May, once one of our sunniest months, seems to be becoming a month of storms - persistent readers of this Diary may remember the gale of 24th May last year - report here - which badly affected many trees for the whole of the summer. We had a similar, if not as extreme storm yesterday, which lasted all day and into the evening. A brisk southwester, it dumped 30mm of best quality Kilchoan sunshine on us.
Visitors to the Lighthouse enjoyed the full brunt of the wind, which was well up to gale force on the exposed point.We thought our electricity supply had survived the battering but, at ten to six, it went off, came back on briefly, and died. The whole of this end of the peninsula, from Salen westwards, was affected. It was finally revived around 3.20am this morning.
The Rembrandt van Rijn, an expedition cruising ship which was once a herring lugger - more about her here - had spent Saturday night tucked under the lee shore of Mull in Bloody Bay, along with the Northern Lighthouse Board's Pharos. At about 8.00pm, with the wind moving round into the north, she left her anchorage to cross the Sound, in fairly exciting weather....
...to anchor again under the calmer Ormsaigbeg shore. Perhaps they wanted some gentler conditions in which to serve their shaken passengers dinner, because she was off again about 11.00pm, heading westwards out of the Sound towards the Atlantic, looking for a bit more excitement.
Sorry - for the record, the power came on about 2.20am, not 3.20.
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