Our journey from Oban to Port Ellen takes us past the islands of Scarba and Jura, which lie to the northeast of our fairway.

As we pass them before entering Jura Sound, we can clearly see how the current around us is getting stronger. The water surface seems to literally boil and the ship seems to stop moving. But this impression is deceptive, because in fact our speed has doubled from about 6 to over 12 knots! This is due to a rare nautical phenomenon: here between Scarba and Jura, different ocean currents meet and form a whirlpool, the so-called Corryvreckan. What sounds like Captain Bluebear's sailor's tale can only be found in a few other sea areas and after the notorious Moskenstraumen and Saltstraumen between the Norwegian Lofoten and the Old Sow in Canada, the Corryvreckan is the third strongest of these ocean eddies. Many a ship caught in its undertow struggles to free itself from them. As "maelstroms," they have inspired writers from Schiller to Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, who spun tragic ballads of daring divers and eerie tales of bottomless abysses beneath the sea's surface around them. So we prefer to keep a sufficient distance from Corryvreckan - especially since it is not directly on our route - but see it clearly from a safe distance as a white-foaming standing wave gushing.

Position: 56.156641, -5.659332