her parka, deep blue in colour and drawn in at the waist to give it shape. While she and the girls had the hoods of their coats up, Gabe had stuffed his woollen beanie hat into one of his reefer jacket's pockets, because sometimes he enjoyed the feel of rain or wind on his face and head. His hair was already darkened by the hard rain, but his only concession to the weather was to pull his coat collar up round his neck.
He was pointing at a metal column topped by a square-shaped box that rose from the sea like a sentinel just over two miles from the harbour boundary. A scarcely visible ladder ran down its length into the choppy waters.
'How can you fit in there, Daddy?' asked Cally peering up from beneath her hood. 'It's very tiny.'
Gabe grinned. 'It's bigger than it looks. That's where I'll probably be next week, checking it out.'
'It's too far to swim,' she said, frowning.
What they couldn't see was the important submerged part of the structure, two giant twin rotors resembling aircraft propeller blades attached to either side of a steel monopile which was set into a deep hole drilled into the seabed. Essentially it was a brilliantly conceived device for harnessing power from the sea itself, using tidal flows to turn the rotors.
It was situated where full advantage could be taken of the Bristol Channel's high tidal current velocities; because sea water was eight hundred times more dense than air, quite slow velocities of water could generate significantly more energy than whole crops of surface windmills, and with considerably more regularity and predictability. Gabe's company APCU Engineering (UK) was but one of a consortium of varied companies involved in the production and financing of the prototype, with the UK's DTI and European Commission also partly funding and supporting the enterprise. The parent company, whose invention this was, was aptly named Seapower. The end view was to create whole lines of such marine turbines just off the coast of countries and continents around the world, most of them linked to national grids.
However, as cost efficient and energy productive as these marine current turbines would be, there was a downside, and this was one of the reasons APCU's engineering skills had been sought for the prototype. Maintenance and repairs were, to say the least, challenging, and APCU's engineers had suggested that if the structure's rotors and drive chain could be raised above the waterline when necessary, then maintenance and repair could far more easily be carried out working from a surface vessel. Gabe, who many times in the past had helped design and worked on offshore oil rigs, had been sent to Devon to replace a colleague who had had to resign from the project for health reasons. The temporary assignment was to assist in solving the various but crucial technical problems involved in such an operation.
Loren tugged at his elbow. 'Dad, won't it be awful working out there all day? What if there's a storm?'
'Uh-uh. I only have to visit the actual site now and again. Most of the problems are gonna be worked out on paper. S'why I brought my laptop and printer with me.' The AutoCAD computer program was a boon to the engineering industry, solving problems that used to take hours, if not weeks, in seconds. 'Most of my work time's gonna be spent at the company's local office in Ilfracombe.' Ilfracombe, some ten or twelve miles away, was the nearest big town to Hollow Bay. 'And then a lot of work I can do back at the house, so you'll probably be seeing much more of me than usual.'
'But you brought your laptop too, Mum,' Loren said, turning to Eve. 'Why do you need yours?'
'Oh, just to keep hooked up to a few magazines back in London. You know I still do occasional freelance work.'
'But you haven't for a long, long time.'
'No, and it's time I got back to doing something useful.' God, Eve thought to herself, as if writing trivia for women's magazines was anything useful. At least if some assignments did
He was pointing at a metal column topped by a square-shaped box that rose from the sea like a sentinel just over two miles from the harbour boundary. A scarcely visible ladder ran down its length into the choppy waters.
'How can you fit in there, Daddy?' asked Cally peering up from beneath her hood. 'It's very tiny.'
Gabe grinned. 'It's bigger than it looks. That's where I'll probably be next week, checking it out.'
'It's too far to swim,' she said, frowning.
What they couldn't see was the important submerged part of the structure, two giant twin rotors resembling aircraft propeller blades attached to either side of a steel monopile which was set into a deep hole drilled into the seabed. Essentially it was a brilliantly conceived device for harnessing power from the sea itself, using tidal flows to turn the rotors.
It was situated where full advantage could be taken of the Bristol Channel's high tidal current velocities; because sea water was eight hundred times more dense than air, quite slow velocities of water could generate significantly more energy than whole crops of surface windmills, and with considerably more regularity and predictability. Gabe's company APCU Engineering (UK) was but one of a consortium of varied companies involved in the production and financing of the prototype, with the UK's DTI and European Commission also partly funding and supporting the enterprise. The parent company, whose invention this was, was aptly named Seapower. The end view was to create whole lines of such marine turbines just off the coast of countries and continents around the world, most of them linked to national grids.
However, as cost efficient and energy productive as these marine current turbines would be, there was a downside, and this was one of the reasons APCU's engineering skills had been sought for the prototype. Maintenance and repairs were, to say the least, challenging, and APCU's engineers had suggested that if the structure's rotors and drive chain could be raised above the waterline when necessary, then maintenance and repair could far more easily be carried out working from a surface vessel. Gabe, who many times in the past had helped design and worked on offshore oil rigs, had been sent to Devon to replace a colleague who had had to resign from the project for health reasons. The temporary assignment was to assist in solving the various but crucial technical problems involved in such an operation.
Loren tugged at his elbow. 'Dad, won't it be awful working out there all day? What if there's a storm?'
'Uh-uh. I only have to visit the actual site now and again. Most of the problems are gonna be worked out on paper. S'why I brought my laptop and printer with me.' The AutoCAD computer program was a boon to the engineering industry, solving problems that used to take hours, if not weeks, in seconds. 'Most of my work time's gonna be spent at the company's local office in Ilfracombe.' Ilfracombe, some ten or twelve miles away, was the nearest big town to Hollow Bay. 'And then a lot of work I can do back at the house, so you'll probably be seeing much more of me than usual.'
'But you brought your laptop too, Mum,' Loren said, turning to Eve. 'Why do you need yours?'
'Oh, just to keep hooked up to a few magazines back in London. You know I still do occasional freelance work.'
'But you haven't for a long, long time.'
'No, and it's time I got back to doing something useful.' God, Eve thought to herself, as if writing trivia for women's magazines was anything useful. At least if some assignments did
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