As the car ferry pulls away from the shores of Glenelg to make the short trip across to Kylerhea in Skye, passengers are treated to a most amusing sight that is perhaps unique in the world.

That is, the sight of a ‘working’ skipper dog or ‘ferry dog’ untying the ropes on the last sea-going, manually-operated, turntable ferry in the world before duly leaping aboard for the journey.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, his antics, or talents rather, as a seafaring, skippering pooch aboard the MV Glenachulish have won him fans across the globe, with videos of him in action regularly going viral after appearing online.

The four-year-old border collie has taken over the mantle left behind by his grandad Nak, whose death in February last year sparked a wave of hundreds of tributes from near and far. 

Known to owner, skipper and local crofter Donnie MacDonald as “the boss”, Nak spent more than a decade ‘working’ aboard the MV Glenachulish as the original ‘ferry dog’, pulling in ropes and being on look-out duties for seals.

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Now, like they did with Nak, passengers will express their disappointment and question Spot’s absence if he isn’t present alongside them on the short ferry ride, which crosses the strait at the closest point between Skye and the mainland.

Jo Crawford, General Manager of the Isle of Sky Ferry Community Interest Company, which operates the seasonal ferry, said passengers are often left “spellbound” by Spot, who, like the ferry, has become a tourist attraction in his own right. 

She told The Herald: “He never misses a crossing. When the crew take the wee dinghy out to the mooring to start up the ferry before they bring it into the slipway for service, Spot can’t go in the dinghy so he has to wait on the shore until they come in with the ferry. So he waits for the boat to come in for the first crossing. After that he is on the boat for every crossing. In busy season they can do 50 crossings a day.

“Spot is always there. It’s quite funny, when Donnie comes in with the boat, Spot jumps up onto the boat and you’d think he hadn’t seen Donnie for about a year even though it’s literally only been about 10 minutes. Spot does what he thinks is helping. He sees what the crew do, the ropehands, tying and untying the ferry, and he lends a hand.

“The passengers are absolutely spellbound by him. They are utterly enchanted by Spot. He must be the most photographed dog in the Western world. Everybody is filming him and taking photographs of him. There’s palpable disappointment if people turn up and he isn’t there.”

Built in Troon by the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company in 1969 for service at Ballachulish before the bridge was built there, the MV Glenachulish was brought to Glenelg in the early 1980s and has sailed the Kylerhea narrows ever since. 

The ferry has been in the ownership of the Isle of Skye Ferry Community Interest Company since 2007, with the Glenachulish Preservation Trust subsequently set up to raise funds to preserve what is a unique piece of Scottish maritime history. 

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Since then, over £200,000 has been raised to bring the boat to her current condition, including the most recent campaign back in 2019 which saw £10,000 raised to help maintain and restore the vessel. 

Ms Crawford added: “It’s the last manually operated turntable in ferry in operation. There used to be common sights up and down the west coast of Scotland doing all these short crossings where a lot have now been replaced by bridges of course like in Ballachulish and Kylesku. 

“They don’t need much in the way of infrastructure. So they just need a ramp. They don’t need a big pier or anything like that and they can carry vehicles across. You drive on, they turn the turntable round and you drive off. There’s no reversing or anything like that required. It’s such a finely-balanced piece of engineering that one person can turn a deck full of six cars round by themselves. 

“The crossing is of interest too. It’s the original crossing between the mainland and the Isle of Skye because it’s the point where the two landmasses are at their closest. It’s part of an ancient drovers route down from the Hebrides down to mainland Scotland and down to the Central Belt. 

“It’s living heritage in many ways.There’s been a ferry crossing for hundreds of years and a vehicle crossing since at least the 1930s.”

Having run for almost four centuries, the boat crossing from Glenelg to Kylerhea has long been an economic lifeline for communities on both sides of the water. As well as being a piece of “living heritage”, Ms Crawford is keen to emphasise how vital the ferry service remains for locals. 

She said: “We market it as a tourist attraction of course because you can go on to Skye over the bridge for nothing if you like. The previous owner put the boat up for sale when the tolls were removed from the Skye bridge, as he thought he probably couldn’t market it anymore. 

“There’s a small group of people in Glenelg who really felt that not having the ferry would really turn Glenelg into a kind of dead-end, because there’s one mountain pass in, one road in and one road out, without the ferry. It would change things for local people that I think. 

“The ferry as we operate it just now carries about 35,000 passengers each year between April and October. And if those people wouldn’t access this wee peninsula if it wasn’t for the ferry on their onward journey to Skye. So it’s economically really significant. There’s no doubt about that. We also employ about 10% of the working population here.”

You can find out more about the ferry here