My Blog
My Blog
Sicily
There was a frost on Saturday night the 3rd of March, next day I managed to drive past the council workers as they removed several tons of boulders that had landed on the road at Gribun. We then did a couple of routes on the granite.
The next Saturday I was working on Salen pier loading salmon into a well boat. The old Calmac pier has a new wooden surface.
I try to keep alert working with helicopters. You don’t want a half ton bucket landing on your foot, there is also a 8 KG weight on the chain that can smack you in the face and there is potential to get fingers trapped.
Once (many years ago) I hooked up a bucket of salmon. The helicopter came back soon after without the bucket. My first thought was that I had not attached the hook properly, but the pilot told me that the rope had snapped. After that incident the buckets are always attached by chain. This causes a stress on the helicopter so the top of the chain is slack with a nylon strop to take the load a bit more gently.
Sometimes when space is limited you have to catch the bucket and guide it down before it touches the ground, the result can be a jolt of static especially on a damp day, there was plenty of room on the pier so I didn’t have to touch the buckets before they landed. I filmed myself on the pier. Afterwards we did some climbing at Duart.
Next Saturday we were on Iona.
Josef Goeth from Sweden on The Good Shepherd
Sunday we were back on the granite.
On the 22nd we went past Mont Blanc the highest hill in Europe at 4,810m/15,781ft to get to Sicily, photos are here.Sicily
Tuesday, 3 April 2012