with an Ocean Discovery tour, heading south and quickly finding tuna feeding beneath gannets. As we continued offshore, more tuna breaches appeared—some very close to the boat—followed by a decent-sized group of porpoises also foraging. On both trips, the seals were moaning and groaning…
Thursday 9th October
We had a full Ocean Discovery today, which is nice for October weekday. It felt very similar to yesterday – cool and grey, and everything was really quiet for about an hour. We passed what was initially mistaken for a skua, until we realised it was a peregrine falcon which was flying back towards the…
Wednesday 8th October
It was a murky day today but the wildlife brightened everything up. We started at the island watching seals start to haul out, then as we went south, we appeared to motor into a cloud which was pretty persistent for about an hour. We watched some fish boiling away at the surface and some kittiwakes…
Tuesday 7th October
Autumn days like this feel like a gift from the gods, especially in the aftermath of wind and swell like we had at the weekend. On this morning’s Bay Discovery trip, we had an awesome encounter with a massive fin whale – this was feeding with what looked like over a thousand gannets, plus countless…
Wednesday 1st October
We had a Bay Discovery and a Discovery Voyage today on what looks like the last nice day before some foul weather comes in. Both trips were very productive with lots of common dolphins seen on both, including some very young calves. They were swimming close to their mothers in a big maternal pod. Seabird…
Monday 22nd September
Dry and sunny today – a very welcome development. We had a three hour trip but sailed so far south west it turned into four hours! There was plenty of wildlife to be seen including large numbers of common dolphins and harbour porpoises (which were too quick to get photos of!) and sixteen seals hauled…
Saturday 20th September
There is a limit to what weather forecasting models can do and today proved this nicely. Instead of a light northwesterly wind and light showers (which is still what we were being told yesterday evening), we had a stronger onshore wind, fog and intermittent heavy rain. This improved a little, but it was all much…