All ship shape and bristol fashion?

Wednesday is volunteer day, and we have a team of 4 regular volunteers who come out and help us out as often as they can. Today, however, only John could make it, so he and I went out and polished off some jobs that needed doing but didn't need a group of people to do them. Things like shoring up a waymarker post for the all ability path leading from the visitor centre to Starney Bay, and getting the reserve boat ready for action.

Now, as you can see from the picture of the left, our boat may is not huge, but it is just what we need here at St Abbs. It is small enough to strap onto the top of the truck and drive across the fields to Burnmouth Harbour, where we then have to lift it over a barbed wire fence and carry it down the beach to launch. And its big enough (just!) to fit two people in it, one driving the boat and the other counting the nesting seabirds in the blind spots that we cannot see from the top of the cliffs. All we need to do now is have a test run on the Mire Loch to make sure everything is how it should be, then we are ready to take it out on the sea and count the birds.

I think this picture could be a contender for a caption competition, and as a clue I can say that John could be heard mumbling something about scrubbing bottoms!