Sunday 18 July 2010

Ships in the Sound

It's been a busy week in the Sound of Mull, with an unusually large number of ships passing. This, of course, was the most important, Sea Life Survey's Sula Beag bringing Kilchoan's winning football team back from Coll yesterday evening.

Earlier in the day, in muckier weather, the Scot Venture passed, bound for Hallstavik, a port on the Baltic coast of Sweden which specialises in paper making. She's a 3,200 dwt bulk carrier of goods such as grain and timber. It's good to see that she'd British-registered, in Inverness.

And with that poor weather we've had the prawn trawlers steaming up and down in these more protected waters. This one is Kirkaldy-registered KY340, "Guide Us", a 17m, wooden-hulled boat built in 1973 and based in Eyemouth, though at present it's working out of Oban. For anyone that's interested, she's for sale.

This one, also a prawn trawler, I couldn't identify, as her name is so small as to be unreadable even using a fairly powerful telescope, and her registration number is invisible, unless it's the "K.2" she has on the starboard side of her wheelhouse. However, she is Scottish, judging by the Royal flag of Scotland, the lion rampant, flying at her foremast.

Keeping an eye on everything is what I take to be the Scottish Fish Protection ship Minna. The reason I'm uncertain is that she does not appear on the AIS, she has her name painted in small letters on her bow, and she has no identification number as do all Royal Navy ships. Adding to the uncertainty is a saltire painted below her bridge with the word MARINE above it.

No comments:

Post a Comment