Sea Eagles

From Loch Hourn, still with no wind but wall to wall blue skies, we motored up the narrow straight between Skye and the mainland up to the Kyle of Loch Alsh (kyle means straight in Gaelic, as in stretch of water between island and mainland) , under the Skye bridge and north into the Sound of Raasay, the route to the northern isles. We had a tip off that there were sea eagles on the spectacular cliffs off Portree, the capital of Skye. We were not disappointed!

The tip off said to hang about until the tourist boats came out, follow them (as they know where the eagles hang out), then sit back and watch the show as a street wise eagle who has seen this boat before comes gliding down from its cliff top perch to pick up out of the sea the mackerel that the boat driver had held above his head then tossed into the water for the eagle. Cheating? Who cares!! After the boat had left we dropped anchor to watch the eagles for half an hour and did see them catching fish of their own.

We had  a lovely afternoon sail to Rona.

On Rona we visited a cave which was used as a church a hundred or so years ago when the island had 170 inhabitants and had a seat in the stone pews! 

The evening saw us anchored in another pretty remote island harbour with the spectacular Couillin mountains in the back ground.

We are getting a little blasé about some of the sea life. We see porpoises ( a small black member of the dolphin family) most times that we sail, usually in twos but they show very little interest in the boat unlike the large bottle nose dolphins which come and play in our bow wave. Seals also pop their heads up all over the place, often in anchorages.

After Rona we sailed back over to the mainland and into Loch Torridon, another beautiful loch surrounded by mountains but some of the mountains are different here, much harsher, dramatic but two or three of them even ugly in their harshness with one looking like a 3000’ slag heap! We spent the afternoon cycling up a long glen between these huge gnarled mountains where we saw  a Golden Eagle (sorry no pis, maybe another time?!)  soaring on a ridge but too far away to see in any detail.