Being Stornowayd

After catching up on some sleep, since the weather was wonderful we decided to break out the bikes and head around to the castle area before it was over-run by the Hebcelt attendees and hangers-on.

From the other side of the harbour, you can see how cosy we are with the local lifeboat:

In fact our departure on the bikes was delayed by a long and very interesting chat with the lifeboat mechanic. They'd been out on a training exercise the evening that we'd arrived:

and he knew of John, the man in South Uist who has the two retired Trent lifeboats.  The mechanic was concerned for John's mental health.... The Stornoway lifeboat has two big MTU engines that churn out 1,600 HP each. To quote the mechanic, they sound like a bucket of spanners when ticking over as they run on 5 cylinders out of the 10 but when on song.... They simply drink a litre of diesel in around 14 seconds between them. That makes our monthly donation to the RNLI seem rather paltry, we might just about cover the fuel for a training session, when they run the boat more gently.

Heading further around the harbour, the sailing club were out and about, plenty of kids were practicing, with a Nordhavn in the background:

We enjoyed the opportunity to cycle and walk with no wet weather gear on, or the need to carry it "just in case". We stopped off for a coffee in the park, chatting to a London lady who had moved to the island many years ago. Her east end accent was still there, no Scottish lilt at all. Some accents seem rather resilient. 

In town, the sign outside the Crown Inn detailing the exploits of the young King Charles hasn't been updated to reflect his new position:

A very enjoyable cycle trip to the east of the island, across the causeway to Knock gave us a bird's eye view of the little Loganair plane taking off for Glasgow. The end of the runway is more or less where the road and cycle path runs. 

The airport doesn't quite have the same level of fencing and security as Heathrow. Nor does it have such a busy runway which is fortunate for the folks who are going to live in the new houses being built right next to it and the main road. We were amazed at the amount of construction going on all over the area. Things seemed very buoyant compared to other towns that we've visited in Scotland recently. We were told that there are some big energy projects planned that will only increase this. Have a look at weblink for more information. The local folks we talked to have very mixed opinions on the windfarm as you can imagine. Particularly the massive number of workers that will be brought in to upgrade the power grid and install the turbines which will really stretch the local facilities.

On our cycle trips we were sad to see that the longstanding island practice of just dumping dead cars and vans and letting them rot away wherever is continuing: 

So fetching! No matter, the rest of the scenery is just lovely, as are most of the people. We say most as the excitement of having a big Tesco store was dashed by the fact that the store looked as though it had been ram-raided and the checkout staff were surly beyond belief. It almost felt as though they'd managed to corner all of the miserable looking and unhelpful staff in one place. Cracking recruitment Mr Tesco.

The evening light was lovely, here is the view from our aft cockpit of the inner harbour area. As you can see, it was busy. We were glad that we came before the festival kicked off:

To celebrate a couple of lovely days, some good bike trips and the wonderful, unusual weather, the crew went wild and enjoyed an alcohol-free gin and tonic on the flybridge:

She knows how to go big. By the way, the big pretzel on her plate was, amazingly, from the Coop store and it was very good. It missed the rock salt on the outside that the Bavarian Brezn have but was almost as good as the ones the captain fondly remembers from his many trips to Munich.

We had another one of those chance encounters when, wandering along the pontoon to head for a tempting local coffee and cake place, we bumped into Tom and Helen who were heading the other way. The captain was wearing a Nordhavn cap, given to us by the USA Nordhavn folks a while ago. Seeing this, Tom said that they were en route to look at the boat as they recognised it from our time in the Clyde area.  The green covers are pretty distinctive. He had taken some pictures and video of us and shared it on local boating groups. So, they joined us for coffee and cake and then had a look around the boat. Then he added a picture to the Facebook Nordhavn Dreamers page:

Wandering around the harbour area, you really see just how dire the state of the fishing industry is, looking at the condition of the boats moored up:

Being Sunday, the harbour was busy with them. Here, you don't fish or set out to sea on the sabbath. It is seriously frowned upon. However, things have changed since our first visit. There are a couple of cafe / bistro type places which now open on Sunday! When a supermarket floated the idea, the Church of Scotland intervened big time. Pubs of course are OK, after you've been to morning service and before you go to the evening one, fully dressed. The cafe that was open was crammed with younger folks, a huge queue outside too. You can see how the traditions and grip of the church on the island will slowly die through the years.

We were having a good time here, seemed popular with the harbour staff, the lifeboat mechanic and we were enjoying using the bikes too. Even the wildlife was friendly, this lady was extremely tame:

However, so we could explore further afield, we arranged a rental car for a few days. More on that in the next post.

Maintenance news:

The horn, which made a feeble little groan when the crew tried to use it to scare off a hitch-hiking gull during our trip here, needed attention. The captain checked and found that a new compressor, the likely culprit, was available via Amazon with a pretty quick delivery, even out here. Other suppliers were less bullish on timescales. To prove the problem, the captain wriggled into the hatch under the flybridge helm where the compressor is housed, removed the air hose to the twin external horns and gave the compressor a run. Well, after giving the tube a clean out and the compressor a run, the thing worked just fine when reassembled. It worked well enough to get lots of people looking - it is wonderfully loud.

Will this be a permanent fix? Who knows, but for now, it is happy again. 

We also managed some polishing work, finishing off the flybridge exterior and doing some of the aft cockpit too. Not a massive amount but to quote a famous supermarket, "every little helps".