'Dawn Treader'

Somewhere in this maelstrom off Ardnamurchan Point today is the Tobermory creel boat Dawn Treader.

Conditions at sea today have been pretty grim, with westerly winds gusting up to gale force, driving in heavy showers of hail and sleet.

Pictures, with many thanks, from Kilchoan Early Bird.

Lysblink Seaways - Some Questions

The south coast of Ardnamurchan, Loch Sunart, and the northern end of the Sound of Mull were nearly, so nearly, the scene of a serious pollution incident.  The grounding of the Lysblink Seaways follows those of the Lysfoss (2001, on Auliston Point) and Fri Ocean (2013, 2.5 miles south of Tobermory), all at the northern end of the Sound in an area which is to become a Scottish Marine Protected Area.

A number of questions were raised at last night's West Ardnamurchan Community Council meeting.  These include:

1.  Why wasn't Kilchoan Coastguard team called out as soon as the grounding was reported?  Why wasn't the Fort William Sector Manager, in whose area the incident occurred, alerted?

Kilchoan's is one of the most highly trained and enthusiastic teams along Scotland's west coast.  Unlike many, it is a Cliff Rescue Team.  The Kilchoan Station Manager Hughie MacLachlan (right), and his boss, the Fort William Sector Manager, were informed by a member of the public who had gone down at four in the morning, two hours after the grounding and some time after the Tobermory lifeboat had been called out, to look at the ship.

2.  Why did the ship ground?

This will be the subject of an investigation by the Marine Accident and Investigation Board, and there will be a full report.

When one looks at the AIS track of the ship in the minutes before the grounding (map courtesy West Coast Yachtsman), one's hair stands on end.  The Lysblink Seaways must have missed the New Rocks by metres.  If she had grounded there, the incident might have been far, far worse.  The consequences, for local fish farms including the new fish farm at Maclean's Nose, for our local creel fishermen, and for our tourist industry, would have been disastrous.

The MAIB report will take time, but it'll be publicly available and thorough.

3.  Were the salvage people prepared for the possibility that she might refloat herself?

The only people on duty on the shore near the ship at the time she floated herself off the rocks on Thursday evening, shortly after one of the highest tides of the year, seem to have been members of Kilchoan Coastguard and a local policeman.  The crew of the ship reported they were afloat, and the Forth Jouster, lying close by, came to their aid, but the Kingdom of Fife was some distance away.  The wind was westerly, and blowing the ship towards a beach a kilometre from where she had been stranded.

This picture of the bulbous bow of the ship was taken by a member of the local Coastguard who, in the hours before she floated off, noticed that it had moved.

One is reluctant to question the professionalism of the highly experienced people involved in a salvage operation such as this, but when one considers how much this community had to lose if things had gone wrong, then perhaps some sort of enquiry into its handling is merited.

4.  Why was the Lysblink Seaways left in such a confined and exposed position overnight on the night of Saturday/Sunday when an inshore gale was forecast?

The Lysblink Seaways dragged her anchor that night, and had to be towed away from a lee shore.  The next morning, she was moved to a better anchorage, regularly used by ships like the Hebridean Princess and Pharos, to the east of Mingary Castle.

Hugh Shaw, the Secretary of State’s Representative for Maritime Salvage & Intervention, has said that it was his decision, bearing in mind the salvor's concern about the risk of fuel leaking from the tanks during the tow, yet the next day, Sunday, the salvors moved her.  Conditions on the Saturday evening, see picture, were calm.

5.  In view of the three strandings in our part of the Sound of Mull in the last fifteen years, what is going to be done to prevent further, similar incidents?

It was felt by some at the Community Council meeting that restrictions should be placed on which ships are permitted to pass through the Sound of Mull, it being suggested that some do it to maintain a good TV signal.

6. When is HM Government going to reinstate the Coastguard Emergency Towing Vessel at Stornoway?

It was agreed that West Ardnamurchan would do what it could to help the campaign to have an emergency tug reinstated at Stornoway as a matter of urgency.

Winter Overstays Its Welcome

For the last five days we've been in a westerly, Atlantic airstream which has brought everything from heavy rain (22mm on the last day of February, almost an inch), to sleet, hail, and now snow.  Yesterday we walked into the soggy hills at the back of the house, climbing to the western end of Druim na Gearr Leacainn, which gave us views both down into Kilchoan Bay and north, to the lighthouse and Small Isles, but most of the photos are so dull and lifeless that they're not worth sharing.

Then - so typically of this place - the sun suddenly came out as we walked above the twin lochans, and flooded the glen, and the blunt height of Stacan Dubha beyond them, with watery sunlight.

One of the bonuses we receive with hail is sudden electrical storms.  Thunder and lightning used to be summer phenomena, but now they seem to come more and more frequently in winter.  The latest episode has blown the BT telephone boxes in several people's houses, the usual symptom being that incoming calls don't ring.  Within twenty-four hours of our reporting the fault, a cheerful BT engineer arrived and replaced our box, all of two minutes' work. The cause was a small electrical fuse-like thing within it which, had I had the spare part, I could have replaced.

We now remove the connection between the BT box and our router whenever there's a likelihood of an electrical storm, and have things like our Sky Digibox attached to the mains through surge protectors. Our computers have APC Back-UPS boxes which both protect them against electrical surges and continue to run them on a battery for up to twenty minutes or until they can be powered down.

During last night we had at least two heavy hail showers - well, two that woke me.  By this morning Ben Hiant was snow-covered, and....

....even warm Ormsaigbeg had a blanket of.... well, a mixture of snow, hail, sleet and general slush.  As I write, it's now snowing heavily, and the forecast is for more wintery showers.  All one can say is that, if conditions here are poor, people inland will be enduring far worse.

So, at this rather depressing time of year, special thanks go to....

....Keith Charles, who sends this photo of mother and lamb taken along the road to Fascadale last spring, to which Keith adds the caption 'Spring is just around the corner'.  Keith, I hope you're right.

B8007 Closures Announced

The B8007 is to be closed for extended periods during late March and early April to allow work to repair the section above Camas nan Geall, where there was a landslip in November.  Details on the West Ardnamurchan News here.

Photo Kilchoan Early Bird

Animal Tracking Course

Saturday's animal tracking course, organised by Pat Glenday at the Kilchoan Learning Centre, provided a fund of useful knowledge for those of us who wander the hills of Ardnamurchan.  We often come across signs of animals, such as scat, but lack the knowledge to interpret them.  The course, run by West Highland Hunting, gave us a thorough and fascinating introduction, and included a large amount of information about the wild animals which roam this part of the world.

For example, we learnt that the number of badgers is increasing, but that their behaviour differs from other badgers: they are much more nomadic, so will appear in an area for perhaps only a few weeks before moving on.

The morning was spent in the Centre and then, despite the miserable weather, we ventured outdoors. At the first location, near Mingary Pier, we were taught to find and interpret signs of otters.  Our sea otters need to bathe in fresh water each day, so a good place to look is around the many rainwater pools that collect close to the sea.

There are eleven otter territories along our side of Loch Sunart, one of the highest concentrations in the UK.  A typical male otter occupies about ten miles of coastline, and a female four.

The second location was near Loch Mudle where, along a hundred-metre section of forest track, we found signs of fox, pine marten, red and roe deer.  In this picture, we are looking at the tracks left along a bank, but we also learned to recognise where deer had browsed and marked the branches and trunks of bushes and trees.

The final location, in one of the sheds at Swordle, concentrated on barn owls and the pellets which they regurgitate.  These give the experienced observer an overview of the small mammal population of an area.

The course was delivered by Niall Rowantree (left) and Stevie Grant of West Highland Hunting....

....and Hamza Yassin, also of WHH but also a professional photographer (Facebook page here).  Many thanks to all three for their insight into this complex subject, presented in a cheerful and informative way.

If you want local guided tours, try Wild Highland Tours.