Friday 11 October

Our ferry is back in Stornoway; the Hebrides is currently at Ullapool and will start to make its final crossing as relief vessel as of this afternoon. Our former freight ferry Muirneag last was picked up on AIS just before midnight last night, some 40 miles east northeast of Algiers. AIS coverage is sparse along the coast of Algeria, so there is no more recent sightings at present. On the 8th day of her journey to a new life, Muirneag is continuing to head east northeast in the Mediterranean, some 15 to 25 miles off the Algerian coast. At 11 this morning, she was located 250 miles west of Tunis and 220 miles east of Algiers. She will probably enter Tunisian waters around midnight tonight, after which she should start to show up on AIS monitoring stations in Sicily. Once past Crete, coverage is again poor across the Aegean, so I hope that I can follow Muirneag's progress on the last stages of her journey to Istanbul.

Nice bright and sunny day out here, and we've mostly lost the wind. Received my replacement hard drive, and am going through the motions of installing programs and updates, and later files. A number of things are (and will remain) missing. I did have some degree of back-up, but will have to up my game in that respect. This is a complete pain in the backside.