Gigha to Bangor the big leap 14 August 2023

 

Watching the 6am sunrise at Gigha

Early start this morning to catch the tide.  We left Gigha pontoon at 06.00 with only the slightest of southerly wind, and no rain - all the rain had been used up while we sat outside having dinner yesterday evening. What a wonderful meal.

Our progress south encountered an interesting array of sea states - all of them benign.  As we got close to Machrihanish we picked up an Atlantic swell that became quite lumpy, not rough but still the boat moved about quite a bit.

Kintyre peninsula from the Machrihanish end. Beautiful morning. 

Then as we reached the bottom end of Kintyre we encountered an area of quite rough choppy water - tide induced. This was soon followed by the rest of the Irish Sea which was dead calm, glassy calm for a lot of it.

At the north end of the North Channel there was a 10 mile stretch that was thronging with seabirds in all directions.  Guillemots, Razorbills, Gannets, Kittiwakes and Storm Petrels, totalling thousands of birds.

Glassy calm sea as we come in sight of The Maidens 

After a number of complaints about how tatty and faded our Celtic Nations
flag was getting, some eejit decided to give it a refresh with a new flag.
So the operation was done while underway.  
Don’t do this at home!!

Before and after 

Shortly after passing Larne we began to see quite a few Harbour Porpoises - although they were mostly at a distance and sightings tend to be rather brief. They take no interest in the boat.

Harbour Porpoises - quite small animals, and they don’t come over to the boat.

Then when we were in line with the Isle of Muck we came across a group of between 100  - 500 (and maybe more! - this is an amended figure from the one first published ) Common Dolphins.  There may have been even more, but they were spread over a very wide area of sea, probably a mile long and extending well out to sea.  A little unusually, the majority of them did not take any interest in the boat.  However many did.  The whole group put on a fantastic display of porpoising, jumping right out of the water, large group gatherings.  Brilliant.

A group of Common Dolphins close to the boat but not interacting with it.

Some of the Common Dolphins that played on our bow wave

We spent half an hour watching and playing with this large group of Common Dolphins and then felt we should leave then to their generally northward progress. What a privilege!

Arrived in Bangor shortly after 12.00 noon to a scorching hot day.  Had lunch aboard before unpacking and heading home with many loads of washing, some extra whisky, and brilliant memories of a wonderful two week sojourn round the Inner Hebrides.  We didn’t make it to the Outer Hebrides, but there’s always next time.  Happy days. 

The boat bird list was short with 14 species.

Our route: