Sunday 4th October

The weather is so fabulous this weekend we added a short notice trip to take advantage of it. There’s no wind at all and the water surface is like satin – absolutely fabulous. Autumn days like this are a gift from the wildlife and weather gods. Heading out of the harbour we could see the stationary boats in the distance where the fishing boats from this weekend’s competition were, and in and around the fleet were countless seabirds. By this stage of the year it’s almost all gulls and gannets of course, but we also saw some terns, a couple of guillemots and razorbills and also a great skua. October is the time for skuas.

There were some absolutely massive bluefin tuna hunting with the dolphins (or at least the dolphins were hunting with the tuna). Nothing beats the excitement on a calm day like this of hearing the violent chaotic splashes of the tuna as they rush towards hunting their prey, accompanied by the cackles of the gannets and screams of the gulls. The dolphins periodically took a break from hunting to rush over to investigate us on the boat before heading back to their feast. After a while everything calmed down so we headed out and west hoping to find some porpoises, to no avail. Instead there were common dolphins everywhere we went. We also found a Lone Kayaker who told us that he had seen some porpoises further out, but they’d been tricky to track. Where are they all and will we have a late season burst?

Tomorrow we are off on a staff day to the Scillies, but a few spaces remain on Tuesday morning. The weather still looks good!