Six by two anyone :-)

Now this is going to be really short because I need to find some money, around £150K in fact and the bank I’ve been with since 1985 is about as much use as a chocolate teapot Nay friggin wonder they make obscene profits not content with screwing me for damn near £1000 a month for the foreseeable future they want to charge me £895 for the privilege. Of course they couldn’t have told me that in the branch two weeks ago, I’d to wait for one of their ‘advisors’ to phone me

My Friday

OK, it was actually Tuesday but as it’s  my last day at work it feels like a Friday It was a bonny day and flew by with me rushing round demented in the morning finishing off the weekly and monthly planned maintenance.

 

Recycling some wood in my lunch break

I’m not complaining because I, and whoever else in the community can be bothered to collect it has got some nice timber FOC, but was it really necessary to replace all this wood in Raasay House ??

 

Here comes some more, but that won’t be heading up to Arnish

I had to laugh really, it was like a scene from ‘Whisky Galore’, a couple of weeks ago I gave a mate a lift north. I’m building a shed says he with all that timber from Raasay House, you should go and get some. A week later my mate from Torran says to me, “I’ve just got some timber from Raasay House to repair my barn roof, you should go and get some”. Next time I saw him a few days later he was hauling wood to Torran and offering me the use of his trailer Of course when I went to collect it another pal already had it full of wood Undeterred I phoned up yet another ‘man with a trailer’ and went to collect it Tuesday lunch time.

When I arrived at  http://www.raasayengineering.co.uk/ to collect Simon’s monster trailer I nearly split my sides with laughter. There right next to the trailer was a pile of wood, was I the last person on Raasay to collect this bounty ?? Apparently not for just as I finished loading up two other salvors turned up

Anyway, finishing early, after my ‘back to back’ arrived on the 16:15 I headed home in daylight, or at least a little before the sun went down.

 

Catching the wife ‘red handed’ using an iron!!!!, I didn’t even know we possessed one, I was mortified

Wednesday

This morning I was up with the larks, well I would have been had we had any, it’s a long while since I’ve been so enthusiastic about the day. The incessant rain, wind and t**t that complained to SEPA http://www.sepa.org.uk/ about my hydro turbine has had me feeling ‘as low as a snakes willy’ of late Anyway that’s all behind me right now and I’m back to my annoying self

So after feeding my herd I got stuck into the ‘priority task’ of the week, sorting out my electrical problem. Regular followers will know of the short but frequent power cuts that started last Tuesday night when my Trace SW4548e inverter started ‘tripping’ and going ‘over current’ http://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/over-current-2/

I knew it wasn’t actually getting overloaded so the fault was more likely a short, especially as it seemed to be far worse when it was raining. I’d isolated a few circuits to no avail, spoke to an electrician and borrowed a ‘Megger’ to test for shorts and insulation breakdowns.

 

So after cutting the power, isolating everything and disconnecting the supply at the fuse board in the house I got out the ‘Megger’.

Now don’t for a moment think that I actually know what I’m doing, well at least I didn’t until I ‘phoned a friend’ This handy tool fires an extremely high voltage down the cables and measures the resistance between them in megga ohms, which I guess is millionth ohms. You check between live and earth and live and neutral and it should be over 200, any less indicates poor insulation or a short circuit.

It says a lot for ‘Densotape’

Sure enough the readings were far too low, around 6 or 7 from the breakers in the generator shed to the fuse board in the house Digging up the cable and following it back towards the house I came across this. 

Before my time, and I’ve lived here 22 years it was a bodged joint in one of the dry stone walls between some armoured cable and ‘twin an earth’. This was taken after I’d cut the ‘Densotape’ open with a knife but it says a lot for its waterproofing qualities if it’s taken all these years to let moisture in

 

Cutting out the bad joint I replaced it with SWA (steel wire armoured) cable by taping it to the old cable and pulling it through the  stone work.

Next task was to fit a rubber band to the tail of my Rutland FM910 wind turbine that sits atop an 11 or so meter mast. This little 50w turbine has served me well for twenty two years, OK it’s had rather a lot of repairs done on it but it is still working Anyway it’s in a rather poor and turbulent spot despite being so high but over the years I’ve discovered that wrapping an old inner tube around the tail greatly improves its performance.

 

Due to the ‘lie of the land’ and nearby trees the tail ‘hinges’ far too quickly and turns the wee turbine out of the wind. Initial trials many years ago of bolting the tail solid improved performance but put too much strain on the little Rutland so I tried putting a bit of old inner tube around the tail to act as a damper. It proved a success and for the last few years it’s worked really well, that is until it snaps and I have to climb up there and replace it

Only a handful of years ago it would not have bothered me in the least but nowadays I find myself getting quite apprehensive as I don my safety harness and climb up there

Still, once your actually up there and tied on, it’s a fine view,

all the way to Lewis

That done wifey and I unloaded the trailer at the end of our drive,

 

I really will have to incorporate some of this into the new house then I can say, “see those timbers, they came from Raasay House after the ‘great fire of 2009”.

 

These in our kitchen reputedly came from a nineteenth century wreck off Rona called the ‘Caribbean’ or ‘Caribbea’

 

and these in our living room from the ‘Great exhibition’ of 1938 in Glasgow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Exhibition,_Scotland_1938

Anyway, that’s about it, I got more wood, fed the pigs and had my dinner so I’ll just leave you with some decent pictures of the steel cutting from 30th Jan 2012 of ‘yard number 725’, Raasay’s very own hybrid ferry

Left to right, Guy Platten of CMAL http://www.cmassets.co.uk/en/home.html the vessels owners, Stewart Stevenson minister for the environment and climate change http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Stevenson (any chance of a word with SEPA ) and Alan Dunnet chairman of Ferguson’s on the podium.

Here’s a couple of Marylyn Johnson, the wife of CMAL chairman Grenville Johnson ‘pressing the button’

Yard number 725 :-)

The mood is starting to lift at the north end, the days are lengthening, the forecast good and things are ‘afoot’. An early night last night got me off to a good start this morning, well it did until I realized the clock was fifteen minutes slow and the forecast for the week ahead is amazing. Of course it could be wrong but it would be good to get the ground dried out a little and make a start on the footings for the barn. Not that I’ll be digging them of course, I know a man with a digger who’ll be doing that

 

 

Still not fully light as we sail to Skye but improving by the day

The Moll in the foreground and the island of Scalpay in the distance will be far brighter by the next shift which will be, for me at least, in February, where has the winter gone ??? OK, it’s not over yet by a long shot but the extra daylight certainly helps.

I kind of look forward to the winter after an active spring, summer and autumn but by the New Year I’ve had enough and crave the extra daylight. February always seems to be a bit of a turning point and can produce some fine spells of weather. In my younger days we’d often holiday on Skye during the half term, diving the wrecks of north and west Skye. Of course we had some poor days but on the whole they were great, lifting propellers, finding bombs and generally cutting up scrap

New York to Stornoway

A good hash of south east wind left it quite chilly on deck and apart from a few routine duties in the engine room cleaning sea water filters and doing paperwork I continued with my painting. Only surfacing once every twenty minutes or so for air. I was on to the gloss coat now and the fumes are, well, interesting On one of my trips to the surface I spotted a green bag, that further investigation revealed a box and flag.

 

I’ve probably been told about this and either forgot or didn’t hear correctly

but for a small (or large) donation you can have your name on this flag that will be rowed across the Atlantic by

Niall Iain MacDonald for the charity SAMH http://www.samh.org.uk/ Scottish association for mental health. Something that I think is little understood, greatly underfunded and far more common than we’d like to admit.

My name is Niall Iain Macdonald, I am 37 years old and I live and work in Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, in the Western Isles of Scotland. Although I was brought up on the mainland, in Inverness, I have very strong island connections as my father is from Skye and my mother was from Barra and South Uist. I have been based here in the islands for the past 10 years working in Gaelic radio and television, the majority of the time for the BBC but I now work on a Freelance basis.

A few years ago I reached a very low point in my life but, with the help and support of family, friends and various health services, I managed to overcome my problems. This caused me to re-evaluate what is important to me and recognise just how precious our time in this world really is. Since then I have tried to use my own experience to get people to talk more openly about mental health and show them that there is help and that they are not alone. In addition, I feel strongly about highlighting the families and friends of those who suffer as they also have a lot to deal with and are often a forgotten voice. I have also been inspired to challenge myself in ways that I would never previously have considered.

Copied from Niall’s website http://ny2sy.co.uk/welcome/ and even if you can’t get your name onto the flag you can donate here http://www.justgiving.com/NY2SY 

Good luck Niall

The ‘First Cut’

I’ve never been involved in ‘building ships’ most of my experience is with pulling bits off them on the bottom of the sea. Something, that thirty years ago I used to get quite excited about. Modern ships were of little interest to me as they contained little in the way of non ferrous metals compared to a steamer from the early twentieth century

However there is one particular little ship that is really getting me excited, and its yard number 725 at Fergusons Shipbuilders on the Clyde http://www.fergusongroup.co.uk/shipbuilding/profile.aspx . The ship in question is our new hybrid ferry that had it’s first steel plates cut toady http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-16786906 . The contract is for two vessels, the second one going to Gigha.

The 900-tonne ships are said to be the world’s first sea-going roll-on roll-off diesel-electric hybrid ferries.

They will be owned by Caledonian Maritime Assets (CMAL) and operated by CalMac Ferries, which runs Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services.

The first vessel is expected to enter service next year.

The ferries will be built to accommodate 150 passengers and 23 cars and are designed for short routes, including the link between Skye and Raasay.

The £22m contract will involve installing new green technology, including battery banks supplying a minimum of 20% of the energy consumed on board.

They will also have diesel generators on board, to top up the charge.

The ferries’ batteries will be charged overnight while they are moored on the islands they will serve.

It is hoped in the future energy from local wind, wave or solar systems will be used to charge the batteries.

Funding support

Ferguson will be working alongside Glasgow-based ship design specialists Seatec and electrical specialists Tec-Source to deliver the project, which is supported by a Scottish government loan and additional funding of £450,000 from the European Regional Development Fund.

CMAL chief executive Guy Platten said: "The cutting of the first steel marks an exciting new stage of the project, as the build begins on the world’s first sea-going ro-ro passenger hybrid ferries.

"The project demonstrates CMAL’s commitment to leading the way in innovative ferry design and we look forward to seeing the project reach fruition when the first of the vessels goes into service in early 2013."

Environment Minister Stewart Stevenson said: "The detailed design and the construction of the world’s first battery-operated sea-going vehicle ferry, both being carried out by local companies, highlights Glasgow and the Clyde as a major player in a modern world.

"It is absolutely fantastic that a new generation of ship-building is starting on the Clyde, a river which has a rich and proud ship-building history."

More on the story here http://inverclydenow.com/news/local/6412-work-starts-on-pioneering-new-ferries 

and a picture of CMAL’s chairman Grenville Johnson and his wife Mary Lynne who is just about to start the ball rolling

Thanks to John Salton of http://www.cmassets.co.uk/en/home.html for the first picture and ‘Inverclyde now’ for the second.

 

 

No stranger to opening things for Raasay is Stewart Stephenson, Scottish Minister for Environment and climate control. It was himself that opened our very own harbour in 2010

 

And if the new ferry is as good as our harbour it will be an asset indeed, larger, quieter, cleaner and greener, I can’t wait

Much ‘guff’ is talked (and joked) about the ‘battery powered boat’ and this new vessel is certainly not the ‘Prius (pious) of the sea’. It is in fact a diesel electric vessel with battery storage, this enables the ships generators to be run at their most efficient load and the vessels lithium ion batteries to be topped up at night. A lot of carp is made of the fact that using ‘grid power’ to charge a battery is less efficient and more expensive than just burning diesel. Personally I disagree but you have to remember that this ferry will have a thirty year lifespan, oil is NOT EVER going down in price and there’s a helluva a lot of wind and tide rushes past the end of that pier Both of which can be used to charge the batteries.

Me, I think of it a bit like our wee ‘off grid’ house that has run perfectly for five years, we have a big battery bank that supplies the power to the house, it’s topped up by a wind turbine, and hydro turbine. If the wind does not blow or the water don’t flow the generator starts up and charges the batteries. It’s not rocket science, it reduced our diesel consumption from 100lts a week to 200 a year and we have far less power failures than people connected to the grid

Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on it

These are quite old drawings by the way and the below deck layout is now completely different.