Eddy lines, boils and whirlpools in the Dorus Mor

16:08:18


16:08:20 Something seems to be stirring ahead...


16:08:22 ...thankfully it's only a tiddler!


These photos were taken within the Dorus Mor before we cleared Craignish Point. We were travelling at 12km/hour which equates at 6 knots neaps as marked on the chart. I found myself progressing along an eddy line between a large, upwelling smooth boil on my right and a more disturbed area on the left. As you can see from the small blue segment on the GPS track, this corresponded with a sudden (involuntary) change in direction.

All of a sudden a small whirlpool appeared at the interface and within 2 seconds sucked air down to at least 6 feet below the surface of the crystal clear water. I dropped the camera and snatched my paddle out of the water to perform a reassuring air brace (as one does). Over the next minute I saw another five, near identical, whirlpools along the eddyline. Many years ago from a yacht, I saw about ten similar little whirlpools along another eddy line which forms nearer the Craignish peninsula.

If there had been any wind I would not have seen them, the Dorus would have been a very lively place and I would not have been doing any air bracing!

Our maximum speed was well thorough the Dorus Mor when we reached 16 to 19 km/hr where our track went northwards near where the chart mentions tide rips. We did need to paddle quite hard to break out of the race, otherwise we might have ended up heading for the Corryvreckan. We started paddling north just after we met the whirlpools. You can get some idea of the flow by the large arc of our track.

12/02/2008

Sea river

From Macaskin we paddled SW towards the islands that stream south from Garbh Reisa, the gatekeeper of the Dorus Mor.


Dorus Mor means great door or gate in Gaelic.


We were soon approaching the steep cliffs of Garbh Reisa.


We kept paddling SW until we cleared low Craignish Point. We turned to the NW when we could see straight through the Dorus Mor, past Reisa an t-Sruith, and on through the distant Gulf of Corryvreckan bounded by Jura on the left and Scarba on the right. We were now on the equivalent of a great river in the sea. If we were not able to break out of its tidal stream, we would be carried on through the Gulf of Corryvreckan and into its Great Race beyond....

12/02/2008

Snow falls on Seakayakphoto Towers

The Scottish mainland lies between 54 degrees and 58 degrees north and Shetland extends to 60 degrees north. By rights we should be frozen solid in winter but we have a temperate maritime climate thanks to the Gulf stream. This means that it is usually windy, wet and mild year round, with little differentiation between the seasons. This also means we can sea kayak year round, on the fair days.

Several regular readers of this blog, who reside furth of Scotland, may think we Scots live in a sea kayaking paradise and yes I think we do. However, it is not all light winds and sunshine. This was Glasgow this morning. Despite appearances I have only managed two days paddling in January and a further two in February.

But what a fantastic set of four days they were!!

:o)

The leaving of Macaskin

We continued round the north end of Island Macaskin and passed through the narrow channel between it and Eilean nan Gabhar. We emerged into the sunlight which was streaming up Loch Craignish. The Dorus Mor was our destination. It lay on the horizon between the rugged outline of Garbh Reisa and the low Point of Craignish. Through it, the flood tide was now streaming towards the distant hills of Jura and the great Gulf of Corryvreckan to their north.

12/02/2008

The Kilns of Macaskin

We returned to our kayaks from the abandoned settlement on Isle Macaskin. We had left them on the little landing channel that had been laboriously cleared of boulders by the former inhabitants.


We paddled up the SE coast of Macaskin and passed these ancient kilns. I have seen similar kilns on the Isle of Lismore (some 48km to the NNE), which date from the 1800s. The Lismore kilns were lime kilns and as Macaskin is relatively fertile, compared with other islands on acidic rocks, it is possible these are also lime kilns. They could however, be corn kilns.

12/02/2008

White tailed sea eagles of the Dorus Mor.

While we were exploring the islands of the Dorus Mor we saw these two magnificent white tailed sea eagles. The strong currents and disturbed waters of the race bring fish to the surface and the sea eagles are ready to swoop down and catch them with their talons.

In the summer you can also find gannets feeding here but they can dive more deeply and catch the fish with their bills.

12/02/2008

The stout trees and roots of Isle Macaskin.

We paddled up the rugged east shore of ~Loch Craignish then crossed to Island Macaskin.


From its shore we walked over the bracken (which has covered once fertile ground) to the abandoned settlement. Inside one of the cottages, two barn owls were roosting. The settlement had 6 people living in it on the 1881 census but it was abandoned by the 1891 census. One of the last people to be born on the island was Ann Gillies in about 1860. She married Neil MacEwan and lived nearby at Kilmartin on the mainland.


This is the view from one of the cottages. The people who lived here enjoyed this fine view and took the trouble to plant these stout trees. These islands are the roots of the Scottish nation.

12/02/2008

From Nick in Chichester:
That landscape shot looks almost photoshop'd...like a fantasy landscape! lovely.

From Savage Family:
Your pictures are always of very high quality, but I am particularly struck by the two today that are taken apparently into the sun, but in which detail is preserved, rather than shaded. I was wondering what sort of settings and exposures you have used to obtain such pictures? I don't mind, of course, if you prefer not to reveal your methods, but I think you have achieved good results there.

Hello Nick and Savage Family, I am glad you liked those photos, thank you!

Most cameras give a silhouette when taking into the light shots or in other high contrast photos. This is so common that it looks "normal" and high dynamic range photos such as the two you refer to look unnatural, (yet they are much more akin to what your eyes see at the time).

The web is full of how to take HDR photos, which are normally composites of several photos, taken with different exposures and blended in Photoshop. I often use that technique but it is not possible to do it easily where the light bits are so intertwined with the dark bits as in the tree shot.The tree shot was taken with a wide angle lens, 21mm, to make the sun a relatively small source of light. I used an expensive lens (Canon L series lens) to minimise flare and maximise contrast.Expensive lenses also tend to distort the horizon less when it does not run through the centre of the photo.

It is easier to reclaim detail from underexposed parts of a photo than from highlights, which once burned out are lost for ever. So in this case, I exposed for the sky rather than the foreground. The exposure was 1/800th at f20 at 400ASA .I used the camera RAW setting to save the digital photo. This results a much larger file than the usual jpeg but it stores a lot more detail, particularly in the shadow areas. On the computer, I used the Camera Raw software to open the file and used its exposure and fill light controls to bring out the shadow detail on the trees and bracken. It was pretty easy!