Sailing around the World with thwe World Arc. ( presently in Cape Town )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Sat 8 Jan 2011 16:51
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THURSDAY 6th
JANUARY 2011
Well, well, here we are back again from Christmas
at home in Ireland, and was it cold, brrrrrr brrrrr blooming
freezing,
apart from all the snow which we very rarely see in
Ireland, the frost caused so much damage and broken watermains
that half the country were without water for almost
2 weeks. but apart from that , we enjoyed the trip very
much.....
We got to see our new grandchildren , our children
,our mothers, brothers and sisters, and our friends, the weddings, the
parties, the dinners, and the
Christmas dinner of course, but more on all that in
bits and pieces over the next while.
Looking back over the last 12 months since we left
St. Lucia on the 6th Jan 2010 , exactly a year ago , we feel proud of our
achievments to date,
In that 12 months we have sailed just over 19,000
miles, visited 15 different countries and stopped at 92 different Islands, ports
and cities.
we met so many wonderfull and interesting people,
not to mention all the Irish we met in almost every spot we stopped
at.
The variety in food, the variety in living
standards , the variety in people, the variety in economies was amazing , and in
all that time
we were very carefull not to eat or drink
anything suspecious for fear of getting food poisining, skipper had to wait
untill returning to Ireland
to get a good dose of jelly belly from a sausage
roll.. would it not make you laugh. not at the time...... ohhhhhhh,
s***t
" Oysters" winter magazine has an article about the
first part of our trip and they presented it very well, well done Oyster and all
their team.
Back to today, North sails returned our mainsail (
Steve Meek, who sailed in Cork week a few times ) and we duly hauled it up the
mast
and tried it for size, It all looks good. and in
particular the new top batton, They also returned our repaired "Parasail "
or as we usually refer to
it as the " KITE "
The riggers reinstalled our spinniker halyard,
and we had Terry ( female diver ) clean the underside of the hull, and she did a
fantastic job.
All in all, we were nearly ready for road and our
new companions for the next leg arrived at midday.
Sham and Emily , who live in "knysna" south africa,
where we met at the beggining of december are sailing with us to St Helina and
onto
Salvidor in Brazil, Skipper knows Sham since our
teens and some of his children would be good friends with
ours.
So for the moment they are our N.B.F,s
Later , they went off in their car and purchased
some of the provisions required for the next month.They did this at "
Woolworths" We are sure you all remember woolworths back in Ireland and England,
which of course closed down a few years ago.but out here, the shops have gone
from strength to strength....
meanwhile Skipper and Aileen went off and had lunch in the Waterfront.
16.30 hrs We all piled into the car and
headed to " Hautbaay" for the skippers briefing and party, however, we
decided to go and have a meal
in an adjoining restaurant called " Mariners Wharf
" after the briefing.
The food was excellent , most of us had fish and
really enjoyed the overall surroundings, a couple of glasses of wine and we were
in top gear.
We have a lot of catching up to do, but then we
have a month to do so.
23.00hrs, we arrived back at the boat and had a
night cap with " Destiny " before hitting the scratchers,
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Ohhhh, would you belive this, despite all the
warnings I give to people NOT to send attachments, photo,s or
brochures, we still recieved
a good number over christmas and the whole system
crashed, we could not send or recieve, so Skipper had to
sent a text to our French friend and IT man "
Arnaud Disant " and get him to delete all messages sent after the 6th Dec.
Now we are back in buisness again.
Happy New Year.
Thats it for now,
signed :- Stephen Hyde (
Skipper )
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