Day 9 Johnny be Goode position 36:47.41S 154:35.29E

Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Thu 9 Dec 2010 00:20
NZT 1300

Sunfish, Rouge Diesel can, Great white Shark, food fights and Gaffer tape!!

 
From the title I guess you guy’s are expecting something exciting, I’m sorry to disappoint, it was just your average delivery day, with the slight increase in wind we covered some miles today, and up till about 2/3 in the afternoon it was just your average day at the office, then a series of events transpired to make it more interesting than the average day.
 
First off during a routine pit stop for fuel the guys added a 20 Ltr can of to the fuel tank, usually we take two over a 24 hour period but because of the amount of sailing we had done the second can was hardly touched at all and we were all in high spirits because at that point we knew that if needed we could motor all the way into Eden without falling short. So James and Leigh we tiding up, cleaning any excess diesel off the deck etc. and then the routine is to reattach both the empty and full fuel cans to the the rail so we could be on our way, whilst lashing on the cans, Leigh inadvertently turn his back on the rouge can and it jumped overboard! Oh bother we all said at the same time!  The guys hurriedly
finished tying off the remaining cans while the rouge one was getting further and further away until it was out of sight. You can imagine how please we were and we turned the yacht around and back tracked 1/2 nm to see if we could find the diesel can, well the first pass we couldn’t see anything and then we started at the beginning of our original route and found it about 1/4 mile later, we were really happy to get it back on deck and things just went back to the normal amount of chaos.
 
About an hour later Leigh spots this 4 mtr Sunfish which was basking in the sun, which I must say was nice to see. then I had to go and spoil by spotting a 13ft Great White on the surface, equally impressive but not as friendly looking!!
 
So as normality continued we were all bimbling around to get stuff organised for the night shift and dinner, one of the guy’s noticed that the front hatch had a slight drip coming in and we investigated and decided to use some of the silver tape that ‘Eric the legendary Mechanic’ had left behind to seal the hatch from the outside, well by now you all know how much James likes going on the foredeck and he went up armed with tape and a towel to rectify the problem. One of the sheets at the front of the yacht had got caught in the seal which was probably the cause but we decided to tape it anyway and it has fixed the problem. So again back to the mundane and while Leigh was cooking dinner a wave caught us off guard and threw a lot of things out of the galley including a pot of potatoes on the stove and a jar of gherkins which smashed on the floor. Fortunately the the water wasn’t boiling. so everything was cleaned up and Leigh started again. It was at this time that we putting a reef in the main to make it more sedate for the crew that were off watch so they could get to sleep and yes you guessed it another bloody wave hit us on the side and the food dive off the stove again!!! this was now getting a tad annoying to say the least.
 
I’m sorry that this is a little late but it has been a busy morning at the office here the wind has increase slightly and we are soldering on to Eden at present we are 225 nms from Eden and making good time and everyone is in good spirits.
 
Well they say worse things can happen at sea, which they can, but why the hell couldn’t the guys that organised all this shit pick on another yacht and not lay it all at our door...hmm
anyway TIS (this is sailing), no harm or foul, everybody is happy and feed bangers and mash, which incidentally has spent more time on the carpet than I have, if you can believe that! By tomorrow evening we will be safely tied up in Eden and I hope all your days have been as normal as mine and the crew of JBG.
 
 
 
Cheers
 
 
Mark, James and Leigh