Oriole's last throw of the dice.
Oriole
Sat 23 Jul 2016 11:33
To prepare Oriole for shipping we took our leave from our little slot at the NE corner of Falmouth Harbour, now well discovered by others and sailed round to Jolly Harbour. Here we spent a couple of weeks stripping Oriole's deck, removing and stowing sails, securing running rigging, removing the wind generator blades and masthead wind instruments etc. It was extremely hot and airless and John succeeded in developing a mild form of heat stroke and was laid low for a couple of days.
Jolly Harbour was the scene of much activity and has become a very popular place to lay up for the Hurricane Season. Several of our friends were doing just this and inevitably this meant meeting for meals ashore and parties in villas rented for the laying up period.
Peters and May finally named the ship, BBC Nile, which was to take Oriole to Southampton. We were able to track her passage from Houston and then, after loading some yachts in Fort Lauderdale, to Antigua. She arrived a couple of days early and had to wait at anchor outside St John's for space on the dock. The loading process was highly organised and Peters and May.
The last drops of the Caribbean Sea fall from her keel.
updated us by email on a daily basis as there were minor changes in this very complex operation. Finally our loading time was confirmed and we spent our last night at anchor in Deep Bay, just a stone's show from St John's. We removed the last bits of canvas and were ready early for loading. At 1000 which was our loading time we were still going full speed for the ship having failed to calculate how long it was going to take us to get from Deep Bay! The mobile phone was urging us on but fortunately the ships cranes found something else to do and we did not hold up operations. We had to go alongside the ship down wind, and as there is nothing to tie on to there was a slightly tense moment while we waited for the crew to throw down lines to attach us. The loadmasters came down the pilot ladder, we hurriedly removed the backstay, the lifting strops descended and Oriole was trussed up for lifting. A diver checked that the strops were in the right place, a launch took us off while Oriole was ignominiously snatched from the water for the last time and the last few drops of the Caribbean Sea fell from her keel.
We returned to Oriole on the ship where she was being lashed down to a cradle which was welded to the deck. We re-secured and tensioned the backstay, fitted our newly made cockpit tonneau, locked the cabin and bade Oriole farewell.
Maurice of Blue Crystal, the diving operation in Falmouth Harbour with his new taxi collected us and took us to our hotel where we met some friends for lunch. Exhausted after the exertions and tensions of the last few days we sank into the bed of our air conditioned room and slept until the next engagement - supper.
Unbeknownst to us, far away in Turkey in the middle of a foul night our good and lifelong friend Stuart had fallen from his yacht onto the hard and was taken to the intensive care unit in Marmaris with a serious head injury. We had missed a call while we were out of our room and it was not until we were en route to Trinidad next day that the awful truth emerged as the family tried to contact us.
He was flown by air ambulance back to Queen Square, London where he had worked as a neuro- anaesthetist but the situation was hopeless and he died while we were still in Trinidad staying with our friends.
We flew back to Gatwick, had a brief few days at home before driving to Southampton to retrieve Oriole from BBC Nile. We were aboard Oriole in good time for our unloading, but problems with other boats, one with a big leak and one with flat batteries and unable to start their engine, delayed our launching operation until 1900 on a foul windy and rainy evening.
Unloading operations on a foul evening.
Oriole was uneventfully lowered into the water and we had to climb down the side of the ship thirty feet to join her. The wide runged user friendly pilot ladder was in use by the two yachts tied alongside with their problems, Christine and I had to descend to the deck of Oriole down a conventional rope ladder which was hard against the side of the ship making it extremely difficult to get a foothold on the slippery wet rungs - probably the most stressful part of the whole operation.
We motored round to Shamrock Quay Marina passing the yard where Oriole was built and launched almost exactly 20 years ago.
Now started a couple of weeks of cleaning, polishing, finishing maintenance work and generally preparing Oriole for the queue of potential buyers lined up by the brokers - Red Ensign.
Sale agreed subject to survey - we wait for Oriole to be lifted.
The first viewing had been arranged for a day when we were attending a 50th Reunion for Christine in Kent, and it was during lunch that the broker telephoned me and announced that the first viewer had offered the asking price! Naturally we accepted and the next fortnight was taken up with surveys and preparations for handing over to Oriole's new owners. Her name is to be changed and so Oriole will be no more and so has ended a twenty year association with a wonderful yacht which has looked after us and given us an enormous amount of enjoyment and has been an intimate part of our lives as our second home.
This is written on 17th July in Newport, Rhode Island where we are visiting son Andrew and his wife Caroline and our two year old granddaughter Clara.
Much has happened since Oriole was handed over to her new owners. We have had a visit to Cowes, Isle of Wight, to view the first of three available Seaward 35 pilot boat hulled twin engined motor boats. We considered another on a flying visit to Northern Holland and after two trips to Guernsey finally settled on a very well equipped example of this boat very popular with lifelong sailing yacht sailors in their "retirement".
Oriole, to be based in Falmouth (UK) and Sirdar will inevitably meet.
Sirdar passed her survey with a few inevitable minor resolvable issues and she is now ours. We are planning to bring her back to the UK as soon as we return home from Newport. A long chapter is closed and a new one opens. We will miss our annual trips to the Caribbean but new challenges await.
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