If you want to know what is happening on our wee island then you'll need to check out the various marine weather forecasts. The best is XC Weather followed by the Inshore forecast for sea area Malin.We can actually see Malin Head on a good day. It must be almost 70 miles away to the SW but is at the furthest horizon of one of the best seascapes in the UK. This sweeps across the whole of the north coast of Ireland from Donegal to the Antrim Glens to Rathlin Island with Robert the Bruce's spidery cave, and then Fair Head and the North Channel down to Belfast. The Mull of Kintyre is an abrupt end to Scotland and at 450m high, pretty dramatic with the lighthouse quite low down on the point. The vast sweep of Macrihanish beach - ten or more miles of rolling swell and breaking surf, so often with a swathe of sea mist and spindrift completes our southern vista. McCartney loved it - it was his long and winding road. Jayne and I were brought up in Britain's only coastal National Park in Pembrokeshire but our seascapes in Kintyre easily match our wild Atlantic Welsh cliffs. In the great scheme of things there are plans for a massive 100+ turbine wind farm just 2km off Macrihanish beach. Turbines half the height of the Mull ! We already have several well sited and unobtrusive wind farms along the forested spine of Kintyre with space for many more but politics says we have to go offshore - well it is actually inshore and will destroy one of the best surfing beaches in the UK, ruin one of the finest seascapes with its breathtaking spread, and also place an additional hazard for those trying to navigate round the Mull, which is already hazardous enough anyway. Marine turbines are very, very expensive, much more so than land based wind farms and require massive capital grants and operational subsidies to make them viable. Onshore wind is pretty competitive by comparison. Offshore windfarms are supposed to be 25-35km offshore or at the very least far enough away to minimise the damage to precious landscapes. Well, the Macrihanish wind farm proposals are the right idea but in totally the wrong place - and I am in favour of wind energy in principle.
Now we have had so much disruption to our build from the various storms and gales that have battered us that we have made virtually no progress in the last three weeks. There have been heavy time demands from various day jobs too. We hope to get on with our mains electric connection to the workshop, starting the blockwork and improving site drainage very soon. But only if the weather allows us.
There was a very large submarine in the Sound of Jura this afternoon heading south and hopefully not looking for a reef or sandbar upon which to strand itself.
