Snow in July!!!!! :-)

Well that’ll be the good weather by with now Hopefully not for long though. Spoke too soon, that was two weeks ago and it’s ‘peachy again’ Yup, that’s when I attempted some blogging again, halfway through my ‘on shift’ aboard Hallaig and it was snowing!! Well not really, we were doing some major painting round the portside of the car deck.

  

The hardest bit of which is cleaning up all the ‘snowflakes’ left behind by the power washing.

  

Luckily the trusty MV Hallaig has a large enough car deck to still ship plenty of traffic even with one lane closed. Having said that this was before the ‘Glasgow Fair’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Fair and English school holidays. The Glasgow Fair fortnight being Raasay’s busiest period in the summer, when all the Raasay ‘ex pats’ return to their family homes

Truly finished

My good mate and master builder Lachie Gillies took full advantage of the weather and came over to put the finishing touches to Sonas.

 

That’ll be the ‘ingoes’ around the 20 triple glazed windows finally done It’s been one of those jobs on his ‘to do’ list for a couple of years, don’t worry Lachie, I’ve got hunners of jobs been waiting much longer than that

  

The Raasay House sgoth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgoth Oigh Niseach, four hens in one nest box and the gaff rigged cutter Eda Frandsen https://eda-frandsen.co.uk/ moored in Loch Arnish.

  

My son exploring more of the Arnish sea caves

 

and wildlife, in and around Loch Arnish.

Everyone should have a digger

That was the ‘fortnight on’ as for the ‘two weeks off’ well that’s half way by with and much of it has revolved around Calum, the Kubota.

  

A bent drag link on the neighbours Nissan Patrol being straightened with Calum’s blade and bucket.

 

A broken tyre valve being replaced on the Searider’s trailer.

  

Then the more traditional uses for a 3 ton machine,

  

laying a field drain in one of the hen enclosures. Something that would have been impossible in a normal ‘soggy summer’

 

The Portree fishing boat Green Isle after a lobster or two in Loch Arnish and Molly helping ‘haul rocks’ in the dumper.

 

The latest addition to ‘the fleet’ an old but low mileage Forester from Devon.

 

The ‘Egg Chariot’ ready for this afternoon’s trip to Harris and the ‘dog sitter’ with 75% of the pack (Molly is still in bed)

It’s a ‘dogs life’ hey, Leah, Charlie and Bonzo ‘full of beans’ and Molly having none of it

  

Land Rover still very much ‘work in progress’ at Tayside LR http://www.taysidelandrovers.com/Home.aspx

Anyway, ‘that’s it’ for now, gotta pack the car as we’re off on our ‘jollies’ this afternoon St Kilda here we come https://www.kildacruises.co.uk/ (hopefully)

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She’s away !

Well, May’s not been much to shout about so far My favourite month has gotten off to a pretty shaky start really, though April really did ‘go out like a lamb’ with Monday being a pure peach so much so that I shaved my head on Sunday night in anticipation, come Tuesday I was regretting it right enough but it was good whilst it lasted and I got a fine tan on me bonce

At least 14 tons

Over half way through my month’s holiday now and quite pleased with the results so far with the repairs to the old fish farm slip coming along nicely.

  

A good 14 tons of aggregate, 70 bags of cement and lots of rebar. Ideally you’d be doing a job like this with much larger ‘pours’ but I can only work with what I have, which is a wee Belle mixer and 2 to 3 tons of aggregate at a time. Not ideal but a good strong mix and then drilling and pinning each fresh batch will help tie the different batches together (I hope )

  

  

So, that’s pretty much the first section finished and now it starts to get complicated. The second section (after that crack) is gonna need a lot more support than the first section and it’s obviously underwater for more of the time. Methinks I’m gonna have to put a lot more rock and steel under before I start concreting in earnest. I’m also going to be restricted by the sea state Still, even if I couldn’t do anymore then with what I’ve done now I’ll still be able to get the Searider in and out at the larger tides, which will save me having to drag it 10 miles to the ferry slip.

 

The garden

Next major project has been the garden

   

and wind proofing, which is going well and getting a boodly good testing at the moment

  

Then there’s all the regular stuff like bins and sunsets

Boats and stuff

Then there’s the regular boaty stuff,

 

the FPV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Fisheries_Protection_Agency Hirta spent a good part of the 1st of May patrolling the mouth of Loch Arnish.

The day after we were treated to the Norwegian frigate Thor Heyerdahl   http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13270&Itemid=106

in the same place for an hour or so.

  

FV Serene and the sgoth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgoth Oigh Niseach at Raasay pier. The Northern Light Cruising Company http://www.northernlight-uk.com/our-boats/hjalmar-bjorge/ charter vessel Hjalmar Bjorge anchored at Tarbert in Loch Arnish.

New chassis, bulkhead and B posts

Sure, as Les M says about the trusty old broom having four new heads and three new shafts, the ‘Old Girl’ is getting a new chassis, bulkhead and B posts, all galvanized of course. OK, she’s on her third engine, third gearbox, second set of doors and umpteenth set of brake discs, springs, shockers and suspension bushes but she is over thirty years old and still my ‘daily driver’. Having covered over a quarter of a million miles (mostly with myself at the helm) she’s like part of the family. Having owned her since the new millennium I aint gonna part with her now. Sure, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve considered getting a comfortable truck with a windows that work, a heater that’s hot, a radio you can hear above the road noise and performance akin to a ‘hot hatch’. Then I look around at all my mates driving ‘crew cabs’ that they have to change every four or five years cos the engine is fecked or the chassis as fallen off. This is after spending a fortune on dual mass flywheels DPF’s and ball joints every MOT. OK, so I spend an inordinate amount of time under the Landy but in all the years I’ve had her she’s only ever failed one MOT and that was debateable, I mean ‘brake pedal rubber’, headlamp alignment and corrosion near an unused seatbelt.

So, after much deliberation I figured ‘better the devil you know’ and having continuously owned a Land Rover or Range Rover since around 1978 I thought why change? Don’t get me wrong, I’d never recommend one to anyone. They’re over priced, unreliable, noisy, smelly, uncomfortable and only suitable for small people but they’re probably the best ‘off road’ and towing vehicle on the planet, the ‘Old Girl’ weighed in at over six tons once on the quarry weighbridge!!!! She’s also got me into work when the snow plough couldn’t get to Arnish for over a week!!! So, with that in mind I took her down to Perth today

 

and left her in the capable hands of Matthew Webster at Tayside Land Rover  http://www.taysidelandrovers.com/

MiL collected me from the Broxden roundabout on the A9 and finally I’m home