Saturday 21st June 2008 - The 'Blog Slave' speaks out!
Callidus Harwich and Beyond
Richard Wells
Sat 21 Jun 2008 06:19
Hi
Bloggers!
There have
been no updates since Tuesday when we arrived in Lyme Regis because the No.1
battery went flat at the same time as the laptop battery. No shore power
was available in Lyme Regis. We went on to the quay on Wednesday morning to
do various jobs and avoid the F8 in the bay! With hindsight we didn't
make a determined enough effort to charge the No1 whilst in Lyme. No.2
battery is out of bounds (it has to be saved for engine starts) so charging
power was only achieved when we ran the engine part of the way to
Torquay. When we got to Torquay their shore network was down so no work
on transferring the system to Richard's laptop could easily be done
and so Dick spent the evening sorting and packing his small mountain of gear.
What a lash up but pretty typical I suppose.
I have
decided that whatever you achieve on the internet when at sea in an old boat is
very hard won and hard work, which is expected to be accomplished on top of
other crewing duties like cooking, cleaning & washing up, doing jobs
and never mind all that navigating, changing sails and steering malarkey.
A new crew
role has been created - that of 'BLOG SLAVE' - "An' oi think 'e should git
more pie 'n 'ev loit doo'ies moysilf! Yip, that oi
do..."!
Dick is now
home (via a hire car) with the slightly damaged satellite phone - it
got bounced out of its cradle I'm afraid and some bits are still in the bilges.
Peter found the biggest piece. It still works and I expect the case can be
repaired. I couldn't easily put the system on to Richard's laptop due
to Torquay's network problem. Further updates will be via Richard's
email whenever he can find a shore network as he makes his way west and south.
He could use his t-mobile 'dongle', of course, but at what
expense? 'We just
don't know' as Patrick Moore always says - 'Its a mystery of the
Universe'.
Today
(Saturday 21st June) Callidus is in Dartmouth - really Kingswear, with
a day off. Richard & Peter are going up to Paignton on the train. Both
Bernard Brooks and Pete Wills also leave yesterday or today from Dartmouth
so Richard and Peter are the only crew until Plymouth when I think someone else
joins in the the fun.
Retrospective updates, tracks and a whole load of
photos will be posted later this morning and tomorrow, so keep watching this
space! Incidentally have any of you tried the RSS link? It saves some time in
looking for updates and reading the back log.
From the Blog
Slave
Dick (at
home)