Thursday, March 3, 2011

Sunshine, stainless steel and birthday shopping

Another day of perfect sunshine.  Farmers are never happy though and we desperately want some rain.  We still have a lot of lambs waiting to go to the abattoir and if this dry spell continues then they will start to fall away.
Today we managed to buy all the stainless steel bench units that we need for the crab processing.  It is all secondhand from a local hotel that ceased business.  It has saved us a lot of money in freight and the units are all in good condition.   We now have everything we need either in transit or here apart from a compressor and a water geyser.  The geyser is on order and the compressor will be purchased locally.  Our crabbing licence has arrived along with the catch sheet records.  The main job now is to prepare the building ready for when the equipment arrives.
Christopher unpacked his new sand blaster today.  This was a significant capital purchase last year.  There appears to be only one sand blaster in the islands that has the pressure that we need.  Unfortunately the business that owns it was not prepared to hire it.  This left us with no alternative  other then to purchase our own.  Theo is probably our most important asset and at the very least her bulwarks need blasting.  When we purchased her from the UK we paid to have the deck blasted.  The blasting and painting cost £1,000.00, ten years ago.  We are very lucky as at the moment there is a person here that can advise us whether the hull needs blasting.  He has also done sandblasting himself and is meeting Christopher on Sunday to advise him on how he should do the job.  We are hopeful that we may be able to fly  him out to Speedwell to look at Theo.  Although we can't beach her there we would be able to lay her over enough to let him get a reasonable view of the hull.
The outboard motor for the  dinghy is now fixed and Christopher and his father put it on the rib and went out in Stanley harbour to give it a trial run.  It appears to be working well.  The rib which Christopher's father gave us will probably be based at Speedwell with Shaun and Tanya.  It is 5.8 metres and will be used to get the crab from the keep pots.
Christopher spent his afternoon in meetings and I took my mother out again.  We went out to buy hairy mini rollers for when we start work on Theo.  We were looking for packs  of 10 but couldn't find any.  Bought a couple of little bits to put in jiffy bags and send to Tiphanie for her birthday.
Bruce, Christopher's father at George Island
Started preparing for Shaun starting work with us.  Contacted the tax office and asked for an employers pack.  This contains the POAT tables etc.  Returns have to be made monthly so need to be prepared in advance.

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