A far better day than yesterday greeted me as I went to to feed and catch piglets this morning.
Many wise and far more experienced pig keepers than I will tell you that you can’t mix piglets of different ages and I’m sure it’s true if you keep them in a field but when out on the hill with plenty of room we’ve never found it to be a problem. The three Tamworth gilts who are much larger than the three spotties seem to get on fine with each other, wandering about in two separate groups with no scrapping at meal times.
With everyone else fed I turned my attention to the eight Tamworths on the croft as I was taking two gilts over to Portree for a customer, leading them into a pen so I could pluck two out and put them in a crate.
It was a bit of a rush but we managed to get them in, transferred to the trailer and down to the south end in time for the 8:55 ferry.
A bit of a detour
The Portree trip went like clockwork with the piglets transhipped to their new owners vehicle on the old Co op car park. My nightmare of Tamworths charging down the A 87 did not come true, we filled the Land Rover up with pig food and Halloween treats and still we had time to spare. Almost three hours in fact until the 13:10 ferry from Sconser, with all this time to kill we headed for Dunvegan and the ‘Highland Ordnance Company’ for spare CO2 cylinders for the boys ‘Crossman Ratcatcher’ .22 rifle. Of course they had just sold out so our 40 mile detour was a bit of a waste.
Of course once there we had to check out the harbour to see what boats were in.
The ‘Nils Desperandum’ was looking no worse the wear for her brief spell ashore http://www.fishupdate.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/12850/TWO_FISHING_BOATS_RUN_AGROUND_AT_EILEAN_ISAY,_LOCH_DUNVEGAN.html but there was no sign of ‘My Amber’
Back to mister Lister
Arriving back at Arnish around 15:00 I headed over to Torran with the injector pump that I’d assembled yesterday to refit it to my mates ST1 Lister generator that was suffering from a seized cam follower.
and I will have to finish this off later 
Hi Paul. Love the third picture down. That’s what I call a picture of contentment.
Comment by Rienza — November 1, 2009 @ 10:58 am
Hi Rienza,
If you think those two looked contented then you should have seen Ginger and Braken today, last pic
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — November 1, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
‘My Amber’ is OK too. The bolts holding the strip that goes along the keel of the boat had been knocked loose, and so water was getting in, but once these were replaced it was fine.
Comment by Alison Macleod — November 1, 2009 @ 11:41 am
Hi Alison,
glad to here ‘My Amber’ is back in commission, sturdy boats those Cygnus’s
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — November 1, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
If the Arnish weather has been anything like ours today, your battery banks and water tanks will be full. The wind has been strong enough to blow a dog inside out and it’s persisted down all day. So with no chance of real work being done, I looked through some of your older post and came upon a picture of Loch Striven, out of the water for her annual refit. It was the Voith unit that intrigued.
I had a vague idea of how the unit worked, but only as sort of a “horizontal paddle wheel” and maybe I should have left it there but after a happy hour or so of web hunting, all is clear. The animation on the Voith web site cannot be recommended highly enough, especially the constantly changing vector diagrams. Can I now quiz you on your installation?
From the Loch Striven pages on the Calmac site; Twin units one fore the other aft and possibly diametrically opposed, each driven by Volvo-Penta engine. I assume engine rpm are optimised for ahead with the boat speed trimmed by the driving pitch control. Are the units’ shaft coupled to the engines or hydraulic, do both units answer to the same helm, with separate pitch controls for manoeuvring and do the units contra-rotate with the helm set ahead to avoid “crabbing”?
Do you get the chance to root inside the units or does a man in a monogrammed overall and laptop come and steal your thunder? I bet the cam / bell crank chamber is quite something.
Sorry for all the questions but I’m a nosey bu66er.
Cheers Mike.
Comment by Mike"Belthorn" — November 1, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
Hi Mike,
The Voith interactive animation http://www.voithturbo.com/545950.htm describes it better than any words could and I’ve used it on here several times. The units on the Loch Striven are indeed shaft driven by a non clutched gearbox of 2:1 reduction, like you say diametrically opposed. Two separate wheels for ‘rudder pitch’ and one lever for ‘driving pitch’ both units, I think turn the same way and as for crabbing, well anyone on Raasay can tell when I’m driving
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — November 1, 2009 @ 7:24 pm