Plenty more dolphins!
Another great week- this time with a few different groups of breaching dolphins!
On the Monday morning trip the dolphins made us work for our first sighting of the week. They were hanging out at Navity bank- a spot about 6 miles from our marina! Thankfully, they were on their way in towards Chanonry point and so we had the pleasure of their company as we also made our way back home. The afternoon trip didn’t have to cover quite so much ground and were fortunate to see Scoopy with a mother and calf feeding on some large salmon in the Chanonry narrows.
The Tuesday morning sailing spotted hundreds of grey and common seals hauled out on the sandbank at whiteness and saw lots of guillemots sitting on the surface of the water but unfortunately there were no dolphins to be found amongst the waves. The afternoon trip had much better luck and spotted a pair of dolphins hugging the shore in at Chanonry point enjoying a late lunch of salmon.
There was a lot of traffic on the water on Wednesday’s morning sailing. As we were passing slowly through the narrows a pair of curious dolphins came over for a quick bow ride with the boat before peeling off for deeper waters. After heading up to look for seals at whiteness beyond we began making our way back home. We had to pause to let a large tanker pass through the narrows ahead of us and were delighted to spot 3 or 4 dolphins bow riding and leaping off the front of the tanker, giving us a nice show whilst we waited. It was clearly a good day for some surfing! There was no afternoon trip as the RIB was taken out of the water for a routine engine service.
It was a team effort spotting the dolphins on Thursday. One of our cruiser skippers was on the beach at Rosemarkie whilst another of our RIB skippers was taking a ‘staycation’ on the Black isle. Both of them had spotted the dolphins long before the boat did and were able to us to the right spot. After a couple of minutes the dolphins began breaching right out of the water! This group of about 5 or 6 dolphins included the famous sunburnt dolphin Spirtle. We had no passengers booked on for the afternoon tour so the skipper enjoyed an early finish.
On Friday we found a pair of dolphins feeding in Rosemarkie bay which were joined by another two, then another four dolphins bringing the feeding frenzy up to a total of 8 dolphins chasing the fish! We had full breaches, deep dives and a couple of nosey dolphins peeled away from the group to come and investigate the bow of our boat. It was choppy so it was hard to spot them but the dolphins were active and the large splashes they were making made them nice and easy to spot! We then went up the Black isle coast line and then across and back down the middle of the channel. We could see huge waves crashing over riff bank with the strong winds and tides dragging the water in. on our way back there were a couple of dolphins right into the shore at Chanonry point but there was already another boat watching them so we left them too it and headed home.