7th Dec 2006, What shall we do with the .....
Fleck
Thu 7 Dec 2006 13:13
|
Noon 7th Dec 17 13N, 35 01W
146 miles since yesterday, estimating 17 N,
37.5 W by noon tomorrow.
Lovely morning to you all, cloudless today after
several days of overcast weather. Seas and wind largly unchanged, Geoff reckons
that the boat rolls through about 85 degrees in its more exuberant mode.
Whatever it is rolling continuously, nothing can be put down on a flat surface,
in the gally, on the chart table where I am typing, or in the cockpit unless
there is a hand to steady it.
Yesterday we decided to change the main foresail
sheets, to guard against chafe, and to gybe both foresails so that we can come
onto a true easterly (sorry, Geoff say it should be westerly, I'll argue it out
with him later) course. To do this all the sailing kit: spinnaker poles,
guys and uphauls have to be moved from one side to the other. I guessed
that it would take about an hour, but it took that long for us to retrieve
the spinnaker pole from the atlantic, let alone anything else. Let the Press
Office at Russells Hall Hospital take up the story....
Press Release, embargoed until Christmas day, after
the Queens Speech (should be safe enough, Stephen?)
It is the case that a former employee of the Dudley
Group of Hospitals was found yesterday afternoon swinging from the mast of
a sailing boat, 40 feet above the deck, in the mid Atlasntic Ocean,
wearing a 't' shirt, possibly a pair of
underpants, and with a comando knife between his teeth.
A Source, possibly a senior member of the
Anaesthitics Department, said that although another skipper in the Atlantic Rally had gone suddenly crazy three nights ago,
and his boat abandoned, this was unlikey to have been the cause of this latest
incident, the former emplyee having been mad for years.
The only eyewitness to the event, a current member
of rthe Anaesthitics Department said. 'I was checking my instruments throughout,
so it was nothing to do with me, any changes that may have been made to the
boats nitrous oxide levels would hardly have have had this sort of effect.
He told me that he was going to try out a new procedure to get the foresail down
more easily, but that it got stuck, so the the foresail would neither come up or
go down, so he had to go up and cut the rope that was causing the
trouble'.
Anne Close, in charge of the Hospitals
Clinical Governance Program, said 'These bloody doctors should know better.
If they had brought this new procedure to the attention of the New Procedures
and Interventions Committee, the would never have happened, and the hospital
would have been saved considerable embarrassment. As both the doctors involved had agreed to accept a period of
counselling, to be conducted at the Old Courthouse (its a pub, Broadstairs),
disciplinary action would not be neccessary on this occasion.
Ends........
Roger the cabin boy adds; Many of you who only knew
RJB in his manager's suit may have had difficulty imagining him up that mast (
..on a point of order, Mr Chairman..) but we think we know people quite well
just because we have worked with them for years. It's only under
circumstances like this that other facets of our natures are truly
revealed. Just waiting still for my ultimate test!
|