On Monday (26th) we launched the boat at high tide, however the tides were quite small and while the MCZ helped us by bring the boat down to the top of the beach, they couldn't drive down through the beach. This meant people power! Carl and Phil from Dale Sailing came along to help, and along with most of the MCZ team we hauled the boat on its trailer down the beach. Kate from the MCZ even lent Bee a drysuit to help get it in the water!
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| I rather think that Bee looks incredibly modern, while ed looks like he could be from a black and white photo of a fisherman from a hundred years ago. |
On Tuesday morning when we were up at 6 getting everything down to the beach.
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| All our gear, and yes, that is my bike... |
We were very grateful for some more help from John Walmsley and Gary and Chrissy (who were guardians to all our possessions as we ferried loads to the island).
When we arrived with the first load, we were greeted by curious moulting seals, icicles and snow.
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| Note the satellite dish which normally brings internet to North Haven, currently not receiving the signal! |
Once we had persuaded Trundle the tractor to start (he was a little reluctant this year) we ferried our gear up to our respective houses and turned on the buildings "summer" systems.
This is the point at which we discover if anything has survived the winter.
Anyone who has stayed on the island will have met our "fridges" which are converted chest freezers (a device with a thermometer attached cuts off power to the cooling elements when it reaches the set temperatures, and switches back on with the temperature rises above, say, 5 degrees). When we turned on the fridges at north haven and the farm they did nothing. this is because the fridges, left open over the winter and at room temperature were at 2.5 and 1.3 degrees respectively.
Since then, at the farm, the fridge has not reached the temperature required to turn on, and in fact this morning i woke to a bleeping, which was the fridge converter alerting me that the internal temperature had gone below it's "working limit" and it is -1.
The benefits of this cold is that I was able to buy a cool box full of frozen food and 24 hours later when I got it to the freezer it was still frozen to the side of the box, and our vegetables will last a while! On the other hand, with no heating other than a fire in the living rooms, we're quickly running low on wood, and the kitchens and bedrooms are very very cold.
We are currently battling frozen pipes and the temperature is unlikely to get above 0 today, with a significant wind chill.
It's certainly interesting!
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| Ice on the main track makes for an adrenaline fuelled walk! |
Meanwhile however we've been having the most incredible couple of days of waders on (and over) the island.
February the 28th had totals of 65 Oyster Catcher, 41 Golden Plover, 163 Lapwing, 34 Curlew, 6 Turnstone, 1 Jack Snipe, and 23 Common Snipe.
Many of the ponds are entirely frozen over but a small patch of North Pond is being kept clear by Canada Geese.
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| Teal, trying to stay warm |
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| Mallards and Widgeon keeping an eye on things |
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| Canada Geese keeping a narrow channel of water ice free. |
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| Hen Harrier hunting the over the western fields |
Already today I've seen 184 Lapwing and when I spoke to Ed earlier he'd had over a hundred on a short walk, so I'm sure totals from today will be even more impressive!
For now I need to try and get feeling back to my fingers, so please excuse any spelling or grammatical mistakes. I'm currently wearing all my clothes and very, very cold.
Stay warm folks. See you soon.
Sarah (Assistant Warden)
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