Repeat - sailing is not a safe occupation.
Oriole
Sun 8 Jan 2012 12:55
Falmouth Harbour,
Antigua.
17:01.07N 61:46.28W
Perhaps the title is a slight exaggeration but
there have been two potentially life threatening situations in the last
week. One concerned some friends who were crewing in a race on one of the
old beach built Carriacou sloops. These vary in size but this one was
approximately 40 feet and capsized in a squall tipping the crew into the
water. They were fortunately in a relatively calm patch of sea and the water did
not get up to the hatch otherwise they would have undoubtedly sunk. The
owner had recently been rebuilding and had not battened down the lead
ballast which fell onto the downhill side of the boat. It was righted in
the conventional dinghy manner with crew climbing onto the keel and the
remaining crew were scooped up onto the deck as she came up! No harm done
and a few lessons learnt. No life jackets or other safety
equipment!
Yesterday we were in our dinghy approaching
Gitana which is stern to on the Falmouth Harbour Marina and had to go
under a rope securing another yacht to the dock. stretching 30 yards
all the way across the marina berth. As we approached a crew member
dropped the rope to adjust it and succeeded in garrotting John.
Fortunately we were going quite slowly so apart from the shock of being brought
up short and losing his cap into the water no permanent damage was done.
Some choice words were exchanged mainly in one direction, and the poor crew was
most apologetic!
Oriole in Falmouth harbour
(always one of the smallest)
It is clearly time we left and we have been
chartered by Andrew to take him and his new girl friend for a couple of
days and a night on Oriole.
Meanwhile we have acquired superb new varnish on
our brightwork thanks to Stab and JT Varnishing. The bow section which
needed stripping to bare wood had ten coats and is really
gleaming.
Entrance to Falmouth Harbour looking
West.
Lynn and Ian Dewar breezed in for a couple of days
en route for the Virgin Islands and Lynn's birthday yacht charter. We met
up over several meals and more than few bottles of wine. We think we
have now recovered our equilibrium after a few days abstinance. It was
good to get some news from home and replacements for our credit cards which had
been cloned back in the UK and used for various large fraudulent purchases in SE
England. We think that Gatwick was probably the culprit venue so credit
card users beware. The banks are being increasingly security conscious and
we have had our credit cards stopped on two occasions recently requiring us to
phone the UK. Yesterday having logged into the bank intenet site
using the boat computer John wanted to complete the transactions ashore using
his iPad. The bank detected the use of two different computers in a short
time interval and promptly logged him out! No doubt it is a good thing
that it is becoming more difficult to spend money!!