Small Cruise Ships in the Sound

The weather has turned lively.  Yesterday evening's cumulus brought heavy showers one of which, caught by the late sun, gave us....

....a spectacular rainbow into which the small cruise ship Hebridean Princess sailed, to spend the night, as she often does, tucked out of the wind in Bloody Bay.

In the grey morning light she was joined in the Sound of Mull by another cruise ship, the Hamburg, with up to 420 passengers a relatively small boat by cruising standards.  She's a modern ship, having been launched in 1996.

When she arrived the wind was in the south, but it steadily swung into the west and freshened, so that....

....by lunchtime the weather out in the open water was nasty enough to justify the local creel fishermens' decision to spend the day in Kilchoan Bay but not rough enough to deter the Loch Linnhe from making her normal sailings to Tobermory.

The Hamburg spent most of the morning being blown down Loch Sunart and then steaming back upwind to be blown away again.  She was obviously waiting to go into Tobermory but wasn't able to until after lunch, when another even smaller cruise ship, the Sea Explorer I emerged.  For the Hamburg's patient passengers it was a lightning visit to the town as she was off again out of the Sound by half-past two.