HEADLINES

TODAY: SCATTERED SHOWERS, COOL NW’LY WIND
TONIGHT: LITTLE CHANGE
TOMORROW: SCATTERED SHOWERS, BREEZY
DAYS 2-5: SOME RAIN OR SHOWERS, LIGHTER WINDS
DAYS 6-10: RAIN OR SHOWERS

SUMMARY

Bright with scattered showers today. Feeling cool in a fresh NW’ly wind. The showers perhaps more frequent for a time on Saturday, as fresh NW’ly winds veer N’ly. Sunday becoming mostly dry and bright with lighter winds.

Monday starting cloudy with some rain, but becoming brighter later. A mixture of showers or longer periods of rain and bright spells midweek, then perhaps drier with freshening S’ly winds.

GENERAL SITUATION AND SYNOPSIS 06:00 UTC

With an anticyclone centred to the west of the UK and pressure low over Scandinavia, a fresh to strong NW’ly airflow covers the Northern Isles.

While little change is expected today, by Saturday – with the anticyclone drifting a little south, while expected to ridge north towards Iceland – a cold front moving south over the Northern Isles will bring a slightly cooler NW to N’ly airflow.

This is expected to fall light later in the weekend, as the high moves to a position south of the UK and the Northern Isles falls within the ‘col’ area between this high and another north of Iceland. However, the earlier front is likely to be slow-moving over the north of Scotland.

With high pressure predicted to drift away into the near-Continent – while an area of low pressure develops to the northwest of the British Isles – later next week, we will probably see a strengthening airflow from between S and W’ly. At this point, it is possible high pressure may maintain its influence northwest over the North Sea, and thus keep Atlantic fronts away from the Northern Isles.

FORECAST FOR NEXT THREE DAYS
Confidence level: Weather type – high. Timing – high/medium.

Temperatures rising to 7° or 8° Celsius by day, falling to around 4° Celsius overnight.

FRIDAY 12th: Though bright or sunny spells are likely, it will be mostly cloudy with a few mainly light showers. During the evening, thicker cloud may bring patchy rain or drizzle with some hill fog to Shetland. Feeling cool in a F5 – locally F6 – NW’ly wind, which will be backing W or WNW’ly later. Much of the night then cloudy with an occasional light shower, but also one or two clearer spells. Fresh NW’ly winds.

Sea state – Moderate or slight in Orkney waters, with a 1 to 2 metre WSW’ly swell. Moderate through the Fair Isle Channel and northwards, but rough with a 3 metre swell northeast of Shetland.

SATURDAY 13th: Bright with showers, these perhaps more frequent and heavier for a time during the afternoon. F5-6 WNW’ly winds – perhaps easing F5 for a time – veering F5-6 NW to N’ly by the evening, as clearer conditions with fewer showers move south through Shetland and then Orkney.

Sea state – Moderate or slight in Orkney waters, with a 1 to 2 metre WSW’ly swell. Moderate through the Fair Isle Channel and northwards, but rough with a 3 metre swell northeast of Shetland.

SUNDAY 14th: Bright with scattered showers, these dying out by the afternoon as F4-6 NW’ly winds back W’ly and ease F3-4.Thickening cloud may bring a little rain from the south into Orkney and perhaps Fair Isle overnight.

Sea state – Moderate or slight in Orkney waters, with a 1 to 2 metre WSW’ly swell. Moderate through the Fair Isle Channel and northwards, but rough with a 3 metre swell northeast of Shetland.

10-DAY OUTLOOK

Confidence level: Weather type – medium. Timing – low/medium.
Temperatures in the daily range 7° Celsius down to around 5° Celsius. Possibly a degree or so milder later in the week.

MONDAY 15th: Cloudy with outbreaks of rain at first, but turning drier and brighter later. Moderate or light NW’ly winds.

TUESDAY 16th – WEDNESDAY 17th: Scattered showers or longer spells of rain, with brighter interludes between. Moderate or light SW to W’ly winds.

THURSDAY 18th – MONDAY 22nd: Perhaps mainly dry though cloudy, with fresh or strong and milder SW’ly winds.

DISCLAIMER

Be aware that the weather over north-west Europe – and especially around the Northern Isles – is part of an ever-changing and dynamic
system. Therefore regard the ‘10-Day Outlook’ as a guide only – there are times when any outlook going beyond about 36 to 48 hours is likely
to prove unreliable.

Always check the latest forecast from the UK Met Office before undertaking any weather-dependent activity.

All forecasts are for planning purposes only.

Neither Dave Wheeler, nor any employee of Fair Isle Weather Services, accepts any liability for the accuracy of this forecast.

E-mail: dave@davewheelerphotography.com or dave.wheeler@fairisle.org.uk

Weather: www.northisles-weather.co.uk

Fair Isle: www.fairisle.org.uk

Hotels, guest houses, shops and other retailers are all in line for the swingeing increases and are only now beginning to digest the potential impact on their business plans as the country emerges tentatively from recession.

Although the government has reduced the business rate for 2010/11 to 40.7p in the £ for properties with a rateable value of £35,000 or less and 41.4p in the £ for those above, the revaluation conducted by the Scottish Assessors Association  – based on annual turnover – more than makes up for the cut in many instances.

On top of the government’s proposals to increase the durationl of ferry journeys to and from Shetland and the prospect of fewer winter sailings, the revelation has angered politicians and business people.

For seven hotels in Shetland the revaluation will mean an increase of a quarter or more. Two hotels facing sizeable increases are the Grand Hotel and the Queens Hotel, which face an increase in their rateable values of around 40 and 90 per cent.

The new rates set mean the Queens Hotel will now have to pay £19,006 and the Grand £19,109.50, increases from the previous year of £7,462 (64 per cent) and £3,463 (22 per cent) respectively. Owner George Hepburn, of JW Gray, said he had not yet been informed of this and as such could not comment.

Some of the other businesses to be affected are Lerwick’s shops: Westside Pine will see its rateable value increase by almost a quarter and the Cope-operated Shetland Soap Company by 21 per cent.

Other accommodation such as guest houses and hostels will also experience increases, with Islesburgh Youth Hostel’s rateable value increasing by 17 per cent and Eddlewood Guest House at Clairmont Place by 30 per cent.

Steve Henry, chairman of the Shetland Tourism Association, said: “Anything that puts the cost of people staying up will have an effect on Shetland.”

Mr Henry said the news this week that NorthLink is to add time to journeys and cut sailings will also be a worry for those in the tourist industry in Shetland.

Shetland Retailers Association chairwoman Janet Davidge said that for businesses that will be affected by the increase it is “bad timing”.

She said: “With the current economic climate it’s just one more thing for businesses to worry about.”

Isles MSP Tavish Scott said he will be writing to the businesses which will be affected by large increases.

Mr Scott said: “Liberal Democrats want to see a transitional period so that the hotels which are facing big increases don’t suffer the full force of these rate rises immediately. We know that the Scottish government doesn’t set the value of every hotel. But the government has chosen to hit hotels with the full increase in just one year.

“Previous administrations have brought major changes like this in slowly, over a period of time. The UK government is doing the same.

“At a time of deep recession, the SNP are hitting the tourism industry in Shetland and throughout Scotland hard.

“On April 1st, some Shetland hotels will be stunned by painful rises in their business rates. The Scottish government can’t take Scotland’s hotel industry for April Fools. They must introduce the scheme which helps these important Shetland businesses.”

The MSP raised the issue at First Minister’s questions last Thursday, criticising the decision to put “extra burdens on Scottish tourism” during a time that will be economically difficult for many businesses and questioned whether the government would change its mind about the increase.

First Minister Alex Salmond responded by stating that the decision to raise the rates had been made by independent assessors, “not by the First Minister or the government” and that the package of relief available to small businesses is “the most generous package in the United Kingdom” under which “60 per cent of Scottish businesses will be better off”.

Violinist Chapman Cheng from the Anderson High School won the Senior Musician of the Year title. Click on image to enlarge.

Already Shetland’s Young Fiddler of the Year, Anderson High School pupil Chapman Cheng added the Young Musician of the Year title to an impressive list of achievements on the penultimate night of the 2010 Schools Music Festival on Wednesday.

Much to her surprise, Junior Young Musician of the Year was pianist Nicola Morrison from White­ness Primary School. She said afterwards that hearing her name being announced had come as a bit of a shock: “At first I never knew it was actually real, I went a bit woozy and stepped forward and said, ‘Oh my god!’”

The 11-year-old said she “prac­tised every day to try and get it perfect”, which has obviously paid off.

Chapman said it felt “great” to have won and he had really enjoyed playing his pieces: “I didn’t really expect to win it. The Grieg [piece] is enormous fun to play; you get all these low moments when you just have a long bow, that’s fun.”

Two special cups were also awarded on the night. The Festival Cup for outstanding individual or group went to Fraser Tait from Sandwick Junior High school, and the Schools Shield went to Dun­rossness Primary School.

Adjudicated by educator and acclaimed musician, the entertaining Eric Tebbet, the night was a display of some of the finest young musical talent the isles has to offer.

The competition began with the junior section and the unenviable task of opening the night went to Bell’s Brae pupil Joe Smith, whose trombone playing showed real tal­ent.

Next up was eventual winner Nicola. She played two piano pieces, Scherzo in E Minor, which dem­onstrated her confident and considered playing and faultless timing and Sea Pink, which was again beautifully played. With a beaming smile and bow she left the stage, to be followed by Rebecca Millar.

The diminutive Sandwick Junior High school pupil took to the stage smiling, and though she may be small, her clear voice soon filled the hall as she sang a dialect song written by her grandfather, Eddie Barclay, What Does Shetland Mean To Me?, fol­lowed by the traditional tune The Unst Boat Song.

She was followed by another Sandwick Junior High school pupil, Pryde McGinlay. Although dwarfed by the cello she gave a confident performance throughout her two pieces.
The fifth act was piano student Amy Laurenson, whose nimble fingers made light work of her piano pieces.

The final performer in the junior section was another singer, Bell’s Brae pupil Lauren Boyle, who sang the musical piece My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music with real conviction, followed by another dialect tune.

Before announcing the junior winner, Mr Tebbet commended all the pupils, saying it was an “absolute pleasure” to be at the event again and commented that it is “amazing what you manage to do in Shetland”.

After a short break the senior section began with Hannah Adam­son, from Sandwick Junior High School. She played two violin pieces with confident, fluid bowing and precise intonation.

She was followed by Brae High School pupil Loris Macdonald, who played two mesmerising piano pieces with seemingly faultless timing, and talented Anderson High pupil Megan Govier, on the trumpet.

Norman Wilmore came to the floor next and transported the audience from the Town Hall to a sultry jazz bar with his soulful rendition of the jazz ballad My Ship, written by Ira Gershwin and made famous by Miles Davis.

Vocalist Mairi Coutts, from the Anderson High School, managed to be both elegant and sassy in her confident performance of a classical aria, followed by the gutsy Don’t Tell Mama from the musical Cabaret.

She was followed by fellow Anderson High Kirsten Hendry on fiddle, who treated the audience first to a set of Tom Anderson tunes, followed by a Canadian set from that country’s Grand Masters, which displayed her unbelievable timing and obvious, seemingly effortless, natural talent.

Andrea Gordon from Sandwick Junior High was next. Her two clarinet pieces were clearly and elegantly played, as was the music of talented Miriam Veenhuizen, from Aith Junior High, who played a Sonata in A minor followed by the Mexican Hat Dance on recorder.

Violinist Chapman then played two beautiful pieces, Meditation by Massenet and Grieg’s Violin and Piano Sonata in G Major, before the evening was brought to a close with saxophonist Scott Leask’s classical piece followed by a bluesy rendition of a tune fittingly entitled Finale.

Before announcing the Senior Young Musician of the Year, Mr Tebbet assured the participants and audience that it was “not easy to pick between the performances” but he had chosen the winner down to their commitment, conviction, consistency and passion.

A Viking display at Clickimin Broch during the 1985 Hamefarin. Click on image to enlarge.

It’s been four years in the planning and expects to attract more than 500 people. This summer’s Shetland Hamefarin is set to become the event of the decade for the hundreds of visitors who are eagerly awaiting a chance to visit the land they or their forebears left.

This is the third such event since the inception of the Hamefarin (or homecoming) in 1960 – the second was held in 1985 and there was an “unofficial” one at the start of the millennium – and its supporters hope in future to hold it every 10 years.

The Hamefarin is an opportunity for those who left Shetland to make their home elsewhere to return for a fortnight of celebrations and reunions, and those descended from emigrants to visit the land of their forebears, perhaps for the first time. Around 320 have registered for the event so far.

Although most of the hamefarers will be from the UK (133 have already registered, more than half from Scotland) sizeable contingents will come from the Antipodes and North America. Australia and New Zealand in particular will be well-represented with 115 people already signed up – there are around 80,000 people with Shetland origins in New Zealand alone following a wave of emigration in the late 19th century, and surnames such as Isbister, Sinclair, Mainland, Manson and Bruce abound.

Of those who have already signed up 49 hamefarers will come from USA, 17 from Canada, two from France and three from Germany, two each from Guernsey and South Africa and one each from Norway and Iceland.

But you don’t have to be visiting to join in the Hamefarin – locals are very much encouraged to take part, whether they have family visiting or not.

The fortnight from 14th to 26th June promises to be a packed and stimulating time. There will be an array of events to welcome the visitors, including trips and exhibitions, with the Hamefarin Club, to be based at Islesburgh Community Centre, at the centre of operations. The club will be a meeting point and provide information on all the events laid on for the visitors, which will showcase Shetland’s heritage and culture in all its forms, from literary to nautical.

The Shetland Family History Society will be on hand to help with family history research and Shetland ForWirds will be promoting the dialect through displays and activities. Local history groups will be passing on their knowledge too.

Shetland Museum and Archives will play a crucial role in the Hamefarin experience, hosting a programme of lectures on topics such as crofting, Shetland literature and, most pertinently, emigration. It is currently preparing an exhibition From Old Rock to New Life, telling the story of islanders who left Shetland from 1500 to the present.

One of the most exciting events will be the launch of Laughton Johnston’s book, A Kist of Emigrants, relating the histories of those who went away to start a new life.
And, of course, music will never be far away.

Shetland Folk Festival Society is to organise a Tammy Anderson tribute concert to celebrate the work of the legendary musician and to commemorate the 100th year since his birth.

This world class line-up will unite musicians from Shetland and Norway, and will feature Dr Anderson’s former student Aly Bain, often regarded as Scotland’s top fiddler, along with his side-kick Phil Cunningham on accordion. One of “Tammy’s Peerie Angels” and founding member of Shetland’s Young Heritage in 1981, Catriona Macdonald, will also return home.

Additionally there will be performances from the two fiddle groups founded by Dr Anderson and still going strong – Shetland’s Heritage Fiddlers and the Shetland Fiddlers Society.
The Folk Festival will also organise a Final Fling, which will include Fiddlers’ Bid, Hom Bru and Sheila Henderson (now Duncan). At the end of this 400 guizers from all 10 Jarl’s Squads, plus Lerwick Junior Jarl’s Squad, will take part in a mass parade around Clickimin Loch prior to burning a specially adapted galley.

Dancing, too, will be strongly featured in the fortnight, with a Hamefarin Dance being organised by the Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Club, with music from the Alan Nicolson Band and the Cullivoe Dance Band.

There will be culture of various different sorts with readings of poetry and prose at Shetland Library, coach trips, sailing trips on the <i>Swan</i> and an exhibition and songs of praise from Lerwick’s Methodist Church. And much, much more is planned to delight the hamefarers.

Leading the organisation of Shetland Hamefarin 2010 is SIC head of business development Douglas Irvine. He said: “With so many enjoyable events in the programme it’s difficult to say what the highlight event is. Hamefarers will certainly be treated to the wealth of local talent. Many hamefarers will be coming to Shetland for the first time, some will be regular visitors and we are confident we have a range of activities to suit all tastes.

“We are keen for local folk to get involved and be part of this very special event.”

During a workshop last month with government-funded advisers Architecture and Design Scotland the council was told it should be open to looking at other sites within the Clickimin/Staney Hill area, which could make the building cheaper and more effective.

During discussion at Thursday’s meeting of the services committee, councillor Frank Robertson said it was also emphasised that the new school would be a major civic building and it was important to look at multiple uses for it, not just teaching.

Councillor Jonathan Wills, leader of last year’s revolt against building at the Knab, said members had been told in the past they could not build on the flat land at Clickimin because of a threat from methane gas seeping up from the former town dump, which lies beneath some of the Clickimin leisure complex and sports parks.

More talks with Architecture and Design Scotland are being organised for the councillors who missed what Mr Robertson described as an eye-opening talk from the organisation last month. It styles itself as “Scotland’s national champion for good architecture, design and planning in the built environment”.

Meanwhile, local architects are working on a small study to update the 1999 plans for a school and halls of residence in the Clickimin/Staney Hill area, setting out possible options. Their work should be completed by the middle of next month.

A lengthy public consultation is also set to get under way in the spring to seek views on the impact of shifting the high school site from the Twageos/Knab area. Part of the exercise will involve looking at new future uses for the buildings and land at the current school once it has moved across town. The formal consultation is a legal requirement when proposing to move a school site and will not be completed until December.

Services chairman Gussie Angus said addressing the fate of the existing school site was very important, not least because of the ear-bashing he gets from people who believe the council already has plans to cover the area in council houses.

Councillors are also to get an update on the legal wrangle between the council and Irish building contractors O’Hare & McGovern who were stopped from building the new school at the Knab site last year just days before work was due to get under way. A confidential report will go before the next services committee on 6th May.

Originally commissioned in 1982, the 60 kilowatt turbine had been showing signs of age. When built it was not only the first of its type in Shetland but formed part of the very first commercially-operated wind energy scheme in Europe.

Now though, thanks to extensive work by the Fair Isle Electrical Company and the collective efforts of islanders, who re-erected it manually when the winch that had been brought in broke down, it is ready once more to start producing energy.

This is an essential task as being far from the National Grid the island has to produce all of its own power.

While it was being repaired the pupils of Fair Isle Primary School, with the help of local artist Fiona Mitchell, took the opportunity to decorate the fan tails as part of their Eco-school renewable energy project.

The children proudly showed off their work prior to the re-erection of the mill on Saturday.

The company usually takes orders for sea and marine equipment, such as tanks for hatcheries and storage, navigation aids and other prototypes, but has just completed a water jet to be fitted in a surf ride for one of the biggest artificial surf companies in the world.

Owner and manager Fred Gibson said the firm was originally offered the chance to build the entire ride, but due to space limitations had to build part of it instead.

The prototypes and scale models were built last year before being tested at Strathclyde University. The team then got to work making the real thing.

He said: “Last week we put it all together here, our part of it; the rest of the ride is being manufactured in the south coast of England.”

The company builds the parts out of timber before putting them together and sealing them with layers of glass.

He said: “We have to make all the shapes first and build them out of timber and spray them to get a highly polished surface, so we can get a relief surface; then we build the parts. It’s a bit like Airfix!”

The parts are then constructed before being wrapped in layers of fibreglass so that the final part can withstand a high volume of pressure.

The parts for the ride will be con­structed at a water park in Kansas. The ride itself will feature the pump, which will jet high pressured water up a slope which will then be able to be surfed on.

Shetland Composites was com­missioned by Glasgow based com­pany Murphy’s Waves, one of the world’s leading surf machine com­panies which supplies artificial surf machines all over the world.

The company manufactures a wide range of artificial surf and wave machines and rides which feat­ure in some of the world’s top holi­day destinations, including Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Disney World in Florida, South Africa, New Zealand and even Baghdad.

It also creates wave systems for sea survival training purposes which are used by offshore workers, air and sea rescue services and the armed forces.

Mr Gibson and his team were limited to building parts for the ride due to the size of their current premises at Gremista. However more room would allow them to build finished products and get more business.

Mr Gibson said: “We’re in the process of applying for funding that would allow the big projects to come our way, at the moment we tend to cherry pick the best ones, or what we’ve done in the past is the tooling and other people build the actual parts.”

He said he hoped that if the funding came through they could build around 10 complete rides a year.

Douglas Murphy of Murphy’s Waves said he had heard about Shet­land Composites through another company, Edinburgh Des­igns, which had worked with Mr Gibson and recommended him.

“Fred has fairly unique expertise in the creation of glass fibre pro­ducts, and Shetland Composites are very good at what they do.”

Silage, hay and food pellets have had to be sourced in bulk to keep beasts fed during the longest cold weather period since 1987.

Although it mostly cleared this week snow has maintained a lingering presence over the isles since as far back as December, pushing the price of hay up to £50 a round bale as demand for feed has out-stripped available supply.

Some crofters, who have been used to a succession of mild winters in recent years, have even been caught out by the conditions and have had to buy in extra food for their beasts at the last minute.

Agricultural suppliers have re­ported a brisk trade over the last couple of months with demand for processed feed such as pellets also stronger than usual.

Shetland’s NFU president Kath­leen Sinclair said many had problems finding good bales.

“Sourcing good quality hay or straw is proving more difficult,” she said. “With freight the cost of a round bale of hay in Shetland is £50 and straw in the region of £40 which is very expensive. “There is still hay available on the mainland, but of poorer quality, and if the snow were to continue it could be a problem. In my own opinion over the last years we have had milder wet winters so we didn’t need to feed hay or silage outside for very long. “This year the snow started before Christmas and lay for three weeks, then it was off and on until now, so it’s the longest spell we have had for a lot of years.”

One person who has faced problems with the weather is Weis­dale crofter Agnes Leask.

She said she had struggled to keep a flock of 20 in-by ewes on her holding at Cott fully fed – even though the land they were on had not been grazed on during the summer.

She was forced to buy in extra high protein feed blocks for the animals at a cost of around £9 each to help supplement their diet of baled silage.

“Normally in the winter you would give them a feeding block every two weeks, but the price of feeding blocks have gone up this year,” she said.

“In a normal winter it would be mostly once a fortnight I would put out a block to 20 sheep. This winter, during the snow, by the end of one week they had finished it – even though they had the baled silage as well – because they needed the high protein energy the blocks give them.”

She said the approximate price of a small “black bale”, or silage bale, had varied from £20 to £30 but prices have gone up as demand has increased.

Smaller producers, she said, do not have adequate storage for the larger bales, meaning they are forced to buy more of the smaller ones instead at more regular intervals.

“This is small-scale. This is crofting agriculture. We haven’t got the facilities to store big bales. We’ve had some very mild winters. In years gone by those in-by sheep would have just got feed-blocks.

“We would have a few small bales of hay because you’ll always get a peerie bit of snow. We keep a few small bales and that has been enough to do them for the last 10 years or more.

“The good news is when my accounts go in next year there will be not a penny for the taxman – the local feed merchants will get it all!”

News of the problem has now reached the corridors of power at Holyrood, where evidence from crofters is currently being sifted through which could in­fluence the Crofting Reform Bill.

Last week West Side area assessor Jim Nicolson told MSPs the winter was hitting crofters hard in the pocket.

Speaking to The Shetland Times, he said his two holdings in Aith containing 190 ewes between them were self-sufficient, however he had heard from plenty of other producers who had been affected by the big freeze.

Mr Nicolson said feed was going up because of rising running costs experienced by contractors, as well as supply and demand.

“With the increase in oil prices things like bale-wrap have been very expensive,” he said. “Baling is quite expensive in any case.

It would probably cost around £12 to get a bale of silage with a contractor, but then you have artificial fertiliser that needs to be applied to the ground – so that’s an additional cost.”

Those factors, he said, might push the real cost of a bale to between £15 and £17. However high demand in the cold weather was steadily pushing the price upwards further.

“The price of hay has actually doubled. You could pay up to £50 for a round bale,” he said.

He said someone with 100 sheep may have had to buy an additional 20 bales on top of the 50 to 60 they had initially bought to see them through the winter.

Most farmers will also buy in supplementary feed, but Mr Nicolson said many preferred to work with bales during the worst of the winter period, because feeding boxes used for pellets had “frozen to the ground or filled with snow”.

“That has probably resulted in some people wanting to continue feeding silage,” he said.

That hasn’t stopped animal feed suppliers from having a busy period over the last couple of months.

Harbro Ltd, Shetland’s largest supplier of agricultural feed, has seen trade steadily increase since the snow started.

“We’ve had quite a busy time. We’ve had a struggle to keep up with the demand for feed,” said Harbro’s local branch manager, Stephen Leask – although he insisted Harbro’s considerable size gave it the economies of scale to help prevent prices from spiralling upwards.

“I would think demand is up by a quarter on the same period last year,” he said. “You have the situation in Shetland where you are having to feed anyway because there is very little grass.”

Michael Laurenson of Blueshell Mussels excelled at an entrepreneurs development programme at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

The business plan competition was won by a team including Mr Laurenson, whose business was one of seven from the Highlands and Islands taking part in the week-long programme. They were working with over 120 businesses from 30 countries.

The programme was made pos­sible through a partnership Highl­ands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has developed with MIT, which gives local businesses access to world class business and sales train­ing and the latest in research in management and leadership techniques.

Mr Laurenson said: “Our time at MIT was a fantastic learning exper­ience with world class lecturers who could hold an audience with every word. I took back a number of key fundamentals learned at MIT which I find myself applying subconsciously on a daily basis.

“It changes the way you think about things and helps you examine where you really want to go in your business. I have learned a lot of practical lessons from some very high calibre people which will undoubtedly help me to grow the business back home.”

Blueshell Mussels is a family business formed in 1997, which has developed world-leading cultivation techniques to supply quality mussels to leading restaurants and major supermarkets.

Captain Gray is operations and marine manager at the De Kastri oil terminal in Khabarovsk Kai, eastern Russia, where the average winter temperature is anything from -20°C to a toe curling (or should that be frost biting) -30°C.

Working a shift system, he spends around half the year there and the other half tending his croft in Aywick.

Commuting around 5,000 miles may seem extreme, but Captain Gray said he is used to working abroad and travelling a lot.

“I’ve worked all over the world China, Nigeria – even Orkney.” He said that his current posting was however probably the furthest and most difficult to get to out of all of his work destinations.

“It’s very remote. The main thing that went on here before oil was lumber and cutting down trees. There’s no nightlife.”
He said that while the area is fairly isolated, he doesn’t find this to be a problem.

He said: “Before I came here they told me, ‘It’s not very great, there’s no people, only three of four thousand’, but I thought, well compared to Yell, that’s huge! I don’t find it that bad; it’s no guttery like home in the winter.”

For much of the year the bay outside the terminal is frozen. However in the summer the weather is warm enough for local children to swim in the sea.

This winter’s trip home is much more like what the captain is used to: “Today it’s around -10°C in Yell, which is unusual. But this would be a fine winter’s day in Russia.”

Captain Gray has worked at the De Kasrti terminal since just after it opened in 2006. The oil terminal is one of the biggest in eastern Russia, but according to Captain Gray it is “braaly peerie” compared to the Sullom Voe terminal.

Nevertheless, the terminal re­cently received a Terminal of the Year Award at the fourth International Congress of the Oil Terminal 2009 conference, as well as the ExxonMobil Presidents Award, which is the highest award a terminal can recieve within ExxonMobil.

The oil terminal also received a Terminal Safety Award, which Captain Gray was personally res­ponsible for.

He said: “I am delighted in particular for the nationals on site. This award is only made once every three years. Having been on site during this period there is certainly a personal satisfaction in being involved. But I’m just a small cog in the whole process.

“The work involved is very varied, you never know what may arise. You have to be flexible and be able to prioritise.”
However, despite his high pressure job, Captain Gray said his “second job” is no less demanding: “The biggest issue is trying to fit in the crofting end of things.

“My ‘back to back’ for work for the past three years stays in South Africa and within reason we fit our work and time home schedule to suit our own needs. It’s a bit of a joke that he is arranging his holidays depending on when I’m slipping tups or clipping sheep!

“When I walk out the door at work he walks in and takes over. But when I walk out the door at home there is nobody walking in to take over croft! However I have an arrangement with very dependable neighbours.”

Travel time also has to be done in his time “off”, and as it can take around three or four days to get back to Shetland, Captain Gray often spends less time in the isles than he does in Russia.

When he spoke to The Shetland Times last week the captain had been due to make a return trip to Russia but was snowed in at Yell, giving him a bit of extra time at home.