Engineerless :-(

Sunday already and chance to get of blogging in at last, just cannae manage work and posting, it’s just too much for an old fart like me. Truth is, that apart from last night we’ve both been in bed before 21:00 every evening. Darling wife is too feeling the strain of full time employment, mind you she smells lovely when she comes home from work https://raasaydistillery.com/  

Work got off to a great start on Tuesday with me heading off to see me Mammy first.

 

Gotta say I was a little surprised when I drove down ‘The Avenue’ on my way for the 8:55. Last time I was down there, only a few days previously there were considerably more trees standing. There was a John Deere harvester and forwarder working just by the Raasay Sawmill (convenient hey) and a truck coming off the ferry.

After a pleasant few hours with Mum and Leah the Labrador it was onto work to join the 15:00 ferry and start my ‘two weeks on’

    

Looking towards Glomach from Ratagan over Loch Duich. The Storr, Raasay and the Moll fish farm. Ronja Commander at Caridh fish farm in Loch Ainort.

‘Work’ arriving to collect me

Two dogs walking

So, now we’re both out at work all day, at least when I’m ‘on shift’, we now have a ‘latch key’ wee dug, or at least we would have if I didn’t take her to work. Molly accompanied me on Wednesday morning and now lives in the car until lunchtime when she joins Bonzo and I for our afternoon stroll. I can’t say she was too impressed with sitting in the back of the car,

but she sure did enjoy the walk with Bonzo and they seemed to get on well enough.

I guess not needing to put Molly on a lead makes her ‘boss dog’ so she was just fine with that.

With the weather for the foreseeable future involving showers and a cold wind I decided the engine room was the place for me this week

so concentrated on some cleaning and painting of the aft engine room bilge.

Being buried in the engine rooms certainly beats the carp out of clam diving at this time of year but that didn’t stop these two in the Inverness registered, INS94, ANT IASGAIR, (The fisherman)

At least the Sarah has a cabin.

Don’t think Ant Iasgair will around for long after Sarah has already been here for a couple of months now and those boys really do know their stuff

Me, when I was doing it, I surfaced to a nice warm boat with an insulated cabin, two heaters and a sleeping bag for a ‘wee rest’ between dives. These dudes are much, much hardier than I ever was!

 

Yup, give me the bowels of a nice warm ship at this time of year any day. Having said that it was a great way to earn a living and it was only age, responsibilities and a few ‘near misses’ that stopped me doing it.

Battery operated cars and ferries

Well, that went a little ‘pear-shaped’ I accidentally posted the above prematurely, pressed the publish instead of save! Anyways, the painting kept me occupied for most of the week, which was pretty quiet, I guess due to the weather. Not the weekend though, far from it, Raasay seemed to be overflowing with visitors this weekend. No doubt helped by some good deals at Raasay House https://www.raasay-house.co.uk/, the great weather and the new Distillery’s ‘Whisky club’ https://raasaydistillery.com/whisky-club/ which seems to be getting well used.

  

And you don’t have to own a Tesla model S to be able to afford to join The wife took me around a few weeks ago and the rooms are just lovely.

 

The next best view on Raasay, after the one from Sonas of course

Raasay Engineering is no more

It will be great missed by both the inhabitants of Raasay and the ferry in particular, Simon was always at hand for the odd welding or fabrication job and often pulled us ‘out of the brown stuff’ with some of his ingenious repairs. However he’s relocating to France this week and we all wish him, Lynn and the dogs all the best. The ‘Macleod Hauler’ name and business lives on, though now at Kishorn Mechanical Services Ltd  https://www.yell.com/biz/kishorn-mechanical-services-ltd-strathcarron-713267/ . The only ‘upside’ of this being that Simon kindly gave me a whole heap of steel and fastners that I now need to find room for in my shed!

Sunday was a lovely drive to work in daylight with the sun rising on fresh fallen snow.

 

The extra weekend traffic made for the the busiest ferry of the year so far and the battery powered Tesla departed along with 17 other cars on a fully battery powered ship.

 

The day wasn’t all ‘rosy’ right enough

though most of that is the ‘deck drencher’ system. A little while later the sun was out once more.

The Eberspacher

Having some time on my hands I ran some tests on my Eberspacher D1LCC, heating up the flame and temp sensors with a heat gun then checking the resistance using multimeters and an IR thermometer.

  

They supposed to conform with the tables below.

and whilst my temp sender did, my flame sensor didn’t but in my experience with these type sensors. If the value alters smoothly as the heat rises then everything is usually peachy. I’m certainly not going to fork out £75 for a new one on the ‘off chance’. I’ll give it a good testing as soon as I can find the rheostat switch. The thing about old age is, you spend half your time looking for stuff you’ve put somewhere safe!!

 

Clouds clinging to the north shore of Loch Sligachan and Ben Tianavaig.

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The mouse menace :-)

5:00 AM and all is well, OK it’s 5:30 now the Dow Jones is down 12,000 points (whatever that means) and I’ve just made dinner. Bit early I know but it’s a chicken, nudja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Nduja bacon and mushroom casserole

 

and I’m salivating looking at it. Mind you, I’ll not be eating it for another 15 hours!! It is of course Tuesday, my last Tuesday so, after a visit to me Mammies I’ll be relieving my trusty ‘back to back’ and commencing my ‘two weeks on’.

Typically I couldn’t sleep last night so was up before 5:00 this morning. Dunno why but I never sleep well before returning to work, probably thinking of all the stuff I didn’t do this last fortnight. Sure, I’ve not had any big projects on this last ‘rest period’ but I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved and at least I’ll be able to drive to work with a working heater now Not only that but I’ll be able to see where I’m going when reversing having also replaced the reversing light switch too. Sadly the Eberspacher cab heater is still ‘work in progress’ I tested that yesterday and have a sneaky feeling that the ECU is dodgy  https://www.letonkinoisvarnish.co.uk/Eberspacher_Fuel_1.html Great resource on that site but it’s a bit random and chaotic  https://www.letonkinoisvarnish.co.uk/Eberspacher_Voltage_1.html . After servicing the heater the fan now starts immediately on high speed like this http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?244595-Eberspacher-D2-starts-up-but-no-heat! that thread and what I’ve read on the Letonkis site seems to indicate an ECU fault but I’m not convinced, like I say ‘work in progress’. Be good to get it sorted before the winter is over right enough, getting into a warm vehicle with no condensation or frost on the windows is kinda nice

The starter in place.

The last day

It wasn’t the ‘pure peach’ that it was on Sunday right enough but apart from the cold southerly wind it was a fine enough day and it started off well enough with two dead mice.

  

Not only have the wee feckers been eating all our vehicles they’ve made a nest in the Land Rover’s battery compartment under the passenger seat!!! I only noticed it when working at queer angle on the Eberspacher. My nose was jammed by the passenger seat I I caught a funny whiff. The ‘Old Girl’ always has that damp Land Rover smell anyway but this was tinged with urine!! Further investigation revealed a large mouse nest behind one of the batteries!!!

Not as nice as Sunday but lovely just the same.

Hard at work, Duncan and Robert from DDK repairing the flashing around the schoolhouse chimney.

  

Boat moored in Loch Arnish, a sure sign of good weather

An old fish trap

  

The old caridh (fish trap) at Port Arnish, it’s hard to believe these days but not that long ago these stone traps were a common sight and used to trap fish on a falling tide. There’s one in Loch Arnish and a much larger one in the South Fladda anchorage. You can see any number of them driving around highland sea lochs at low tides.

The shed and ‘harbour wall’ at Port Arnish.