Pepys: streets of Fleck
Fleck
Wed 15 May 2013 13:11
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Wednesday 15th May, 2013
Position 7:53S,
30:03W
Thanks to Vicky for noticing that I have been to
Africa and back recently: I must have given a coordinate as east rather than
west! The map plotting software at Mailasail doesn't understand human
frailty. I can correct this once I get back home. Must mention that her
Christmas present, plastic cookware, is performing remarkably,
especially the bread 'tin'. It is enduringly fascinating to see the flames from
the gas oven licking around the bright red plastic, and yet when the bread is
cooked it shells out effortlessly, and the plastic is shiney like a new
penny, and doesn't even need washing.
The good diarist can extract interest from the most
banal of events or observations, but I still think Samuel Pepys would have
struggled a bit out here. The trip to the foredeck and back is only 18 metres,
and you tend not to meet many other folk along the way. Usually some flying fish
however, hereabouts remarkably small: just two or three inches, this is good as
they dry out so quickly that they hardly smell. Last night however a bigger
squid came aboard: about 20cm long, on the forward coach roof. Poor thing
squirted his ink everywhere, and this has required industrial strength cleaners
to eradicate.
The weather changes but little, generally lighter
winds in the last 24 hours. Stability is what we like: if the wind starts to
increase you imagine an imminent gale, if it starts to decrease you anticipate
slapping and slopping around in calm airs and persistent
swell. Time and tides look all wrong at this
stage for an uninterrupted daylight entry into the river at Cabedelo, but I will
worry only when it is due, otherwise the weather really will change and upset my
calculations.
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