The week progresses

As ever at this time of year we have been busy here on the Isle of Mull. A lot of folk going across to the Island for their holidays along with day trippers on coaches and either due to a water leak or shortage, tankers full of Oban water. Today we had 6 coach loads on our first trip out of Oban with 550 passengers.

At the start of my fortnight we had glorious weather but then on the Monday morning we woke to fog across the Bay, as the week progressed it took longer and longer each day to burn away so we were manoeuvring at slow speed when we were in it. On Friday this resulted in us running two hours late but we did do all of our trips, the lifeline
service continues.


This is a picture of the radar and each of these yellow dots is the return from a target, most likely a yacht or fishing boat moving about the Sound of Mull just near Craignure. A busy bit of water and
probably quite scary for the yacht skippers caught out in the fog as they will not necessarily have the radar we do to detect other vessels, but they will be able to hear our fog signal and know we are
out there somewhere.

By the way, I find it strange how some of my colleagues dislike all yachtsmen, considering them to be an impediment to the stately progress of the ferry, conveniently forgetting that CalMac doesn't own Oban Bay and the £121 million subsidy we received last year was paid no doubt in part by these bloody Wafis's taxes. Ho hum.


Today we had a rather elegant passenger ship anchored off the North Entrance to Oban, the Costa Voyager. Presently of Italian register and quite a handsome vessel in comparison to a lot of other modern passenger boats. A very impressive flair on the bow which you can see better on this photo.