Tearing up 5 pound notes!
Oriole
Sat 5 Feb 2011 16:20
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Falmouth Harbour, Antigua 17:01.08N
61:46.27W
If you really think that yachting is still like
standing under a cold shower tearing up five pound notes you need to get into
the 21st century superyachting league. The shower out here is warm but the
notes are more like 1,000,000 US dollar bills. Last week the 160 foot
sailing yacht Salperton had a little problem. Nobody knows
quite what happened but in light airs off Guadeloupe the mast came crashing
down, narrowly missing the helmsman and an estimated 6 million US dollars worth
of rig went to the bottom of the sea. Salperton came into English Harbour
and unloaded her enormous boom onto the dock and since when she has been keeping
a low profile! Fortunately nobody was hurt.
Meanwhile we in the junior league are beginning to
think that we are being viewed more like waifs and strays. In the last
couple of weeks we were having dinner with a very generous Danish ex
medical equipment manufacturer who insisted on paying the bill, one of the local
fishermen who we had asked to get us a 2lb lobster, dropped it onboard and
refused his quoted record low price of 15EC dollars per pound
(4EC$=£1). "It's a present for you Skip" When weighed it was actually 4lb! Finally I was having
some plywood cut to a template at one of the local boat builders this
week. Normally the charging meter runs with steam coming out of it at 60
plus US dollars an hour. When I went to the office to pay,
after an interesting chat with the boss he too declined payment, and last night
we went over to Jolly Harbour to have dinner with some friends and even our
favourite taxi driver Oliver gave us a discount price. Maybe I need to
look to my wardrobe or get my hair cut.
 Is the skipper looking like a waif and
stray?
Meanwhile we are sitting quietly in a very
sheltered corner of Falmouth Harbour while a few days of stronger winds and big
seas go through and some of the irritating little jobs that have been piling up
get ticked off the list. The sun is still shining and the temperature down
below is a cool 28C and the water temperature is the same!
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