The light of day :-)

Safely tied up alongside our new pier on what’s been a lovely day and I’ve barely seen any of it   Come to think of it I didn’t see that much of it yesterday either.

The glossing of the ‘forward Voith space’ having been much added to by my ‘back to back’ on his ‘week on’, too much in fact, for his efforts put mine to shame Anyway I thought I’d better get my finger out or he’d be getting on at me

It was a busy enough day for a February with a flurry of workers for Raasay house leaving and a lorry load of fencing materials arriving to ‘deer fence’ what was the Screapadale plantation.

 

I could make good use of that load at Arnish

 

You can see where the trees used to be around ten years ago, I dunno whether they intend to replant or just increase the height of the fence to keep the deer out and let it regenerate naturally.

 

Quite bizarrely the same satellite image at .9miles shows the forest still there ????

Saturday

There was no chance of any action on the blog front last night as wifey and I were doing serious house related stuff and then went to bed early, mentally drained. The morning arrived soon enough and I was cheered to count seven happy piglets suckling off Bracken before I left for work

Again there was more work to be done with the 4” roller, though I did manage a spell in daylight after the 11:25 to change the emergency batteries whilst we lay alongside the pier for twenty minutes.

These power the radar, alarms, emergency lighting and some of the navigational equipment and were needing replaced. Checked and logged weekly, a couple of the cells had started to deteriorate so the whole bank was changed. We have in the past just changed individual batteries but the others then fail shortly afterwards, on any bank that is ‘cycled’ regularly it’s good practice. The chemistry of a battery ensures that it will only last a certain number of ‘cycles’ so if ones gone the others aren’t far behind.

 

I did away with the old post type connectors in favour of the ‘busbars’ I’d knocked up out of copper, the copper and stainless steel being far less prone to corrosion and fur than lead and copper.

That done and the 13:00 sailing from Sconser out of the way it was back down below to make a start on servicing the Volvo TAD 121C main engines.

Starting off with punching some holes in the filters to drain them whilst I pumped the 47lts of old oil from the sump into the sludge tank.

That done I primed the new filters prior fitting them and filled up the sump.

With 45 litres of ‘Mobilgard 312’ inside the 12 litre Volvo I changed the fuel filter

 

and if I hadn’t have spent so much time messing about posing and taking pictures of myself I’d have got them both done in the lunch break As it was I finished the aft engine, got the fuel filter changed on the forward one then had a wee sleep Finishing off the forward main engine whilst we lay alongside after the 16:15 sailing.

That was about it really, I came home on a black but calm, mild and calm night to find seven little piglets still suckling happily off Bracken. A hot bath and a large single malt easing the days aches and pains, not to mention shock of receiving a quote of £720 from a surveyor to value our house and new build. Almost three quarters of one thousand pounds for some dude to spend a few hours on Raasay looking at our wee hoose then telling us what the new house will be worth!!!! How the feck do they sleep at night ???