Extruded jellyfish / Walking across the sea to Skye

Since they had been nice enough to build a bridge for us, it seemed appropriate to take advantage of it.  So, as the day was supposed to be a nice one we planned a walk across it to Skye.

We didn't head off as early as planned though. Like last year, our genset was murdered by a jellyfish..... It just shuddered to a stop when the high temperature sender in the exhaust kicked in. The captain investigated and found lots of nice white jelly stuff in the strainer basket that filters the water heading to the genset. Learning from last year, this was removed and cleaned out with gloves on.

The genset fired up, but would not suck any water through. Hum. Perhaps the impeller was trashed. No, a new one was fitted but the impeller was not visibly damaged from the brief dry running spell. It looked like the outside strainer, the one fitted to the hull itself, had some jellyfish remains in it. How to remove them? Well, the flexible pipe that runs from that skin fitting to the strainer did not want to come off. No way. It was hanging on for dear life and not wanting to put too much strain on the skin fitting (a leak there would not be good, especially as no boatyard in this area could lift our weight out of the water) that plan was abandoned. So, we had to blow it through from much higher up - inside the strainer itself, using an elbow fitting that could be pushed into the inlet port of the strainer and a hose fitted to that.

Deep joy, but it worked. The genset ran, was stopped, the residual jelly gunge cleaned out of the strainer again and all was well. The captain popped to tell our Swedish neighbours that the Nordhavn version of the national grid was back up and running for them and then, the genset stopped again..... This was getting tedious - another jellyfish? The area is infested with the things. Luckily it was just a few more remnants of the first one.

So, a delayed walk across the bridge followed. Plenty of seals about and an otter sighting too. The views from up there are wonderful. The entire panorama in both directions is very special:

This is looking down Lochalsh.

Once on Skye (a first for us), we walked to Kyleakin and had a very pleasant lunch at the Tripadvisor number 1 cafe - Harry's. Of course, there are not hundreds to choose from but it seems that Kyleakin is a bit of a tourist coach place. We avoided the large cafe that they all seemed to frequent.....

The local war memorial is a great viewpoint:

The harbour is supposed to have some visitors berthing on the pontoon but it was full of local fishing boats and not at all tempting. The old mooring dolphins have a sign that kind of says it all:

As always, there is a local ruined Castle (this one is Castle Moil) and it would have really dominated the village:

It was nice to get the legs working again and to "christen" the island.

During the evening, a Faeroe Islands based MFV conversion was dragged into the pontoon area by the local inshore lifeboat - the little RIB struggled trying to swing the heavy old MFV against the wind and tide so Hughie, the moorings and trip boat man, came to the rescue and pushed the substantial bow in using his boat:

The rescuers are hidden on the other side of the MFV by the way. Apparently the prop shaft coupling bolts had sheared - a serious lack of "go" afterwards of course. It was reported that they had a "larder" stacked with salted fish so they will not go hungry whilst waiting for repairs. We doubt that Kyle of Lochalsh has many suitable beefy bolts in stock so they could be around a few days.