Fw: A lady trip

A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Sun 16 Aug 2009 09:21
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 5:23 AM
Subject: A lady trip

Thursday 30th july
crew:- stephen and aileen
Out of the super bunk early, Aileen went ashore to collect the laundry before we flew out to flores, a small island 160 miles to the west of our position.
the laundry looked excellent , except the feckers nicked our new best sheets,and what could we do, ....yes just nothing .their word against ours.
hope they get swine flue. basxxxxxx's
 
meanwhile skipper noticed the bolts holdinc the vang to the mast are all loose again. these were secured in crosshaven some time ago, but obviously not good enough. will have to get a rigger in 'Lagos' to have a look when we arrieve there ..
 
the weather was beautifull as we took off for Flores, but pissing uut of the heavens when we arrieved, our english speakink taxi driver, took us on a tour of the low lying area's of the island and we had a traditional local dish for dinner before retiring to bed in the only 2 star hotel on the island, mind you it was way better than we thought . worth mentioning , the dinner cost us a total of 36 euro's
We listened to some local traditional music un the hotel before we hit the bed about midnight. zzzzzzzzzzzz
 
Friday 31st july
crew:-  stephen and aileen
Out of bed at 6.30 , had hotel breckfast, and off we went with Silvo , the taxi guy, to see the high parts of the island. ahhh, sure it was beautifull, and especially all those ' hydranga' hedges, Aileens favourate flower. they are everywhere on the islands, but especially on this island. again the volcano lakes, japaneese ceder tree's, water fall's, and scenery in general was amazing, and to think that I thought that the Azores were just a bunch of rocks out in the middle of the atlantic,  mind you, I was not good on the geography thing anyway.
We flew back to terceira at midday to more bloody rain, just like home , except warmer.
On arrival Aileen took off up town while stephen got into the forward loo again, after changing the pump and 3 hours later , the thing did not work any better.
thats just pure shit. ahhh well, after all , thats boats for you,
any way , following discussions with H. Gibson ,we decided we had a bkocked holding tank, and we would have this emptied when we got back to Ponto Delgada........
 
18.00 hrs, after all that, we had a gin and tonic on A lady with Frank and Yvonne Ranalow.and their friend Eddie Mc Court. Frank has an Oyster 39, a lovely, well seasoned ketch, apart from the fact that he went to school with the Gibson twins, his father had a lough fyne skiff, just like " cruachan "...
 god, what a small world..
we had dinner up town, as we had an early start the following morning.... so into the super bunk and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz 
 
Saturday 1st august
crew :- Stephen and Aileen
06.00 hrs got out of the super bunk, as we had cleared our papers yesterday and paid the reasonable marina charges of 20 euro's per night, we sailed
out of Angria, and headed for Sao Migeul. and Ponto Delgada. The trip took 11 hours to cover the 95 miles or so.
18.00 we arrived in ponto delgado. we moored on the new marina, and went to mass, Aileen got the hair done on the way back,
we congratulated Cormac Mc Henry and the commodore " Peter Ronaldson"  on a well organised , great trip.
the skipper watched " master and commander" on the boat's telly before goimg to the super bunk. zzzzzzzzzzzzz
 
 
 
Sunday 2nd August
crew :- Stephen, Aileen, Sarah, and Arnaud Disant (the french man)
08.30  Sarah and Arnaud arrived on the boat, after setteling in, Aileen and Sarah did a tour of the eastern end of the island, while Stephen and Arnaud
took A lady round to the fuelling berth, to get fuel ,clear the ships papers for departure later in the day, and to empty the fwd holding tank...we discovered the tank was empty anyway, so now the problem has to be somewhere else.
after topping up the deisel, we worked out that she only uses 7.1 litres of fuel per hour , when running at 1800 revs. we think thats good.
15.00 hrs. All 4 of us did a tour of the 7 lakes on the western end of the island, just to give the new commers a flavour of the azores before we
sailed off at 19.00 hrs..
 
The weather was perfect,(as it was all day). we sailed off on an easterly course , heading for Lagos in southern Portugal. the wind was behind us , and we were like the cats with the cream. we saw lots of dolphins  on our way, all different varieties, playing around the boat, their acrobatics were amazing.we
were suitable impressed..
 
Stephen ans Sarah did watch untill 02.30 and Aileen and Arnaud took over untill 06.00 hrs, when we all had little or no breckfast, just not hungry...