Groundhog Day
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sun 23 Jul 2006 13:21
Dear Friends
Here we are again, not much has changed in
the last week.
Yanmar and the local marine engineers
conspired between them to do absolutely nothing. Despite an engineer having
confirmed nearly 2 weeks ago that the parts were ordered and I would pay, they
did nothing. It was only when they sent a photographer (seriously) round last
Tuesday that we found out that nothing had been ordered. As those who know
the skipper might imagine, his advice to the photographer was direct and
unambiguous, not least as there was a 25 knot wind trying to push us on to the
dock at the time...
So we've fallen back again on the excellent
team of friends in Plymouth and spares are winging their way here from the
UK and due tomorrow - we shall fit them ourselves.
We did have a successful 'fishing' trip
earlier in the week. Following the sight of a yacht on the beach (see last
week's blog), we reckoned that there might be a spare anchor going so we had a
good snorkel off the beach and found a 60 lb plough. This was much too large for
the yacht we saw and even for us, but we managed to barter it with the marina
staff in exchange for 2 nights berthing.
Pic (right to left) a nautical
interpretation of "The Anchorage Bar and Grill" for our friends in
Greenwich.
This morning we had another snorkel ("la
chasse des ancres") and found a medium sized Bruce which would be very handy. It
is rather firmly wedged into a rock and is at the limit of George's free diving
at about 9 metres down, so we'll save it for when we get Blue Sky repaired and
have a tug with the yacht. The locals seem a little bemused at us on a rather
posh looking yacht going off on salvaging expeditions, but it keep us and them
entertained.
We were further entertained by the local
fire-fighting aircraft doing practice runs - seriously close to the beach as we
hope can be seen from this photo. They were virtually picking up water between
the swimmers - no worries about health & safety here.
Lukasz left after his scheduled 2 weeks,
sadly with rather less sailing than we had hoped and is now working on securing
sponsorship for a China expedition from his university. He will definitely be
back to Corsica though.
And the other really good news is that after
two and a half months, Michael managed to get the satellite system working on
his computer. This means of course that the blog will continue, wherever we
are.
As I write, we are waiting for Diana to
arrive and looking forward to repairing the engine and exploring Corsica with
Di.
Best wishes
George and Michael
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