Absent, gone, about to go, reprieved, arrived and Google Photos app is worse than a Google car crash.

Absence: Well it has been a little while since I posted on my blog  Seakayakphoto.com and I have been off the water for over four months. I have not been well for some time but am fortunately now recovering. I consider myself rather fortunate as many have health problems from which there is no recovery. I do have a backlog of things I have meant to post so will shortly start with those.

During my absence some things have gone and some have been reprieved or arrived.

Gone:  Mark Rainsley's renowned SouthwestSeakayaking blog has been retired though he is still very active on Facebook. Here is an archive link to his former blog. I am sorry to see it go because Facebook is not indexed and it is difficult to find older posts. Thanks for many informative and entertaining posts Mark.

Gone: Sadly Lulu, a member of the British Isles only resident orca pod, was washed up dead on a Tiree beach.  Her fluke had become entangled in fishing gear and she drowned. I have seen this pod twice, once to the north of the Cairns of coll and once off  Rubha an Dunain on Skye. They have not reproduced for many years and the loss of an adult female does not bode well for the pod's survival.

About to Go: Picasa Web Albums. This was the free photo hosting service by Google. This hosted photos in Blogger blogs like this one. If you uploaded photos directly from Blogger they would be posted in an album that would grow to 500 photos then a new album would start. You could also upload photos directly to Picasa Web Albums and create more meaningful albums of any size. Links from photos in these albums could be posted directly into a Blogger post as in the photos on this page. The demise of Picasa Web Albums has been predicted since the launch of Google + Photos some years ago. Google are so determined to get rid of Picasa Web Albums that they have excluded it from Google searches.

Gone: The Troon Larne high speed ferry which ran during the summer season has been axed. I have used this ferry in the days that it went into belfast rather than Larne so I will miss it.

The HSC Express has been sold to a Swedish company for operation between the island of Gotland and the Swedish mainland.

However, it will make the 22km crossing between Ailsa Craig and Arran somewhat less exciting as the ferry blasted across this route four times per day at 42 knots!

Reprieved: The Ardrossan Campbeltown ferry operated as a pilot summer service from 2013 to 2015 after which it was rumoured that it would be axed.

It was served by the MV Isle of Arran which will thankfully continue the Thursday to Sunday service. Even better news is that the service will now be permanent (as these things can be).

Arrived: Late in 2015 Google Photos replaced both Picasa Web Albums and Google + Photos. It would be marvellous if the third incarnation of a Google photo storage app was a progressive improvement but it is not. For any serious photographer it takes away any control of compression and it lacks all of the indexing and tagging that Picassa Web Albums allowed. It is also so slow that it is like using an old dial up modem .Google Photos is a truly horrid app, it is worse than a Google Car crash.

Plus: One good thing is that all your personally created albums in Picasa Web Albums have already been ported over to Google Photos.

Minus: The bad news is that they have been compressed on the way over. A typical photo in my blog like the one below is 1024x683 pixels.

This one (which is stored in Picasa Web Albums) was reduced in size and saved from the original camera RAW file in Lightroom as a jpg file with 70% compression. The compressed file was 207KB in size. By the time it was transferred to Google Photos it was further reduced to 90KB. That degree of reduction might be fine if you upload an uncompressed original but when a file is compressed twice the results are not good. I am not going to post the Google Photos version as I really do not like it and it spoils my memory of this beautiful sunset.

Minus: I suspect the photos have not only been compressed but have also been "improved" ("auto enhanced" in Google speak) by altering the exposure, contrast, saturation etc. Maybe I am fussy but the compressed, improved photos  have that garish "turn up the picture" look that someone who has just discovered the sliders in Photoshop might produce.

Minus: The Blogger photo albums of 500 photos which are stored in Picasa Web Albums have not been ported over to Google photos.

Minus: The coding is bloated. This is the link for a photo in Google Photos:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9C6nAAdcyBs5YTmxSdW-mMurV8fOGALDlEcWsizn5ac8J9SPeahr9_GOEyQuO_rNq4lcyvb1Zbzp8I8-BqiO0qN_NVGKWdD577o54grkimpyo5TWXO64R8aoOwry2mjUy0xc/w1024-h683-no/

No wonder Google Photos is so slow. In comparison this is a link for the same photo in Picasa Web Albums:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1XXVgV-XJEY/VtiItTRLxtI/AAAAAAAAw5k/RVhRUSIrsog/s1024-Ic42/20160228-IMG_0989DEW100.jpg

Not only is the "old and redundant" code more compact (!!!) it also contains the original filename and note the "s1024" which allows you to set the maximum size of the downloaded photo (in this case 1024 pixels) which is very useful if you want to paste a photo into a post in a forum that restricts the size of photos.

When Google programmers resort to bloatware like this it is little wonder the Google car crashed. Indeed if the roads were filled with Google cars there would almost certainly be the mother of all traffic jams! Having said that, if Google Cars are as fast as Google Photos then the collisions will not be so much a crash, they will be more like the kiss of a down feather landing gently on the floor.

Lastly if you think it is unfair to criticise a "free" app, it is of course not free at all. Google sifts through all your stuff and targets you with advertising which you pay for in the things you buy. Despite it being several years since my knee operations and my retirement my browsing experience is still filled with adverts for knee potions and retirement investments. Even worse the day after I emailed my mother's brother to say that she had not long to live, I was targeted with adverts for funeral plans and directors. Thank you Google. No doubt I will now be bombarded with adverts for pick me ups and health tonics.

Little Ross lighthouse, a lens and an alpine garden.

As we left Little Ross Island cottages and climbed towards the lighthouse we saw we were in line with the leading mark for vessels leaving Kirkcudbright Bay. Surprisingly this was not illuminated until 2005. The increasing number of scallop dredgers leaving Kirkcudbright at night was the reason. The white tower just visible on the mainland is a range control tower for the Dundrennan Firing Range.

Little Ross lighthouse was first lit on 1/1/1843. The light flashes white every five seconds. It was the first lighthouse in the world to have a catadioptric design, which meant that the beam was focussed with both lenses and mirrors. At the time the famous physicist Lord Kelvin ranked it (along with the lighthouses at Rhinns of Islay and Buchan Ness) as one of the top three lighthouses in the World.

In 2004 the original lens was helicoptered to Kirkcudbright Museum but it was so heavy that it was only this year that it has been displayed properly.

The arch over the doorway proclaims that Little Ross lighthouse was built...

...in 1842 by Robert Stevenson and Robert Hume.

This nice bronze identifier is more recent!

The lighthouse shares a courtyard with the keepers' cottages. There were normally three keepers but...

...at the time of the murder in 1960 there were just two temporary keepers because the light was about to be automated.

The present owners have fitted this door bell but no one was at home.

We rested for a short time in the lee of the buildings. The early morning sun was warm out of the chill wind. At our feet...

...the cobbled courtyard was a veritable garden of miniature alpine plants and lichens.

The owners of the cottages have a lovely kitchen.

From the lighthouse we had a clear view SW across Wigtown Bay to Burrow Head some 22km away and the village of Isle of Whithorn to its right.

We were going north however and in The Sound we could already see the start of the flood tide. It was time to go...

Fitting a Flat Earth sail with double back stays to a PandH Aries155

I have previously posted about fitting a Flat Earth sailing rig to a P&H Aries 155 but on taking delivery of a new Aries with forward fin I decided to use a slightly different method which I have outlined here. We have been increasingly paddle sailing in stronger winds often going on down wind shuttle runs. Until now I have used the forestay/up haul with two side stays mounted on either side of the mast for maximum stability and a single back stay. This time I have replaced the single centrally mounted back stay with two back stays mounted on the kayak seam which is the strongest part of the kayak. This also has the advantage of having one of the stays directly in line with the wind direction when paddling on a broad reach which is one of the most fun directions. I got this idea from Mick McRobb who is the brains behind the Flat Earth rig.

I like to get the side stays at right angles to the centre of the mast foot and as far out as possible to give maximum support.

I use surface deck fittings to secure small loops of 2mm Dyneema cord to which the stays are attached by 32mm snap shackles. The SDFs are attached by M4 stainless steel bolts which mean one 4mm hole needs to be drilled for each. A stainless steel penny washer helps spread the load inside but note the pull of the stay is almost at right angles to the bolt. I like to have an adjustable grip hitch  on a loop to the snap shackles as this lets me get the tension of the stays just right. It also means I can transfer the rig to several different kayaks.

These SDFS fittings give a very strong mount that will not break under pressure. If using these you need to be very careful that your deck and seam are strong especially if you capsize and attempt to right the kayak without letting the uphaul or sheet off. Water exerts a much greater force on the sail than air! If you have any doubts I suggest using the deck fittings supplied by Karitek either separately or as part of their fitting kit. These are also secured with a single bolt but the side stay does not wrap round the bolt as happens in the fittings I use. The Karitek fitting is made of plastic and will shear before your deck breaks (unless you have a very lightweight layup).

P&H supplied this Aries with a reinforced deck from in front of the forward hatch to near the bow. The Aries bow is peaked to help with resurfacing so P&H also supplied a shaped spacer to mount the red Flat Earth deck plate on. I chose not to use it and mounted the deck plate using one of the deck elastic RDF mounts. I removed the existing M6 countersunk SS RDF bolt and replaced it with a longer 40mm pan head M6 SS bolt which goes through the front deck plate mounting hole and the RDF. I then  mounted the rear Deck plate hole with an M5 pan head bolt and 2 penny washers above the deck/below red plate and one below the deck. This required a new 5mm hole to be drilled.

The two back stays can be seen clearly here. If you have an aversion to drilling, you could just use the existing lateral deck elastic RDFs to mount the stays to but I thought the best angle to give maximum support on a broad reach was a bit further forward and as I like drilling holes in boats I went for it! To prevent the snap shackles rubbing on the deck when the sail is launched and loaded I have made the loops round the two back stay SDFs a bit longer. When the sail is folded on deck the snap shackles would fall into the water, so to prevent this I have used a short piece of cord to form a saddle between them. When the sail is launched there is no tension in it.

Have fun

Swanning about in the Queen's Harbour.

As we paddled north towards the restricted zone at the Rhu narrows another MOS Police launch proceeded through followed by...

 ...this swan. Neither asked permission from Queen's Harbour Master, Faslane.  However, even the swan would have shown up on...

...the Queen's Harbour Master's radar!

 So we stopped before the narrows on got the VHF out...

...the regulations include: "Craft entering the Gareloch or Loch Long at any time, or if in doubt,
should contact the QHM Duty Controller on VHF Channel 73 or 01436 674321 (Extension 3555)." 

Before they were taken over, Clydeport used to have a nice PDF for recreational users with the various regulations, signals and prohibited areas in the Clyde. Unfortunately it has yet to make an appearance on the new Peelports.com website. You can download copies of both sides of the original leaflet from my public Dropbox folder here and here.

If you do not ask permission of QHM, you can expect the attention of one of the many armed MOD Police launches. The Royal Navy are very sensitive about sea kayakers in the Clyde. In the 1960's Hamish Gow used a kayak in a CND protest against Polaris nuclear submarines. He tried and climb the anchor chain of an American Navy supply ship in the Holy Loch. Later he and his wife became the first sea kayakers to paddle out to St Kilda.

Dell Precision M6500 workstation overheating and running slow.

This is a sea kayaking blog but blog authors and visitors need to use some sort of  computer to access the Internet.  Please excuse a technology post!

For the last 38 months I have been using a Dell Precision M6500 workstation notebook. It works like greased lightening when editing and previewing large RAW files from my Canon 5D mk3 camera in Adobe Lightroom 5. I bought it because of great experience of three  Dell Precision M6400 computers I used at work, The M6500 was three years old in November 2013 and I wondered about extending its warranty. A quote from Dell offered 3 year on site pro support for £311. I thought about it too long and by the time I had made my mind up it was too late, as the offer period expired when the computer passed 3 years old. The reason I had not made my mind up is that in general  I do not buy extended warranties but this one did seem quite reasonable. Anyway, the computer had been trouble free for three years so...I suppose I thought I didn't need the warranty.

Exactly one week after the original 3 year warranty expired, the computer began to develop increasing problems, which rapidly worsened until it was almost unusable five weeks later. It began to slow down to a crawl, especially trying to do anything with big RAW files in Lightroom. The Windows experience Aero graphics score fell from 6.8 when the computer was new down to 2.8. The video drivers on the Dell site for the NVIDEA Quadro FX 2800M graphics card were rather old so I downloaded the latest (Nov 2013) drivers off the NVIDEA site.  I also updated to the latest Dell bios. Neither made any difference. The fans began to run all the time. The computer frequently and spontaneously rebooted. It suffered several blue screen of death episodes. On other occasions the screen would freeze and the mouse pointer locked up. I thought I might have a virus (as the symptoms seemed to have developed quite quickly). Scans with Sophos and Malware bytes revealed nothing and the problem persisted  even when the computer disconnected from the Internet. Suspecting overheating I installed ThrottleStop found the CPU and GPU were running at 95C. I decided to explore the computer's cooling system and used the online Dell service manual and dismantled the computer, which took about half a day.

This was how I found the CPU heatsink. The fine copper grille was completely blocked with dust. I suspect it built up slowly over the three years but as it built up, it gathered more dust increasingly quickly, which explained the relatively rapid and recent onset of symptoms.

This is how it should look. 

The CPU heat sink and grill fits in behind two other heatsinks and grilles which cool the graphics card and share the left hand fan. The graphics card also has another built in heatsink and fan on the right side. Its grille was similarly blocked but was even more difficult to get at and clean than the CPU heatsink and grille.

Once back together, the computer is running cool again at 50 to 55C, with hardly any noise from the fans. It is also working like greased lightning and the graphics score is back to 6.8.

It is a real pity that the whole computer (literally right down to the motherboard) needs to be dismantled to get at these heat sinks. It is not a great design. It is almost inevitable that other Precision M6500s will become affected. It took me about 7 hours plus a trip to Maplin for some Antec Formula 7 heat sink thermal compound paste to get it running again. It is not what I expected from a top end laptop. Perhaps they are built with a three year life expectancy for business but I am a private buyer and expected it to last longer.

Still I have avoided buying an expensive replacement so now I can afford to buy something else!

The Winning Greenland Roller Paddle Review

My good friend Duncan Winning is a long term exponent of the Greenland paddle in Scotland. When he heard that Ian and I were going to the Small Isles he asked if we would care to review his new paddle the innovative Greenland Roller.

Ever modest, Duncan said that the original idea had come from Alistair Wilson, former K1 Olympian and founder of Lendal Paddles. However, Alistair had left Duncan to do all the development work as he was about to retire from Lendal.

Ian and I have pretty catholic tastes when it comes to paddles, we use Euros, GPs and Wings interchangeably and we have never understood why some people restrict themselves by limiting themselves to paddling just one type. For example if I want to do some rolling practice and muck about bracing in an Anas Acuta, I will take the GP every time. If I want to do some rockhopping in the Delphin then the Euro is a much better tool. If I want to cover distance or paddle-sail fast downwind then the Wing is the natural choice.

Anyway Duncan has been trialling the Greenland Roller for about 18 months now and thought it was ready for some wider exposure. He has designed it to be more powerful and faster than the traditional GP. One of the problems with the GP is that you don't get the nice laminar flow across the blade that you get with a Wing. If you attempt to load it too much it develops flutter and looses power. You can overcome this by canting the blade but this looses further power and efficiency. To address these problems Duncan and Alistair have come up with an innovative solution. The Greenland Roller has a slightly bigger blade area and inset into this are three rotating balls. There is a 2mm gap between the ball and the circumference of the hole within which it sits.

As the blade is drawn through the water the balls rotate and water can pass through more easily on only one side of the ball, depending on which way the ball is rotating. The beauty of the design is that the balls can rotate in either direction and you end up with a wonderful in built auto-correct mechanism that almost completely eliminates flutter and ensures smooth water flow.

Ian and I were sceptical at first but we each used the paddle for about 50 km on our 100 km paddle round the Small Isles. It really was a revelation...

...especially on the roughest day, crossing from the south coast of Canna and Sanday to Rum we had to cross the tide race and it was springs! An evil mixture of swell, clapotis, tide and wind created a confused sea. Ian was using the Euro I was using the Greenland Roller. It was noticeable how I was having a much easier time of it. In fact I had to slow down as Ian was falling behind as he had to put in so many brace strokes. A great advantage of the Greenland Roller is that it auto braces while you carry on with power strokes, the volume of the balls definitely helps here. Lastly, the Greenland Roller is the best rolling paddle I have ever tried. If you are having difficulty rolling this is the paddle for you. Paddling in a wind is also a breeze. The Bernoulli effect round the balls all but eliminates wind snatch and aerial flutter in stronger winds of about force 6.

So Ian and I award the Winning Greenland Roller 10/10 for both innovation and function. Patents are currently pending and licences are being negotiated with a number of well known paddle manufacturers. It is hoped that production models will reach the shops in about a year's time. We were sorry to hand it back.

A longer review of the Winning Greenland Roller will appear in issue 36 of Ocean Paddler magazine.

Canna island have a future as well as a past?

Morning dawned grey and blustery on Canna. The wind had got up during the night and I had to get up to tighten the tent guy lines.

It was also cold. Our neighbours, these highland ponies, were standing back to the wind on the heavily frosted grass.

Looking over Sanday and St Edward's, the low clouds were scudding over the Rum Cuillin. Though the waters in Canna harbour were deceptively calm we were glad we did not have to consider launching of the storm beach at Guirdil on Rum. From high on Sanday, the sea to the south was rough though the F5 wind of the previous night had dropped to F4 and the forecast was for it to drop further in the afternoon. Whatever, the spring ebb tide was running straight against the southerly wind. Thoughts of paddling round Canna evaporated and we decided to go for a walk and look at the conditions again towards the end of the ebb. We set off on our walk knowing that Canna had been populated for 9,000 years. We wondered what we would find.

 Near the causeway between Canna and Sanday we found these whale vertebrae...

 ...and this old abandoned bike. I wonder if its owner has left the island?

Canna is a volcanic island and the basalt ledges of its hills rise steeply from the shore. Sitting on its elevated ledge, Kate's cottage has one of the best views on the island. We got to chatting with two builders from the mainland. They were re-roofing a cottage which had recently burned down. The previous evening they had worked late to take advantage of the settled weather. From high on the roof they had spotted us paddling into Canna Harbour and news of our arrival had spread round the island.

Near the farm buildings we discovered the reason for the midnight disturbance. It had been a rabbit cull. Since a successful operation to eradicate rats (to preserve breeding bird stocks) the rabbit population of Canna has mushroomed. They breed like...well rabbits actually.

Last year the restaurant on Canna did a nice line in rabbit pie and I am sure that was nothing to do with its recent closure.

This lovely old farm dog padded out to say hello. His hang dog appearance suggested that it would be rabbit for dinner ....again.

Next to the farm buildings is this convenient loo and shower. The shower requires a £2 coin. The National Trust for Scotland office is just across the road. We called by to present our NTS membership cards but no one was in.

 The old farm dairy has been converted into a museum displaying...

 ...dairy and...

 ...fishing implements,...

...old photos (this is Kate sitting outside her cottage) and...

...curiosities brought to Canna by the Gulf Stream.

NTS via BBC

In 2012 the farm manager found an ancient cursing stone in the ancient graveyard  above the farm. 

NTS via BBC

Amazingly it was a perfect fit for the hollow which had been worn in the base of the Celtic Cross which stands nearby.

Just to the east of the farm is the ruin of the old corn mill. It was built in the 1780's and was originally water powered but was converted to steam at a later date.

We now continued our perambulation along the front at Canna Harbour. There was no mobile phone signal on Canna so we were pleased to find...

 ...a public phone box with one of the most marvellous views in the country. Inside, it didn't smell like a city call box either.

 It was fully functioning and accepted a variety of coins. Its signal was beamed by communications dish to feed into the rest of the World's telecoms network! We phoned home for a weather forecast and to book a room in the Rum hostel for later that night.

Next we passed Canna House. It contains a large library of Gaelic books and butterflies collected by the last private owners of Canna, Dr John Lorne Campbell and his wife Margaret Fay Shaw. In 1981 the National Trust of Scotland was gifted Canna by the Campbell family.

 We continued along the shore road towards the Protestant church but our attention was...

 ...captured by a sea eagle circling over Canna harbour. When you see a sea eagle like this, there is no mistaking it for a buzzard. No doubt the sea eagle also has rabbit for first second and third luncheons.

The Protestant church has a round pencil tower which is not common in Scotland but is frequent in Ireland. It was built in 1914 in memory of Robert Thom, a Clyde shipowner who bought Canna in 1881 and who did much to improve the island until he died in 1911. It was designed by Peter Chalmers who had built a similar church in the parish of Kilmore at Dervaig on Mull.

As we approached the pier we passed this fine bull. We saw a surprising number of breeds and crosses on Canna and Sanday: Aberdeen Angus, Luing, Belted Galloway, Highland and Shorthorn.

The Canna terminal building at the pier  has a toilet and water supply.

Nearby the old terminal building has now been converted to the community shop.

Between the shop and the pier warehouse we found a number of dishes and radio links that are part of the HebNet system that brings broadband to Canna and the other Small Isles.

It was now time to think about heading back to the kayaks. This old hedge tells its own story of how windy Canna can be. However, we were grateful that the wind had delayed our departure and allowed us to explore this delightful island. Sadly the population has recently fallen to 10 after all the families with children left. I do hope others will arrive to take their place and hopefully they be able to stay. Canna has had a wonderful past, I hope it has a future.

Further reading:
The past: Canna Local History Group.
The future: Isle of Canna Community Development Trust Ltd