Cemfjord Lost

We don't often see sunsets from the Ormsaigbeg side of the peninsula, particularly in winter, but this is last night's, seen across the shoulder of Maol Buidhe.

The view across the Sound of Mull this morning was suitably sombre.  We'd heard on the news last night of the discovery of the upturned hull of a bulk carrier to the east of the Pentland Firth, and the efforts being made to locate the eight missing crew.  No distress call was made, which suggests the ship must have foundered very quickly in bad weather.

She's the Cemfjord, a Cyprus-registered, German-operated ship which we've seen in the Sound - she's pictured above in 2012.  As her name suggests, she's been converted to carry cement, and was on passage from Aalborg in Denmark to Runcorn in Cheshire.  Full story, and pictures of the finding of the ship by a passenger ferry, here.

It seems almost incredible that a relatively modern, well-found ship can sink so suddenly, and the incident serves as a timely reminder of the power of the sea.  On a local note, our worry is that, since the withdrawal of the Coastguard tug which, until 2012, was stationed at Stornoway, the only boats immediately available to tow ships in trouble are the RNLI lifeboats.

Many thanks to Kilchoan Early Bird for drawing my attention to the story.

Winter Sailor

The Sound of Mull has been remarkably empty of traffic over the holiday period.  A few CalMac ferries have passed, and one small bulk carrier.  In fact, despite the clouds, we've seen far more 'planes flying over us than ships in the Sound.  The dawn view out over the Sound this morning in some ways mirrors Alan G's picture yesterday of an Arbroath sunset.

Our visitors left first thing this morning for the long drive back to Essex.  The sun was out when they arrived a few days ago, and appeared in brief intervals yesterday, but otherwise they saw more rain than anything else.  So it was fully to be expected that the weather would turn fine literally as they drove off down the road.

A little later, we walked up the hill at the back to get some exercise, stopping occasionally to watch as cloud shadows chased patches of sunlight across the hillsides.  In this picture the old wall built some time in the middle of the 19th century to separate the Ormsaigbeg croft lands below from the township's common grazings above can be clearly seen, as can the fence which was put up more recently to replace it.

We climbed to the top of the ridge behind the house and stood for a time with the sun on our backs looking across the twin lochans to Stacan Dubha and, in the distance, the Isle of Eigg, before beginning to make our descent, only to stop in amazement....

....at the sight of this yacht, pictured as it was about to pass the headland below us.  We didn't see her later further into the Sound, so can only assume her intrepid skipper turned her west, perhaps to pass to the west of Mull.  This was not the sort of traffic we'd expected to see.

Sanna Gale

We've managed a bit of walking over the festive season.  Yesterday we took the track to Glendrian but were thwarted by the flooded burn just short of the township, so this morning we set off for Sanna on a  day of sunshine, hail showers and a very brisk westerly wind.

Crossing the machair to the beach into the teeth of what was, by that time, little short of a full gale gave us a taste of what was to come, for the wind....

....had whipped up a wicked sea, seen here rolling in to the most southerly of Sanna's beaches.  The spume was being blown in across the beach where....

....it was enjoyed by the youngest of our visitors, Darcy from Essex.

 The wind was also blowing sand in waves across the beach, stinging any exposed skin, bouncing high enough to get in our eyes, and piling it....

....against the rocks.  It's just as well that the sand was being blown inland because the beaches have changed their profiles considerably since we last saw them, with much of their sand eroded out to sea.

We crossed the Sanna burn and walked to the point on its north side.  This brought us into the full force of the gale, and it really was, at times, quite difficult to stand upright.  In very high winds, the sea is beaten flat and the tops whipped off the waves.  We've not seen a gale at Sanna blowing, as this did, straight in onto the beaches, so the little bay in this picture, one of our favourite spots in summer for a lazy day on the beach, had become a cauldron of waves and foam.

East Coast Sunset

While the Diary is mostly about West Ardnamurchan, it's always a pleasure to post pictures from elsewhere, particularly when they're of scenes which we don't often see.  Living on a southeast-facing side of Ardnamurchan means that sunsets are something we miss. This photo, thanks to Alan G, comes from Arbroath.

Alan says, "I was in Arbroath, and it started as a typically nice sunset looking over the Tay estuary towards Fife, but the sun went behind some distant cloud. Then just barely five minutes before the sun would have gone below the horizon, it dropped below the cloud and into a distant haze where the colour was nicely diffused and the sun appeared as a vivid pink, perfectly shaped disc. Conveniently there was also a commercial airliner flying above the sun, leaving a nice vapour trail."

Many thanks, Alan, for the picture.

Flying High!