23/10/2024
Thanks to Jim Michie for showing us this post which has our lovely M.V. Sileas featured in it. Amazing to see her hauled out in Kyle of Lochalsh Boatyard in the 60s.
Jim tirelessly restored her after purchasing her in 1996 as she had retired from working alongside Turus Mara. Jim worked incredibly hard and managed to move her from the sea by road to give her a new mission on Loch Shiel.
After the mid 60s MacLean and MacRae operated the boat after she retired from Admiralty Service (named Vital Spark at this time) under contract to David MacBrayne, plying mainly between Kyle of Lochalsh and Toscaig. This was a daily service carrying mail and passengers and ran for close on twenty years until being sold in 1987 to MacNab MacKenzie who operated it as one of several pleasure-boats from Ullapool to the Summer Isles. ��Three years later the boat was sold to Iain Morrison of the Isle of Mull who operated the boat between Ulva Ferry and Iona, Staffa and the Treshnish Isles from 1990 until October 1994. ��Vital Spark was then taken off service and lay in a sheltered bay at Croig near Dervaig in Mull until December 1996 when the boat was bought by Jim Michie.
She continues to be a labour of love for Aly Monsef but with such a remarkable and important history of transporting people and goods she deserves to be preserved and looked after.
Gàrradh-bhataichean Chaol Loch Aillse, 1960an
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Kyle of Lochalsh Boatyard, 1960s
[photo: William J. Ramsay; source: Skye & Archive Centre]