Cape Canaveral and watching rockets launch!!
Arion's West Indian Adventure
Hermione & Douglas Pattison
Thu 16 Jun 2016 01:46
| Now we were safely in port, we had the small matter of addressing our engine. I will make this brief, as I could tell you the full length version- but that is very boring indeed!! We got an engineer onboard who condemned the motor, and said we would need to fit a new engine. Douglas spent a day looking into a great many options. Stressful for him and very dull. (I at least got to play with the children in the swimming pool so I cannot complain!!) . I should probably also mention that it is about 40 degrees here at the moment. The next door skipper gets wind of our problem, and tut-tuts the other engineers diagnosis. He has a look and somehow manages to get the engine started. It involved some jiggery pokery with a can of very flammable looking liquid- which I was rather nervous of after our Haiti incident. I was poised with fire blanket……….. When the engine sprang into life I nearly hugged Mike the mechanic!! We all whooped for joy (even Alice and Arthur- very sweet!!). So tomorrow, all being well, we will continue up the ICW (due to bad weather and also to be nearby if the engine goes wrong) to Charleston! Meanwhile, because we had arrived here, we decided to visit the Kennedy Space Centre. What a brilliant day out this was. Absolutely fascinating, and something for all ages. Arthur was just loving all of the displays and rockets and each part of the centre is incredibly well thought out. I could have spent a whole week there as there is so much to see and do. The other excellent coincidence is that the following day (today!!) they launched a rocket. Our marina is a couple of miles from the launch pads, so we tuned in to the internet live feed, and Arthur counted down with mission control to BLAST OFF!! it was incredible to watch and hear. It was a very bright trail blaze zooming up into the sky. Because we had the live feed going, we knew when the boosters stopped boosting, and fell off, we knew when the rocket had gone into orbit (which happened very quickly I seemed to think!!) and it made it really special as we had been there the day before! |