Monday 14 October

It's a bright and sunny morning, with only a few clouds on the southern horizon. No major changes anticipated over the next day or two. Our old freight ferry Muirneag is now on the home strait, 60 miles south of Athens in the Aegean and 450 miles southwest of Istanbul. She has received orders to proceed to Samsun, 380 miles to the east of Istanbul on the coast of the Black Sea. However, I will only monitor Muirneag's progress as far as Istanbul.



In the evening, Muirneag is on the last 24 hours of her journey to Istanbul, presently 100 miles east of Athens and 110 miles west of Izmir, Turkey; the distance to Istanbul is 450 miles. Tomorrow morning, she will pass the site of the Gallipoli landings of 1915, in which tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides lost their lives. I shall post a tribute to the dozen servicemen from the Isle of Lewis who were killed there in 1915; it is fitting as Muirneag has come all the way from Lewis since October 3rd.

At 10 pm, I received word that the aurora borealis was visible in the Outer Hebrides, so I went out to Mossend to take pics. It was quite some display, with curtains of green light swinging above the horizon. I took the below pictures with a 60 second exposure.

Sunday 13 October

Not cloudless but certainly a glorious autumn afternoon. Our former freight ferry Muirneag is now 250 miles east of Sicily and ditto west of Peloponnese, Greece. Tropical cyclone Phailin has made landfall in India, leaving massive disruption and damage in its wake, but a far lesser loss of life than feared.

I've got some of my bookmarks back (thanks Pearltrees), but they are in an unholy muddle. I have NOT got the pics back that I took between 1 August and 13 September. OK, they are on Flickr, but that means manual downloading - of 226 pics. Have been trying Recuva, but that leaves me with files that won't show the pics hidden therein.

In the evening, Muirneag's chugging along some 250 miles southwest of Athens, and 75 miles southwest of the Peloponnese in Greece. The ship will veer northeast in the course of the night and head up the Aegean towards Istanbul, where she is expected to arrive in the evening of Tuesday 15th October.

Saturday 12 October

Muirneag has reappeared on AIS, now near the island of Pentallaria, between Sicily and Tunisia. By tomorrow, she'll pass Malta before crossing the Ionian Sea into Greek waters.

A perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky. A moderate easterly breeze does not keep the mercury down; we're at 10C / 50F at the moment.

Trying to restore my system to the way it was until my harddisk crashed 11 days ago. Well, that's of course not possible. I've lost my bookmarks; my firewall software is suddenly incompatible with the version of Windows I was running previously, and I can't find my product key for MS Office. No, I'm not going to pay for it AGAIN. And here I am, installing Flashplayer, the very piece of garbage that gave me so much grief beforehand. Sometimes, computers just ain't worth it. Oh, one other nice job I have to do: manually download 116 pics from Flickr, which are the ones that I took after the backup and before my camera switched to a new folder. The old one of course I deleted from the memory card. Do I sound fed up? Whatever made you think that...

Also went to see an exhibition about peat in An Lanntair, where I took a few pics.

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.

Thursday 10 October

Tropical cyclone Phailin is threatening eastern India, with winds of 95 knots. That's 110 mph in old money. Small wonder that the TC page on the Indian Weather Service page takes an age to load. The Philippines are bracing themselves for typhoon Nari, expected to hit Luzon with 85 knots (100 mph) in a few days' time. Meanwhile, the Atlantic hurricane season barely merits the name. Thus far.

This is the most ridiculous situation ever. A horse is kept in a rented home and last week the council said the doors had to be so wide and so high for the horse to stay in it. Excuse me? The only two places to keep a horse are in a field or in a stable. There are plenty of people desperate for a decent home, and they are not equine.

I am not able to provide a position update on our former freight ferry Muirneag, as she is currently out of range of AIS monitoring stations. My estimate is that she will be some 300 miles east of Gibraltar, off the coast of Algeria. I hope to receive a position update once Muirneag comes within range of Sardinia, Sicily or Lampedusa, on Friday or Saturday at the latest.

Wednesday 9 October

Winds are blowing at force 7 from the north, with gusts as high as 55 mph. Temperature has taken a tumble, with the mercury now only in single figures at 9C / 48F. Spotted some hail in the showers earlier this morning. However, we are rewarded with some fantastic cloudscapes and lightshows so it's not all bad. Where's me woolly hat. Where's me mitts. Where's the antifreeze (do I need antifreeze, I don't run a car?!). Oh my word, it's Arctic out there...

Continuing to follow Muirneag's journey to her new home. She spent the night taking on fuel at Ceuta, across the Strait from Gibraltar, and left at 7.45 am on a course slightly north of east, currently 60 miles east of Gibraltar. Ceuta is, like its counterpart Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. In the evening, Muirneag was 50 miles south of Almeria in Spain or 90 miles north northwest of the Moroccan-Algerian border. She is now entering a large blackspot on the AIS coverage, and I'll probably lose track of her until she approaches Sardinia and Sicily by Friday or Saturday.

Pirates of the Caribbean: sorry folks, those movies just turn into an unbelievable and unsufferable parody of itself. Film 1 was bearable, the other two just sank themselves.

Tuesday 8 October

Morning all from a dank and drizzly Stornoway, hey, what's this blinding orb in the southern sky? Following the journey of the Muirneag, which is now 60 miles west southwest of Cadiz in Spain and 100 miles west of Gibraltar. Muirneag is not exactly bombing it down the seas, so I expect her to cross into the Mediterranean tonight.

My sympathies go out to the family and friends of Steven Buchanan of Lionacleit, Benbecula, who died on Saturday when his lorry overturned as he was loading nets onto it. In a small community like Uist, every (unexpected) death is felt keenly by all there, and that echoes across the Sound of Harris.

Monday 7 October

Wet and windy today, not a day for going out. Keeping an eye on Muirneag, which is now some 50 miles west of Lisbon in Portugal, likely to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar this evening or tonight.



Well, my new hard drive is on its way. I'm trying to pull files off the old hard disk, but it remains an unmitigated disaster. Taking 140 hours (see you next week), I don't think so. Oh well, as they say where I'm from: dry your tears and start again. No, I'm not blubbing my eyes out. But I'm heartily pissed off with it all. Yes, I've been very kindly given the use of someone's PC, thanks. But it's not the same, is it. — feeling pissed off.

This evening, Muirneag is now 60 miles southwest of Setubal in Portugal and 250 miles northwest of Gibraltar. She will pass into the Mediterranean tomorrow, and hope to be able to spot her on some Gibraltar webcam.

Sunday 6 October

The Hebrides came into Stornoway at midday to take up the run from the Isle of Lewis, which is currently in Greenock for repairs. A creel had become entangled with the prop of the IoL, causing damage to hull and prop.



The former freight ferry Muirneag is making its way south across the Bay of Biscay, and was located off Cape Finisterre, northwestern Spain, by late evening.

Saturday 5 October

An overcast and at times wet day, with the wind picking up to force 6 in the evening. Our ferry, the Isle of Lewis decided to break her propshaft last night, so she couldn't go out. Although she still has one engine to run on, this still means she can't carry passengers. At midday, the ferry departed for Greenock (near Glasgow) for repairs, and there was no ferry service to Ullapool today at all. Meantime, the Hebrides, which does the run between Uig and Tarbert (Harris) will be deployed to our waters tomorrow, and the Finlaggan (which normally does the Islay run) will go to the Uig - Tarbert/Lochmaddy triangle today. After last winter's shenanigans, the Finlaggan is really popular there. I'm being sarcastic; there were more cancellations than sailings, and I could just about hear the collective moan from the Uists this afternoon when that name was mentioned. The Isle of Lewis will be out of action for a number of days, even now she has only just passed Oban on her way to Glasgow - am expecting her there by midday tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our former freight ferry, Muirneag, is now far from her old home and further from land than she has been for a long time. Although currently out of range of AIS monitoring stations, her last position was 200 miles westsouthwest of Brest, France, in the Bay of Biscay. I'm expecting her past Cape Finisterre (northwestern Spain) by tomorrow evening, and through the Straits of Gibraltar on Tuesday. I'll continue to follow her journey until she arrives safely into Istanbul, which is anticipated on October 16th.

Thursday 3 October

A wet day, but not nearly as wet as in the Central Belt, where they had 3 inches (75 mm) of rain in places. A complete turn-around from a few days ago, when we were sitting outside having our lunch in the sun.

I'm having a major problem with my laptop, which suffered a hard-disk crash yesterday. It would not start up. I found the recovery DVD that came with the machine and attempted to repair the system. No luck. Reinstalling another copy of Vista appeared to work, but CHKDSK threw up a host of errors, followed by a stall - which in the end resulted in a bootsector failure. Well, that's very serious indeed. I still have internet access through another PC, and a few searches threw up a useful tool. As I type this, a so-called "image" is being copied onto my external harddisk drive (capacity 1,024 gigabytes), which I hope can be put back once the problems on my laptop harddisk have been sorted. Don't know how that'll work, but we shall see.

I have been neglecting blog reading this year, but found that a lot of J-land blogs that were copied over to Blogger have been left abandoned since 2009 or 2010 - the spammers have filled up the comments pages on some of them (e.g. Bowl of Cherries by Tellsg is a bad example). I also came across blogs by those that have gone on ahead. Have a look round the Silent Keyboards blog for links.

Blogging

Today is my blogoversary; it is five years ago since I launched this blog, Atlantic Lines, after AOL announced it was discontinuing its blogging service AOL Journals. I had started writing in my AOL journal, Northern Trip, on 8 October 2004, and my blogging career therefore now spans 9 years. A number of AOL J-landers started blogging when the service was launched on 21 August 2003, but I still think I'm one of the older J-landers around.

I did not really become involved with the blogging community until April 2006, when the death was announced of Pamela Hilger (his1desire on AOL), following a 9 month battle with breast cancer. When AOL Journals was discontinued, we moved onto Facebook, and managed to keep the larger part of the community going.

So, here's to the next 9 years!

Sunday 29 September

Another windless and sunny day, and in fact warm enough to sit out in the sun for a couple of hours.  Made good progress with a book on Scottish history by Tom Devine, which (as per usual) served to debunk quite a handful of myths. Went for an amble around the harbour, and found that the Monaco (Stornoway's resident wreck) had been moved round the end of the quayside to be broken up.

Saturday 28 September

A very calm day, with not a breath of wind to speak of. The result was fog after sunset - and lovely reflections in the waters of the harbour. 

Friday 27 September

Overcast and misty, bordering on foggy earlier on. There is wind now and it's clearing up. Is that the sun up there, eh, eh, eh?! Anyway, 13C, feeling cool. Not too bad though. Oh, when you park your campervan, make sure it's back end doesn't protrude out of the parking bay into the carriageway.

Thursday 26 September

We are approaching Hallowe'en (October 31st), and two supermarket chains decided to launch some suitably scare costumes. Naming them Mental Patient and Psycho Ward has unfortunately proven to be a mistake. In my opinion, children should be taught to be understanding and empathetic towards people with mental health issues, which can often not be seen from the outside. How often do I have to say: You break a leg, and it takes a few weeks to heal, and nobody else is much affected. You break your mind, and it can take a lifetime (if ever) to heal, and all around you are affected.

Wednesday 25 September

Like yesterday, we had a glitch with the broadband. Apparently, there was a fault with the microwave link to the mainland, which carries all our internet traffic. When things were restored to normal, I was able to carry on my researches into North Uist casualties of the Great War. Upon going into town, I noticed that the Muirnneag's port of registration (previously Glasgow) and the Calmac website address had been painted out. She is apparently due to go to Turkey in the next couple of days. Sunset brought us another display of blazing colours.

Tuesday 24 September

The day started with low cloud - which prompted descended to sealevel to leave us wreathed in dense fog. Couldn't even see the causeway to Goat Island, which is only about 300 yards away. Fortunately, the weather cleared up and the day ended with beautiful sunset colours. I also finished writing my latest short story, my seventh.