From a distance the Skellig Islands look like two shards of rock sticking out of the Atlantic. Skellig or Sceilg means ‘splinter of stone’. It was a calm, hot and sunny day and we had motored from Dingle, County Kerry, to get close to Little Skellig. It has the largest colony of gannets in Ireland and I wanted to sketch them. The sheer, jagged cliffs soared above us, every ledge packed with birds and whitewashed with guano. The gannets grow to be huge, with a wingspan of two metres.
One of the joys of cruising is watching the gannets flying gracefully in a row of two or three, far out at sea, close to the surface of the water. The largest seabird in the North Atlantic, they are white with cream-coloured heads and
