Isle of Gigha Raft Race 2011

We stopped work at 2p.m. Saturday when we really should have kept grafting to go to the island raft race.

Tarbert on their way to the start line

Ready Steady GO

Andy demonstrates the sea water hose to the winners 

Superb afternoon with the usual suspects. Tarbert guys always strip off to the waist and daub themselves with some weird colour. Gardens raft always top heavy. Karate kids won again. Yet another Gigha occasion and a good time had by all with much imbibing. Another fine BBQ by the Boathouse who organise and sponsor this event. Lindsay cooked on Saturday afternoon but we had an even better do at his new house on Sunday evening with fantastic barbecued lobster and langoustine in garlic butter...It was one of those weeks where we went out more often than not and hot, hot, hot ....

Murphy's Law of Self Building

If it can go wrong it will is the fundamental principle of Murphy's Law. If you are a self builder it will go wrong at the worst possible time - so the tractor got rolled just an hour from finishing the footings, and the JCB has a fuel leak from the lift pump filter and I still can't get the gasket to seal. The JCB also needs new seals on the dipper ram and I didn't get it sorted when I had the chance. Today's problem -  that wasted four hours is the pull start on the wacker plate. We need this going full time at present to compact the backfill on the big roundhouse which is currently being dropped in by JCB and spread by Andy in his mini-digger in 150mm sandwiches. All was going well and then the spring pinged on the pull start - not easy to get back in, and then the fixing screw was unthreaded and so it is kaput anyway. Friday afternoon means no spares till Monday - thankfully we managed to borrow another wacker plate but not till 5:30 this afternoon. The good news is that we ran out of aggregate and backfill but I am digging out a fantastic borrow pit of sand and gravel (36 cubic metres) which has much better material than the stuff we were paying for....and at least the weather is good. Tomorrow is the island raft race so an afternoon off.

playing catch up

Well here we are in mid July and still not got to the kit up stage. May was disastrous weather wise and early June no better.  A week on the fish farm doing grading (46hrs in 4 days) and a week ill and that was June gone. We managed to lay one small area of floor in mid June only and are getting the others prepared for a massive bout of concreting later this month Today was sublime but too hot. Anyway we did do the porch area. Took 2 hrs mixing only for 10 sq metres - only 190 to go.

We are very happy with the finished floor level as we can see the sea horizon below Jura

DPC and insulation in

Insulated tray prior to the pour

Dragonfly

Just after we had finished the blockwork and were preparing the porch for concreting this fantastic creature landed. We take it as a good omen.

Four Spot Chaser at rest

razor sharp

We have had the new leaves on both our wild cherry and the wingnut burnt off by the salt in Monday's storm.  Not sure if it is fatal or they can recover. Salt burn has scorched lots of trees, and the emerging bracken has been hit too - though that is no bad thing.
A couple was airlifted off the big ketch in Ardminish Bay - the skipper had a broken arm. The helicopter pilot recorded gusts of 80 knots plus - well into hurricane force wind speeds -  and took four attempts before landing on the golf course to pick up other medical emergencies. Hope they are all okay. I don't know how this hurricane blast fits May weather patterns. We've had one Atlantic Low after another for four weeks now. It is very cold too and we have had to refix the roof membrane on our big shed (it is a temporary until we can turf it) which was steadily loosening itself.  Tried to make a start backfilling the small roundhouse and porch areas this morning but was sidetracked by having to check all the warps on our cat as another gale is due. Then a huge shower drove us indoors, soaking. I hate wet socks.
We have totally lost our momentum. It is difficult to plan work and even more difficult to keep up progress between showers and gales. The ground is very wet - more so than in late March and I think we will be held up again for the kit. As Jayne said yesterday, the incredible power of the storm does make you feel very alive - it is visceral. That is why we are here living on the edge - but our daily lives are limited by the weather as well as enriched by it.

does a gale have teeth ?

Its Monday afternoon and XC Weather is showing 35-57 knots SW gusting at Macrihanish which is slightly more sheltered than Gigha. Over the weekend we had torrential rain all day Saturday and some pretty blowy weather but nothing like today's gale - Malin was forecast Violent Storm Force 11 this morning at 5:30 - and that was the inshore forecast for Mull of Kintyre to Ardnamurchan.  Jayne and I were brought up in Pembrokeshire which is much more exposed than Gigha so we're used to it. But now we want to get our floors levelled and laid but can't - the weather in May - our Hebridean Spring - has pretty much brought us to a standstill this last week. 
Our two piles of 100mm insulation board in the yard ready for loading both blew over at 12:45 - a 2.4m x 1.2m board is pretty aerodynamic in a 50 knot gust. We've restacked now though in the lulls. Minimal damage as we caught them just in time. Mark is watching the shed roof lifting just down the road at Tarbert but Andy was still cutting grass - last we heard.
At least the power is back on.

cabin fever

It's Monday evening and has rained all day so no work done on site. However, I  did fit the new starter motor on the JCB which obligingly then fired first time. As usual one of the three fixing nuts was almost impossible to reach. Such is motor vehicle design through the ages.
Feel a bit like Zen and the Art of Self Building - have come over all existentialist.

How long can you gaze at the sea without getting bored ?

weather or not

It's a Scottish Spring on Gigha. Unlike the last three years when we had a very long dry spell  including almost all of May - it is showers every day - and some powershower raindrops. The forecast surface pressure map shows fronts coming across every 12 hours for the next four or five days. This means we will lose a good few days work as the site is very greasy and not great for JCB work and definitely no concreting floors. Kit put back till early July already and we can't afford too much more slippage but are totally weather dependent now.
Haven't heard our corncrake for a week or so so he must have gone elsewhere to seek a mate. Swallows abound and we have thrushes nesting under the eaves of the big shed. Bluebells have gone mad this year. On the ferry Thursday and everyone was feeling very weary - we think its the weather. It has been cold enough the last couple of days for us to have lit a fire in the evening too.
But its Spring and a wonderful time of year...

sod's law

The first law of machinery is that when you need it most it breaks down and that is what happened today. To be true it's been a long standing problem that has got worse. The JCB is crucial just now as we are backfilling the foundations and blockwork ready to lay floors. It won't start. This is because it is middle aged and like all of us things start going wrong in middle age, wear out or just break completely  and don't function as they should. It's the solenoid. I've bashed it with a hammer and it did start this morning but then it wouldn't go this afternoon so I stripped it off the JCB and showed it to Mark. Mark is a whizz with anything mechanical. I had some advice last night from Graham after we finished  playing at the ceilidh along the same lines. Graham  is also a whizz with anything mechanical - he scratch built a wind turbine before they became trendy and rebuilt the engine on 'Jamie Boy'. Graham is like Vie, a genuine role model. He is in his early 80s now and was the ferry skipper for very many years. Anyway I have stripped and cleaned the solenoid with advice from MArk and Graham and I'll put it back on tomorrow. If it doesn't work then we'll have to get another one. Luckily there is plenty of other work to be done so it won't really hold us up this next week.

if you ask a stupid question

The UK wide AV referendum has been pretty decisively turned down and the ineptitude of the LibDems in insisting on this piss poor alternative to FPTP as their referendum choice during the power sharing negotiations after the UK election merely amplifies their horrendous judgement. They've blown the chance for PR for the indefinite future. Tories and the Labour right will see to that ... and anyway you're back to two party politics south of the border anyway. Two dominant centre right parties - oh my... what a choice you have. Here in Scotland we are now a one party state. It's official. Labour deliberately designed our semi PR voting system to keep the SNP from ever getting an overall majority with the top up regional list as well as FPTP and it has failed. Just as Labour have failed. Their manifesto was SNP lite anyway.  We now have an SNP majority. We owe nothing to Westminster and we want Salmond to fight for our NHS, students, public services and for full youth employment while the Tories flush England plc down the pan for short term gains for their corporate chums. Scotland is naturally left of centre and has a strong social conscience - it is more Scandinavian in outlook than Anglo Saxon. It is communitarian and we already have a big society - we don't need English platitudes on that score. 
Unfortunately, the downside is that if England catches a cold or - more likely develops severe economic malnutrition we might get pneumonia or even something nastier - though at least we'll have free prescriptions.  
The independence referendum will be won or lost by the Westminster government and how much we think it is following Thatcherite dogma - or worse, and not by the SNP. We will vote against Westminster when the time comes because after 8 or 9 years of SNP in power we will know for sure whether or not we have the quality in the Scottish political class to provide good government. Not Labour, not LibDem, not Tory but a Scottish agenda for Scotland. True, the SNP do need to do a good managerial job. Too many poorly handled crises will be fatal to independence. If Labour had had the wit to be a real left Scottish party, and the LibDems had any wit, (wake up Danny Alexander) then we would have a coalition or minority government now. I hope we succeed. The arrogance of the English political class has long fed the Scottish cringe. It's about time Scots got the confidence to create another Enlightenment 200 years or so after the last one. TINA ? Let's see about that. Both Keir Hardie and Adam Smith were Scots. There's some great thinkers and some great doers here.