Weather was benign so seas were generally flat but it was a great weekend.
We paddled out of Loch Moidart via the north channel.......................
Once in the open sea we saw an object in the distance moving steadily.............. turned out to be a basking shark, absolutely huge, longer than the sea kayaks, probably 20 feet long and of enormous girth.
After the initial shock of seeing the size of the beast we began to follow it. Soon we found another. Normally they cruise just under the surface, with a floppy dorsal fin and a tail fin showing, the latter powering from side to side as they swim along, mouth agape, sieving the plankton in the sea.
This shot shows I am not kidding about the size of the shark. Look at its dorsal and then its tail and then imagine where the head would be. It dwarfs a sea kayak. Eigg and Rhum in the background.
In the evening I climbed up the rugged hillside above the Smirisary camp for this view down on the North Channel.
A lovely late evening view across the skerries towards Eigg from Smirisary.
Next day we returned via the South Channel and Castle Tioram. Stopped for lunch at the gorgeous coves near the mouth of the loch.
We were lucky to pass close to a seal colony on one of the skerries in the South Channel.
Ahhhhhh.............!!!!
