Wot no digger (reprise)

Well we bought a JCB 3CX and got it delivered to Tayinloan with a range of buckets and pallet forks etc.,in early December from where I took it over on the ferry. Now it did have an oil leak from the gearbox which should have been repaired before delivery but this was not done due to an oversight and has proved to be a major headache. We have some brilliant mechanics on Gigha - notably Mark and he did a check on what needed done and split the gearbox, replacing parts and getting it working again. But this took almost three months to get sorted so we have been without excavation potential until very recently.

still on the fish

You can see our house Kinnererach from the fish cages at East Tarbert Bay

For most of the Autumn I worked regularly on the fish farms. Usually this coincided with good weather so I missed out on plot work. I also knackered both knees. I suppose a 56 year old marine operative is bound to be vulnerable to a few twisted joints but the left knee now has a torn ligament and the right knee torn cartilage. Okay so a life time spent with much mountaineering, sailing and doing other fairly active outdoor pursuits was bound to leave me a bit vulnerable.

In the bleakest of midwinter periods we graded the fish. This involves lifting the net on a cage, pulling a line of floats half way across the cage and the well boat pumping out the fish from one side, grading them and returning fish within a certain weight category to the other side of the cage, storing fish to be transferred to other cages in their wells. The first night I did this we did over twelve hours without a break from 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. It was a starry autumn night and the wind blew up about 7 in the morning after a calm and beautiful night with the Milky Way strewn across the sky. The fish shimmer in the floodlights of the work boats. I have always enjoyed being at sea at night and always loved night watches when sailing. It is very existential when there is a spread of stars. The company pays an antisocial hours allowance for overnight working but this is hardly in the same class as a banker's bonus. The fish grading for me was four days in January of 11,11,13 and 15 hours - again working straight through. The Sunday was 6 a.m. till 9 p.m. but we got it finished ! Now I can't say I like working these hours but it is good to know I have enough stamina to see it through. Problem is I am then too knackered to get on with the build - just want to have a long lie and take a day off. The first law of project management is that you never lose just one day. If you have a day off or the weather is bad or the digger breaks down then you have lost one day's work and another day to catch up - two days ! Any time lost - then double it.... that is how quickly you get slippage...

It's a no brainer

But we do have a Nissan Cabstar ! It's inaugural trip was picking up a tonne and a half of ashlar blocks from Dumfries. Every time you bring any vehicle over to Gigha that is over 5m in length you end up with high vehicle costs. A builder's merchant's wagon costs £190 return and a large van about £80. Our Cabstar is under 5m and costs the same as a car - £13.40 return. It carries just under 2 tonnes payload and has a flat bed big enough to carry full size sheets and 4.8m long sticks of timber propped over the cab. It's a no brainer for us as we have problems getting materials over to the plot given the appalling surface on the track. Taken slowly the Cabstar has high clearance and provided the track is not blocked by cows will take a full load very nicely. Problem is we got stuck turning round after offloading our first load as the rear wheel drive just slips when the truck is empty. However Micky rescued us and we got towed out by our Landrover.

wot no digger

In happier times in the summer the wee digger sat on the plot awaiting her tasks - however her services were required elsewhere and we just could not get even a few days work. Hiring off island is prohibitively expensive, especially if you are working part time and don't know which days you'll get on site and we waited for a mini digger from various sources... and waited.... and waited. Circumstances conspired to leave us diggerless so we just could not get on with the on site excavations and finishing the driveway.

As of winter 2009 the plot remained much the same as in summer 2009. Each stone in the pile of 250 tonnes of 75mm down crusher run remained unturned. So what could we do ? We could wait for a digger to become available on the island or we could buy our own, use it and sell it on. A 360° tracked excavator was great to drive but limited in what it could do. A series of technical problems with Lindsay's digger i.e. the one that was available on the island, meant we had to look elsewhere. A JCB on the other hand, despite being less use on wet ground and leaving a few ruts, had a back actor, a front bucket and could handle pallets - and as we have been loading our blocks etc., on to pallets this could be very useful. A JCB was more mobile than a tracked digger. It would also handle much bigger stones than a mini digger. As we have several stones of about two tonnes to drag and then raise into position for our revetment edge we tried Ian's old JCB. It lifted them fine but was sadly somewhat geriatric in abilities. An old lady maybe, but had the JCB equivalent of a zimmer frame in mobility - aka a dodgy torque convertor. However, the trial convinced us we should invest in a reasonably sound JCB and we watched Ebay auctions feverishly for several weeks, eventually finding one within budget and fully functional in Yorkshire.

Meanwhile, winter snows were everywhere but Gigha - though even in our wonderfully mild microclimate we had several days with smatterings of snow lying whilst the rest of Scotland had blizzards and people were stuck for weeks and couldn't get home. However, the ground got saturated and the far corner of the plot, where our big shed was going to be got saturated.

here kitty kitty

There are loads of feral cats on Gigha - sure it doesn't do the bird population much good but the rats seem to co-exist quite happily with the cats. Over a few days as the summer ended and the nights were getting cooler we noticed a wee ginger kitten roaming round down at Ardailly. Only a few weeks old, it was starving, infested with ticks and had an eye infection. Letting nature take its course would have been one option but instead we rescued the kitten and put it in a cardboard box in our porch here at Kinnererach where it gradually recovered its strength on a diet of salmon.

It wasn't a greedy cat, was very affectionate and would break out into raucous purring that was on the Richter scale when it saw you. Now I'm a dog person though we always had cats when I was a kid. This cat took to me - it had a lovely character and the only reason why we did not keep it was because I am allergic to cats - or their fur anyway. The cat was duly taken to the cat rescue in Campbeltown and after the once over by the vet (we had already de-ticked it) was found a new home.

fabrics

We’ve just been away for almost two weeks and even though having a break from the project managed to get to Annie Washbrook’s place near Newport in North Pembs. You’ll have to go in person as she has far too much to ever be catalogued on to a website. There is a treasure trove of fabrics and many specials and ends of rolls, offcuts etc. Jayne has bought a stack of materials for her bag and doll making and has even allowed me to pick suitable offcuts in the past. This time we went a little berserk as we bought about 7 binbags full of offcuts of heavyweight curtain grade material to make all our curtains, room dividers and wall hangings. We both choose materials so it is not just a girl thing. As the house will have mostly slate or solid wood uncarpeted floors the acoustics will be quite hard. Fabrics absorb sound and will soften the acoustic. We want to have plain walls but with fabric wall hangings for colour and acoustics as well as curtains for good night insulation. With the areas needed - one pattern or colour would be a bit uninspiring so we have decided to make up patchworks of fabric offcuts and so have managed to supply Jayne with tons of work for those long winter evenings. It might seem a bit premature - we haven’t even started the groundworks yet but as we won’t get down to Pembrokeshire during the build we now have a good stockpile of the most amazing range of high quality fabrics - perfect for our needs.

Anyone thinking of curtains, upholstery etc. who is within reasonable travelling distance should definitely call in. Phone first for opening hours as Annie isn’t open everyday. The address is Penbanc Fabrics, Plas y Ffynnon, Newport, ,Pembs, 01239-820568

more digging, more stone

After we relevelled the driveway and ordered the 220 tonnes of stone we decided to get enough 75mm for the parking and shed areas, but need to store this. We got 30 railway sleepers to make storage areas for aggregate etc., and have placed 16 or so here to hold about 80-100 tonnes of stone ready for placement in the parking and shed areas. There is a 100m roll of curly drainage pipe in the background - we need to make sure the water draining down from the track keeps off the main parking area and have put in a top side drain with 75mm backfill as well - sort of French drain construction to take the water away to the northern edge of the plot where our main downslope drain leads down to the sea. we did this on a Sunday morning with our friend Cliffy helping shift the sleepers into position. Originally Jayne and I had shifted the 30 sleepers on to the plot from the old silage pit at South Drumachro from where they were being recycled. This hole is now filled with over 200 tonnes of stone ready for levelling, though we have to build the revetment below the two piles of blocks and shed footings first, to get the levels right.

on the fish

This day I went to Crinan with Martin and brought Mary Ann, the fish farm work boat, back from the boatyard there. Gigha’s profile looks different from the north. Most folk see it from the east as the A83 to Campbeltown runs down the coast and the ferry runs across from Tayinloan on the western side of Kintyre to Gigha. For most of August I’ve been on the fish. I work most weekends and otherwise part time on the two fish farms and this has been a really busy time. Luckily this August has been a fairly wet month and digging would have been really muddy and messy on the plot. I lost about 6 days with the digger due to breakdowns etc., so ought to have been a bit more ahead in terms of levelling and revetting but we do have a realistic timetable overall. I have just finished a 17 day stint on the salmon farm at Highfield mostly doing net changes., but with one day off to build the sleeper shuttering for the stone - see 16th Aug blog. Net changing is hard graft and can take up to 5 hours with 5 or 6 of us. The cages are 100m diameter and the nets over 10m deep. Net changing involves much hauling and pulling and is pretty much flat out using the two workboats for the heavy lifting. We’ve been starting at 7 a.m. most days as there has been much else to do too. We managed two net changes in one day last week and this nearly killed me. I am 15 years older than the combined age of the two youngest guys and even they get tired by the grafting we do net changing. I have incipient arthritis in both hips and many other muscular aches and pains. Jayne thinks I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. Malcolm, the manager, loves net changing and is probably the strongest person there. It is a fine exercise in team work and funnily enough, you do get a sense of achievement from net changing. The last one I did on Monday 24th was the ninth in two weeks and we finished with a building SE swell as the wind freshened washing over the cage floating catwalk as we tied the net down, but it was still good.

mowing the roof

Our turf roof is going to be cut from the hay meadow that our plot occupies. We’ve pegged out the roof turf and here Lachlan is kindly topping the weeds for us. We’ll have all those lovely traditional hay meadow flowers on our roof - in a year’s time.

getting stoned

The first major delivery to the plot has been of 52 tonnes of 75mm down crusher run for the driveway. Andy is driving the Trust tractor and trailer. After this we relevelled the stone revetment that edges the driveway with our new toy - a water level and I subsequently raised the level of the revetment by about 750mm to make the 1 in 7 gradient required by our planning permission. After the 52 tonne delivery - in 4 tonne loads from the island quarry we looked at our calculations for stone and ordered another 220 tonnes of 75mm. This is now on site awaiting levelling. We will surface the driveway and parking areas with Type 1 - probably from the mainland as the dolerite in the island quarry is very hard and stable and the fines do not rot down and bind particularly well. Dolerite takes ages to weather in too. It is great as a base material but the surfacing needs to bind really well.