Ships in the Sound

For a month in summer, this has been a remarkably quiet one for ships passing in the Sound of Mull.  It may partly be because the weather has been so fine that those ships which might have used the Sound have felt able to go round to the west of Mull.  One of the biggest surprises has been the lack of cruise ships, the only one we spotted being this one, the Saga Sapphire.  She's owned and operated by Saga Cruises and caters mainly for people of The Diary's vintage or older.

Go to her website, here, and she looks like a modern, recently-built ship, but, as is so often true of the smaller cruise ships, looks can deceive.  She was originally built in 1981 for Hapag-Lloyd, and named the Europa.  Since then she's had four more owners and even more names, including the rather grand Superstar Europa.

A regular visitor to our side of the Sound of Mull throughout the summer has been the Islander, seen here approaching Kilchoan Pier.  Leaving at 9.45am, she offers both whale-watching trips to the waters around Tiree and trips to Lunga and Staffa.  This is a new venture, and to judge by the number of times she's been across from her base in Tobermory, it's been a great success.  To see what she offers and to book, look at Staffa Tours' website here.

The Bessie Ellen also offers trips out of Tobermory when she's in the area.  This picture was taken in mid-August as she made a leisurely circuit of the northern Sound on a day when a brisk southeaster was blowing.  She looks a pretty picture but her website, as The Diary has commented before, is very pretty but a mess - it's here - but her company's website, here, is rather better organised.

We've seen a great deal of the Tobermory Severn Class lifeboat recently.  She's usually out in the Sound on a Tuesday evening for the crew's weekly training, and sometimes they also train on Sunday morning, but she's had her fair share of call-outs during the month, as can be seen from this report.  Amongst other things, she has towed broken-down yachts to safety, rescued children who have got into difficulties while swimming, and gone to the aid of fishermen with outboard problems.

The type of ship we've seen least of, compared to their usual numbers, is the small cargo ships like this one, the Scot Carrier.  An incentive for going round Mull rather than through the Sound might be the number of pleasure boats, such as yachts, that are in the Sound at this time of year, and have to be avoided.

The Scot Carrier, at almost 2,500dwt, was built in 1997 as part of the Scotline fleet, based in Inverness. The main cargoes of their seven ships seem to be timber and wood pulp, delivering to ports in the Thames Estuary and Holland. Their website is here.

Most of the trawlers in the Sound seem either to have been passing through or discharging at the CalMac Pier.  We've seen relatively few which have been fishing, giving the stocks in the Sound a welcome chance to recover.  This little boat is the Golden Bells II, N192, registered in Newry, a twin-rigged prawn trawler.

There have, however, been some boats fishing in the Sound - amongst them, our two local creel boats.  This is Alasdair MacLachlan on his Sylvia T picking up his creels close to the Ormsaigbeg shore on a beautifully still afternoon.  Note the hopeful seagull sitting on the creels at the stern of the ship.