Mercury Rising scrubs up for arrival.

Mercury-rising
Sat 10 Dec 2005 17:12
Well dear reader, with arrival somewhere (not sure exactly where yet) due tomorrow, the crew have been digging around looking for long forgotten personal care items. Razors, soap and, for the lucky ones, shampoo are being dragged out of storage where they have languished untouched for weeks. Some crew members are having to re-read the instructions for some of these things - it having been so long since they were last used. Those crew members who have adopted slightly more, shall we say "alternative" modes of dress (more like perverts to me - ed) while on voyage will be required to choose more orthodox clothres for our landfall and so avoid the risk of arrest and possible deportation. The skipper is also due to give a lecture on dos and don'ts for visiting sailors when reaching land for the first time in weeks. For some reason he insists on giving separate talks to the male and female members of the crew.
 
In the last miles of the epic voyage skipper is having to reconcile the needs of the various groups of holiday-makers on board. The Sea Cadets have been clamouring for more speed at any cost while the Saga Holidays representative has been complaining that unnecesssary high speeds makes looking at the Reader's Digests and National Trust magazines in the ship's library much more difficult. Hopefully a compromise has been found with alternating days of sedate progress for the older passengers with adrenaline rushes for the more tempestuous.
 
Navigating has become easier too, thanks to a crew-member recalling a long forgotten fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This means that when we wake up in the morning we just turn the boat so the back, blunt end with the swimming platform (the "stern") is pointing towards the sun, and then with the sharper end (the "front") we follow the sun as it moves across the sky until it sets over the horizon. We just hope that the ship's course does not change too much over the 12 hours or so of darkness, but as we have seen other boats going our way we assume they must be using the same navigating techniques as us, and are getting it broadly right.. Around the middle of the day following the sun gets tricky as it appears to be almost directly overhead, so we have solved that problem by having a long, leisurely lunch, and when we wake from our naps the sun is usually close enough to the western horizon to follow.
We are told that there are apparently several islands around our destination and it is important to make sure you are in the correct lane well before the junction. We asssume everything will be adequately signposted. Land will come just in time, as it appears that our water supplies have run out. "Black Adder" fans will know the consequence of this.