A typical west coast summer I guess, Sunday I’m raving about clear skies, sun and a fresh breeze. Monday was the same, so much so that I’m rushing around at work like a demented fool and too tired to post when I got home. Having just demolished a Ross Camilli number involving monk fish, aubergine, green pepper and potato. Not that you would find that combination in many recipe books. My son is somewhat inventive on the cooking front, Sunday’s offering being a linguine with, nuts, olives, asparagus, tender stalk broccoli and bacon. Anyway, after that and a 1 hour documentary about the Battle of Coronel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Coronel I went to bed leaving this in my wake.
The weather over the weekend having been so clear that my 1500lt thermal store was pretty much uniformly heated to 80 degrees for three days. The store being heated by excess electricity and solar collectors on the roof. They don’t need the heat, just daylight and when the top of the tank reaches 80 degrees a pump starts to circulate the water within the tank to cool it.
Monday
It was such a nice day that much outdoor painting was the order of the day, ‘make hay whilst the sun shines’ as they say.
Or, if you are Highland Council, ‘clean slips whilst the tide is small and on the way in’!!!!! You could not make it up really. The one thing in life that you can predict with any certainty is the tide, it is like the sun and moon, indeed it is closely intertwined. You can look at a tide table or App years in advance and predict with a great degree of certainty what the tide is going to do on a given day at a given time. We use these slipways up to 18 times a day and every time the ramp goes down HRC charge CalMac £50, every night we tie up the ship it’s another £400!!!!! and on top of that they take ‘pier dues’ off every ticket sold. I kid you not. The entire revenue generated by ticket sales on the Raasay Ferry does not cover the cost of the pier and harbour dues yet they cannot keep the feckin slip clean.
Well’, that’ll be today’s we rant by with 
so here are some pictures whilst I lower my blood pressure.
That looks very much like Ali Bruce in another clam diving boat, wonder what happened to the trusty MV Sarah?
The MV James on fish farm duties, she was in Loch Arnish last week?
Ben Tianavaig and my old favourite the Storr from a different angle.
Both of them in the same shot and Raasay’s own Dun Caan below.
Speedwell heading off to sell her catch.
Tuesday’s more like it
Cool, calm, wet and midge infested, that will be your regular West Coast August and that was what greeted me at 6:00am when I went out to feed the pigs. An hour later I was at work and it was pishing down on a sleepy Inverarish and Clachan.
As we headed out at 7:55, Paul B a small workboat headed south.
It was truly dreich https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-50476008 so I headed inside to do some painting.
Firstly around the emergency diesel generator, a 63kW Volvo D5
Then down below to the aft engine room until the weather cleared and the sun came out.
And then the paint brush closely followed by the dog’s dish
The Raasay fishing fleet and Ben na Cailleach behind Broadford.
Life at the end of the road 
