Saturday 31st August

There was a strong spell of easterly wind this morning so it was a good thing we hadn’t scheduled a morning trip. It did ease off for the first half of the afternoon, but there was still some steep leftover chop. This did affect spotting conditions somewhat, but we still had a good trip. After watching a sleepy seal by the island we headed south, hoping to pick up all those feeding shearwaters and dolphins again. The shearwaters were there, with three species spotted, but they were all rafted up on the water rather than feeding. This gave us some lovely views of the birds themselves, and we also spotted a couple of brief “tuna busts” (though they were too quick for photos). We couldn’t pick up any dolphins there so headed back east and spotted a cloud of gannets in the distance – had to bash into the waves a bit in order to get there and, damn, they dispersed just before we got there! Under a couple that were still circling, we saw a harbour porpoise surface a few times and I was astonished to get a photo of it, given that I was basically blindly pressing the shutter and hoping! The wind had got up again by now so we had an exciting sail inshore.

There are two single spaces left tomorrow, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and the wind looks a lot lighter.