Quiet Day

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.

New Boat Door

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.

Waterlily gets riggged

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.

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.