Puffin (poo) dodging

After the long(ish) trip, our guests seemed remarkably perky. More so than Patrick who was decidedly sniffy about being surrounded by cute puffins. Think he was feeling a little less "centre of attentionish". Luckily for him, Linda came to his rescue with a cwtch or two. For the non Welsh readers (and that must be over 99% of you), a cwtch is rather nice. See Urban dictionary for info.

Patrick started to like having the Welsh folks on board and even tuned in to the accents. He picked up on the rather frequent use of "fair play" and other nice sayings. We worry that his rather faltering English is already being corrupted. At what age should penguins begin to converse?

Linda offered him a RIB trip. At first he was unsure as he'd had an email from his spaniel friend Bron:

 We have also been out on the wobbly stuff. We got as far as the pier twice last weekend to play something called committee boat for some dinghy racing. I got a ride on a fast rubber boat but me dad didn't come so I cried and they took me back again

As you can see, he took a little persuading to go and needed a big cwtch:

However, once out in the RIB he lost all his inhibitions (as did the RIB crew it seems):

Of course, having been led astray, the RIB crew then went for a burn. After 25 hours at around 6 knots, perhaps the urge to play hooligan was just too much:

Note how the helmsman seemed slightly less impressed / uninhibited than the passenger. However, upon their return to the mothership, they both said that they wanted a RIB like this one. Of course it would be way cheaper than a Nordhavn but harder to sleep on. Sorry Phil and Neil (the Nordhavn Europe men that you met last summer in this blog) - think we have lost you a sale. 

Post lunch, a trip around to the northern side of the island where you are allowed to land was fruitless. No places to leave the RIB. Actually it was far from fruitless. The scenery was lovely, we watched puffins doing belly flops across the waves as they tried to take off in choppy water and a couple of RIB occupants who were sitting on the side tubes got a bit soggy. Not a bad result really for those of us enjoying the jockey seat in the middle:

The day was rounded off by some serious puffin photography, birdwatching and general chilling. They are just so cute and entertaining. Here are a few images to give you a taste of what we enjoyed:

Take off is quite tough for them as you can see in this sequence:

Of course, the razorbills looked unimpressed at these antics:

A great day. Wonderful weather, a morning arrival after the overnight trip, a beautiful anchorage, some RIB fun, lots of wildlife to watch and a peaceful night at anchor to enjoy. It really doesn't get much better than this. Even the boat looked happy with yet another "Mew Stone" in the background: