Monday 27th July

Back out on the water today after a day off in yesterday’s strong wind. We started early with a five hour Discovery Adventure, in more westerly wind than we have been used to, with greyer skies. A far more typical Cornish summer’s day in fact! However as predicted, this brought the seabirds back in, and sailing south we could see a few massive work ups as the gannets, shearwaters and gulls were following bluefin tuna shoals. These were bigger than we have seen for some time, and though we didn’t see any leaping tuna, there was a lot of evidence of them near the surface with churning white water. In among the Manx shearwaters, several great shearwaters were spotted, and some storm petrels as well. In the same patch we also saw an ocean sunfish. Common dolphin pods were spotted several times, the first one being a sleepy pod of mixed mothers and calves and the second one being far more interactive. We also saw three individual Risso’s dolphins swim past us, though they were impossible to track in the rolling swell and chop.

This afternoon we had a Bay Discovery and we went straight down to the island where we saw several seals bobbing around in the water. We then had a lovely sail and watched the racing yachts return to Penzance after the weekend’s Scilly (PASAB) race. Well done to all!