It's been windy recently as Storm Pia went through. A couple of the boats stored outside in the compound lost props or supports as they moved slightly in the wind. These have been replaced. Today turned into a maintenance day at an electrician arrived unexpectedly to work on the Fire System which had been playing up. We now have some new fire sensors and alarms fitted.
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| Cingalee lost a prop |
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| Doris lost a wedge stack |
With the approach of Christmas and some sickness it was a quiet day at the Old Herring Factory. The hardy bunch that turned out spent their time on tool maintenance and cleaning. There has been no further progress on the boat door in the last week. Work should hopefully recommence early next week.
The contractors have made some progress installing the new boat door. The steel frame was erected a couple of weeks ago but now we have a roller door installed and working, albeit manually powered only at the moment. The electric motor still has to be connected and some trim needs finishing as well as a bit of concrete work on the outside.
Although not yet fully restored, Waterlily has been cleaned and repainted. Her sails were washed before being put into storage a long time ago, We felt it time we got all the pieces together and put the sails back up. The last time Waterlily had any sails on her was in August 2019. The nice thing about Waterlily is that she is small enough that we can rig her inside - a good thing given the temperature outside.
The contractors had made no progress on the new boat door in the past week. However, in preparation for when we can get the bigger boats inside we started reorganising the small boats already inside and locating missing bits of rigging. Work was also started to clean up some of the bench tools which had some surface corrosion resulting from damp conditions at a previous location.
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| Waterlily - how do we rig her? |
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| Men at work |
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| Boat door frame |
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| Saga |
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| Shamrock |
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| Rewiring table saw switch |
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| Sand bagging |
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| Tightening tie down ropes |
More typical weather conditions prevailed through this week so normal work activities could be resumed. The electric motor removed from the table saw was reinstalled with a new drive belt and new wiring. Painting of White Wings, work on the re-decking of Saga and work on the keel of Shamrock continued.
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| Reinstalling the electric motor |
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| Painting White Wings |
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| Re-decking Saga |
Not much to say about this storm as it pretty much left Orkney alone. We had some more visitors this week at the Old Herring Factory who came along to see one of the boats that they donated was doing. A brief trip to check on some boats still stored at another location proved to be uneventful - everything being in order. Progress was made on the keel of Shamrock, painting of White Wings and on the table saw restoration.
Orkney did not receive the worst Storm Babet brought but we did suffer some fencing damage to the storage compound. This week we fixed up the sagging fencing to prevent further damage - eventually the council should get around to properly fixing the problem.
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| Fence fixing |
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| Whitewings |
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| Shamrock |
Boats currently outside all look ok so work focused on inside activities. The motion sensor controlling the lighting in one of our storage areas was by-passed and replaced with manual switching (we have several times found these lights switched on for no apparent reason - may be ghosts?) so we will go old school. While doing electrical work the connections on one our tool motors was also inspected in preparation for supply rewiring. We started to move some of our collection of oars and spars to a more useful location.
The wind is gusting to over 50 knots today so it was time to pack the boats outside closer together and tie them down with additional weights. Inside an old table saw is being stripped down and refurbished and Ruby was washed out.
When the weather worsens as winter approaches more volunteers head for inside working. A variety of jobs are in progress at present. An old table saw is being stripped down and rebuilt, White Wings has been turned over so that work can progress on the underside, Ruby has been deep cleaned and the wood repairs on Shamrock make further progress.
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| White Wings |
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| Ruby |
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| Shamrock |
We had a good deal of heavy rain, lightening & thunder for a time during the last week however all the boats we recovered the previous week all survived with no pooling on the canvas cover.
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| Falcon under cover |
Inside painting has continued on White Wings with a top coat being applied to some areas.
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| White Wings |
With fine weather once again returned the opportunity was taken to wash & treat with Milton's fluid some of the sails in our collection.
After being left open to the elements for a week (during which we had a lot of rain) Esmeralda was given a gentle pressure wash to remove the last of the bird muck. Her cover was also washed off and dried out. Not having a drain hole nor a working bilge pump we used an external pump to suck the collected water out from inside.
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| Cleaning Esmeralda |
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| Drying Esmeralda's cover |
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| Esmeralda drying out before being recovered |
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| Setting a ridge pole for Falcon |
For the first time in 5 or 6 years Esmeralda had her deck cover removed today. Now that she is outside in the weather, her timbers soaking up a bit of water, her flat deck cover is acting as a rain catcher. We will put a ridge pole in to solve this problem, but since we had to empty the water today we took the opportunity to remove the cover and have a look inside.
Despite having been stored inside a covered barn some birds had decided to build a nest on the side decking under the cover. The birds had also left a bit of a mess on the inside of the boat. We have left the cover off for the time being to let the rain soften the bird mess which we will pressure wash off next week.
We also now have a main access door which can be latched closed and won't swing open in the wind.
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| Esmeralda - rain catcher |
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| Esmeralda - removing rain water |
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| Esmeralda - cleaning the inside |
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| New latching door lock |
The engine in Sheena was run for a good while today using a hose pipe to supply cooling water. At the same time the interior of Tern was cleaned out. Since being added to the historic fleet Tern has been in 'tight' storage with little access so this is the first proper opportunity we have had to sort through the debris.
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| Working in Tern |
Ruby was moved into the Old Herring Factory and currently sits alongside the other small boats inside.
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| Ruby settled in at her new home |
The time had finally arrived to move all the remaining OHBS assets out of one of the several storage locations OHBS has been using in Mainland Orkney. Two boats and a pile of wood had to be moved so a work group set about the task which was only slightly interrupted by drizzle for a short time.
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| Loading wood |
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| Unloading wood |
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| Loading Tern onto a trailer for moving |