Lysblink Seaways - Day 5 Morning

Yesterday afternoon brought fine weather, a light northwesterly and sunshine.

During the night, in continuing calm weather, the tug Kingdom of Fife steamed up and down the coastline to the west of Mingary Pier, but....

....by morning she was back with the Lysblink Seaways - the Kingdom of Fife isn't visible in this picture as she is hidden by the ship.  But what we noticed was that the Lysblink Seaways was considerably further out, so we assumed she had been towed there in preparation for today's southerly high winds.

We were down at the pier by nine, where the news was that the ship had moved inshore during the early morning, as the forecast high winds began to build, and had had to be towed out into deeper water.  No-one seems sure whether the movement inshore was because she had dragged her anchors.

By this time the wind was south-southeasterly, force 6, and gusting.

The small craft in the foreground of this picture is the Spanish John II, out of Mallaig.  She had brought the hot tapping equipment which enables the salvage crews to pump the ship's fuel from the lower tanks into two higher tanks.

As we walked home from the pier, we realised that the ship was under tow.  It looked as if she was being taken eastwards into the wide bay between Mingary Castle and Maclean's Nose, perhaps to better holding ground.

Winds are forecast to rise to force 7, gusting over force 8, by midday.  The forecast for the next two days is for further spells of stormy weather, perhaps worse than today.