If anyone is heading over to Arran, or Bute this summer, or are just in the area, i'd highly recommend the Five Ferries One Day deal that Calmac are doing
We are just back from a fantastic day out, 12hrs of touring around Bute, Argyll, and Arran. For £79 for car and up to four passengers, it's hard to beat
This is really cranky, probably a bit much for a two year old and possibly off topic for the board but.....
..... if you go to http://www.shipais.com/index.php?map=Scotland you can either click on an area map, or click Search from the top line and type in the name of a ship, and it will show you where ships are using GPS plots just like the coastguards see (complete with trajectories and wakes for collision spotting!!). As an example, Calmacs Isle of Lewis is, as I write this, travelling at 16.5 knots on a course of 297 degrees about half way between Ullapool and Stornaway. And for some reason the Stornaway rescue helicopter has just flown right over it. Yes I know, I ought to get out more.......
Oh no ...... the wife is bad enough checking up on ships tooting past the caravan, but we now have mobile broadband down there plus this GPS tracking site, it's just gonna get worse!!!
I've used a similar site to track my parents flight to Canada a few weeks ago - they were at 38,000 ft doing 550kts just approaching the coast of Newfoundland and were in an Airbus A330.
Not being technology savvy they thought it was amazing it was something you could do!
Your site confrims how busy the Humber Estuary is!
When we sailed back from Isle of Arran with them, first of all when we got on they put the wrong annoucement welcoming us to port instead of to the ferry (ie, not the safety instructions) and when we docked they didn't open one the doors to the car deck making us have to go back up and back down, typical.
The very thought of that makes me feel seasick, ie, being tossed up and down. Both times coming back from Calais in the past it's being delayed cue having to hang around the port for a while once I presume being due to the fog, the other time I have no idea. I managed to miss one ferry to Calais in February so I had to get a transfer, my own thought though.