Reorg Day

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.

Waterlily - how do we rig her?

Men at work

Weight Lifting

The contractors have made some progress with the installation of the large boat door. The supporting metal frame has been installed on the inside of the building. Inside Saga is having new rubbing strakes attached and the keel of Shamrock is about ready for a new keel band. The table saw refurb is just about completed having been rewired and a new drive belt installed. Outside with little wind and even a bit of sun we spent some time adding more tie down ropes to the boats in the compound. This involved tying ropes lashed to the boats to pallets on the ground which were then loaded with sandbags.

Boat door frame

Saga

Shamrock

Rewiring table saw switch

Sand bagging

Tightening tie down ropes

No storm this week

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.

Reinstalling the electric motor

Painting White Wings

Re-decking Saga

After Storm Ciarán

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. 

After Storm Babet

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.

Fence fixing

Inside a couple of boats were getting painted. The underside of Whitewings received another coat of white paint and Shamrock, also inverted, received a coat of primer.

Whitewings

Shamrock

It's wet-n-windy again

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.

It's windy today

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.