Out and about.

Oriole
Sat 22 Jan 2011 22:29
Deep Bay, NW Antigua  17:07.67N  61:53.22W
 
There is always someone worse off than you - well usually.  While we were successfully wrestling with recalcitrant inflexible exhaust pipes under the cabin floor a friend had found four gallons of water in his diesel tank.  Diesel engines do not like being given water to fuel them but he was lucky that none got through to the engine but getting it out of the tank together with all the other crud has not proved an easy job.  But success is on the way.
If forty feet of Oriole produces lots of problems imagine what 300 feet of steam yacht built in 1930 can throw up.  While we were on the dock sorting out our exhaust the most beautiful Edwardian steam yacht Nahlin berthed close by.  No-one ever will ever tell you who owns these wonderful craft but a quick perusal of Google has thrown up her history.  Built in 1930 by John Brown in Glasgow for a jute millionairess, she was chartered by King Edward V111 for his somewhat controversial cruise around Eastern Europe in 1936 with Wallace Simpson just before he abdicated.  Later bought by King Carol of Romania she ended up as a restaurant ship on the Danube and somehow managed to survive the communist era.  She was acquired by a yacht broking  RCC member and has finally been extensively restored under the ownership of none other than the famous vacuum cleaner inventor Sir James Dyson.  She is still steam driven and was seen in Dartmouth, Devon in July.  A regular visitor to Falmouth Antigua is another Edwardian motor yacht Talitha G who shared this anchorage with us yesterday. She was also built in 1930 and is owned by the Getty family and had an extensive refit in Devonport Dockyard where she emerged in 1993 in pristine condition.  The extraordinary 250 foot sailing yacht Mirabella V on which our son Andrew was mate and the equally extraordinary 280 foot Maltese Falcon have also been in Falmouth this week. 
 
   
 
             Sir James Dyson's Nahlin gracing the dock in Falmouth.                           Talitha G in Deep Bay, Antigua moments before the sun set with a green flash.