In which Sid and Doris go through narrow channels to look for puffins and visit another island mooring.
As the sea state is flat it is not too hard to release the shackled mooring strop so long as you have quite strong fingers. The picture shows how elegantly this was achieved. Sid and Doris consider how this might be done from what is amusingly known as the bathing platform. Up here people do go diving but mostly with dry suits. We have seen bathing belles. They were all seals.
Other adventurous sorts go sea kayaking and camping. Here are four now. Kayaking nephew James is very impressed as he is planning his own summer trip. Summer would be better. Sid is wearing a long sleeved base layer, a fleece, a soft shell jacket and a full offshore jacket and rarely feels overdressed though paddling will keep you warm.
We have seen kittiwakes, shags, gulls, guillemots, gannets, eider ducks, terns and very likely other varieties but No Puffins. Doris is very keen to see puffins. And as Doris is the navigator in charge, and as we have a couple of days in hand, she lays a course for Coll via Lunga, where we will run down a nadgery channel between rocks and cliffs which are allegedly almost invisible behind serried ranks of puffins standing shoulder-to-shoulder incubating their eggs while arranging sand-eels attractively in their beaks. We pass the time on the passage looking at the clouds, and at weather happening to other people.
Doris is trying to upload the chart of the fabled puffin run onto the Epic Journeys maps here. [and I have now succeeded! D.] There were indeed many rocks and cliffs. There was what looked to be a Scots Nature Conservancy boat in the anchorage at the centre of the channel. On our way out of the channel Doris saw a single big beaked blighter flying past [logged as Puffin, Debatable – D.] and Sid spotted a seal at sea. Puffin hunting might be more usefully done in a walk-ashore tour from a specialist tourist boat. And generally cliff-nesting birds seem to be #bestviewedfromabove (sorry Anna).
This picture was supposed to show you how narrow and nerve-wracking the channel was, but the miracles of modern iPhone cameras just make it look scenic and appealing (as opposed to appalling).Once heading north again we sail at an kind wind angle to Loch Eatharna on Coll which has splendid moorings with easy pick ups. Once settled we sit fully clothed in the cockpit watching skinny winged, forked tailed terns doing stall turns as easy as kiss my hand.
There is a large church. Could it ever have been filled? The population now is 200. The airline that originally flew onto Coll (IATA COL) went bust but with subsidy BN2 Islanders now serve Colonsay, Tiree and Coll. The ferry brings corncrake-seeking birders who use the hotel and bunkhouse. Maybe there is farming. Sid and Doris love to visit remote places.