The ‘weekend has landed’ :-)

Dunno about ‘landed’ it’s almost over with now, 21:00 the dugs have already beaten me to bed

and it won’t be long before I join them. It’s been a grand weekend with a good constant blast of south wind for the entire couple of days. Which unusually for wind from that quarter has been on the whole pretty dry. Today totally and yesterday mainly, just as well really cos my mate came up to slate his roof Having arrived on Friday around 14:00 and probably spent all afternoon moving his slates for the fourth time out of a hire van, this time into the Mule and along the track to Torran.

After the usual morning’s dug walking, this time to Calum’s croft

  

where and I admired and wondered, not for the first time as to the purpose of that wall built out from the gable of the barn. It’s beautifully made but what for, was it an unfinished project that never quite made it to the top of the ‘to do’ list. In between building the road, doing the post and running lighthouse relief boat he was a busy chap  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calum_MacLeod_(of_Raasay)

After the morning’s perambulation I had my muesli and went over to Torran to see how my Mate was getting on

 

which was just fine without me. So after a cup of coffee I left him to it and returned to my own project, that of fitting my new bigger inverter.

Out for dinner

Saturday night being a blurry memory of dinner and wine at the Schoolhouse then somehow wobbling back home on the quad.

A BIG switch

Most people connect their inverters directly to the battery bank, perhaps through a BIG fuse and in the past I’ve been no different. I guess the reason for not using some kind of isolator is that for the currents involved the cost of something suitable is astronomical. However in recent years I’ve been able to acquire several huge three pole motorised switches that are used on our hybrid ferry to switch the huge lithium ion battery banks. The ferry has four of them costing the best part of £1K each and they are replaced every two years because the switching mechanism fails.

The beauty is that the actual switch bit is just fine and it’s a modular design and with a little work they make an absolutely first class HEAVY DUTY isolator. You just need to pull it apart, remove the contacts and fashion a handle to operate them.

 

A bit of work on the brackets to make it suitable for mounting.

Remove one of the contact blocks and there you have it

The cable tie is just to make sure I don’t move the switch to ON whilst fitting the inverter.

Finishing that off will be Monday’s project before going back to work on Tuesday.

Fell asleep at the wheel

Well, that’s it Monday morning 6:59 and I had to give up on blogging last night. I was pretty wrecked after a most enjoyable day’s pottering mainly with my inverter but not exclusively so.

I’ve not seen this chap for a while, probably been too windy for him but he was back in the garden looking for worms yesterday morning before I went over to Torran to see how my Pal was getting on.

 

Just fine without me was the answer to that so after coffee I returned home to my own projects.

 

These included  doing a little work on my 5.4M Searider in preparation for the up and coming month’s holiday

  

Dunno where this workboat was heading but it was probably to a fish farm to lay moorings or something.

 

After spending the best part of two days changing the tyres on my quad I thought it was about time I had a proper ‘bead breaker’ but I’ve never seen one that’s suitable. They’re either made in China and not ‘man enough’ or made in China and too expensive. That was until I saw this vintage Stenor tool on eBlag, a pure cast steel relic from the 1960’s just like the one I used ‘back in the day’ when I was an apprentice mechanic Well I received it yesterday and just can’t wait to use it

At almost 8:00AM now and the makings of a good day ahead I’d better walk the dugs and feed the pigs before turning my attention once more to my Victron Quattro 48/10000.

A brief respite :-)

I had intended to post something this morning but I didn’t wake up until after 6:00 and it was well light by 7:00 with the promise of a good few hours ahead before the next Atlantic low arrived. As the day was supposed to turn to sh1t by midday I decided to make the most of it and left the house early, not even finishing my regulation full pot of coffee. Instead choosing to feed the grunters and head on out with both dogs for a walk. Even the normally lame and unenthusiastic Molly was buoyed up by the sudden and dramatic change in the weather.

I guess the recent spate of back to back storms must have been grinding us both down So after a short wander through the woods for the first time this week without oilskins and wellies we returned home for our muesli and I finally finished the pot of coffee

   

The grass was growing in my garden my hedge was getting buds and starting to look green and my daffs hadn’t been flattened by the wind.

Even the chaffinches were happy,

probably the first time in days they’ve been able to hop around without being blown into the next field.

It was indeed a proper spring morning, so I continued enjoying it by washing the Disco and quads in the sunshine before going over to Torran and lighting the fire for my Pal who was on his way for the weekend.

  

This is the old Mission house at Torran and the burn that runs past its door by the old boundary wall. A friend of mine was the last person to be baptised here and he’s younger than me

Visitors!

The good weather had given others an excuse to visit the North End too

three sheep having decided to make their way through the fence or over the cattle grid were busy eying up my daffs and the green buds on my hedge until discouraged by two very vocal terriers

 

I just had to go and say hello to the driver of the beautiful 2003 Subaru though. I don’t easily get excited by cars but this was a pure minter with only 48K on the clock.

Thursday

Yup, it was a different season yesterday with brutal showers of hail, thunder and lightening.

The hailstones being larger then peas and as hard as dried ones  

I spent most of the day in the shed only venturing out when I had too, which was around 16:00 when a text message informed me that the calliper was here for the Honda.

 

Glamaig with a dusting of snow as Hallaig heads over to Skye at 17:00. In the foreground is the Orchard, the trees long gone but the stone wall surrounding them very much intact.

By the time I got back home it was dark wet and wild so I left the Calliper in my workshop until today when I fitted it and bled the brakes.

 

It’s not easy to see but it was the threads on the bleed nipple that were oversized or even stripped as the nipple wouldn’t tighten up  

Anyway, I got them bled easily with a small vacuum pump, much easier when working on your own, especially when you cannot easily get to the brake pedal. Cos the drivers door is next to the ramp post you obviously can’t get in that way and the Honda’s interior has a great big transmission tunnel that makes it hard to get from the passenger seat to the drivers seat. Well it does if you’re in you sixties wearing big boots and don’t practice yoga. I tried putting the pump onto the actual nipple much like you would when pressure bleeding them. However that didn’t work so well cos it kept sucking air through the threads. So I took the nipple out put a pencil sharpener on the end of the pipe to nicely trim it to a taper and screwed it into the hole Then the pump sucked all the air out of the system and gave it worked a treat.

The stool is so that Molly can climb onto the bed I got sick of her whining during the night for me to lift her on, strange really cos she can jump into the back of the Land Rover no problem. Bonzo on the other hand jumps onto the bed no bother but has to be lifted into the back of the Land Rover.

 

The Portree fishing boat Green Isle II BRD73 lifting creels in Loch Arnish for the first time in a while.