Our skippers spot it first: a dark lump on the horizon. There’s a scramble as a second pair of binoculars is found and shared around, each of us careful not to take our eyes off the distant point while we wait our turn. Silence as we stand on the ship’s foredeck staring determinedly at the sea, hoping it wasn’t an illusion. And then we see it – the sleek arc of a minke whale’s back and a hint of its dorsal fin.
It’s a humbling experience that elicits gasps from my three friends and I – even our skippers, Mary and Scott, seem awe struck.
Gradually, Scott steers the boat a little further out in the Inner Sound, before cutting the engine and letting us bob on the water, waiting to see if the whale breaks the surface again, and then it does, but this time much closer. We are in the company of one of the giants of the sea, which are often spotted off the coast of Skye and its neighbouring Inner Hebridean isles, and over the next half an hour or more, we watch as it crosses the Sound, trying to anticipate where it will come up for air next.
This sighting, off the coast of the Isle of Raasay, is the culmination
