Season Starts - Not Going Out

This is pretty much the start of the season and I start with an apologies for the silence of the blog, some of you will be wondering about how we are progressing in preparing for the start of the season. Well for this week very little progress has been made. These cold easterlies are stopping me getting anywhere near to the island and so I am onto about Plan W by now. The Isle of May lies 6 miles out into the North Sea, further out than many seabird islands open to the public so we struggle a bit when the weather gets up.
There is a gap in the weather middle of this week and i hope to be going for it to get out to the island so that I can start getting things ready for the start of the visitor season which is next Friday, Good Friday the 29th.
Overall the weather hasn't been too bad since New Year and contractors working on the island have managed to get quite a lot done. But now I need to clean the paths of winter debris, clean out the visitor centre, put up visitor warning signs that keep the birds and visitors safe and get a couple of boat loads of equipment over to the island, sorted and stowed. So as you can see things are getting a bit tight.  But somehow the island will be ready to receive the first boats of what is a very early start.
This weather isn't only delaying us it is also delaying the seabird and the Scottish Seabird Centre have reported to me very little puffin action or shag action on their cameras on the island.
So at the moment all the mountain of boxes are packed and ready to go but i just need a drop in the wind and the flattening of the huge swell that makes the harbour inaccessible.