Things that go bump in the night
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Thu 9 Feb 2006 16:00
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Thursday the 9th February,
2006.
Good morning all! We
are a little jaded, having had a sucession of disturbances last
night.
1) Otti in a real
paddy over her PADI diving course, really designed for adults. She
has to dive all day and read sixty pages of theory at night and is finding
it hard to keep up the pace. Dive plans, pressure, density and loads of
initials eg. SCUBA abound. Half an hour spent calming and reassuring her,
after lights out.
2) Party of sixty people
having THE MOST VOCAL good time you can possibly imagine on the beach
by the boat. The Grenadans specialize in Tarzan like yells, in
chorus, and in dialogue, of amazing cheer and hysteria. Add a very very
popular band, which was hard to hear through all the yells of delight,
plus carhorns, all about one hundred yards away... It finished in the wee
small hours.
3) Repeated vicious squalls
interspersed with hot clammy calms. This means that you have to open the
hatches or you die of heat, and then when a squall hits, rush around
closing them before the thunderous heavy rain drenches everything. The
only brilliant thing about this is that I had my water tank plasticine in situ
on deck, and for everysquall we get a few bucketfulls of clean fresh
rainwater!!!
4) Finally, after the
party,(sadly immune to all the squalls), I was woken by an ominous grating sound
from the anchor chain. I lay puzzling in bed, trying to analyse this
noise. Anchor drag is usually accompanied by a juddering which this noise
didn't have. I got up and stuck my head out to see a steel sloop with it's
stern nudging our bows, and perhaps its rudder on our chain.
Whoops. We had tacked on our anchor bridle (not good), and got the stern
rope wrapped around the keel/prop. So lots of running around the deck in
pants with torches and boat hooks etc., all perfectly synchronized with another
squall. Wet decks are quite skiddy in bare feet, so you can imagine the
pantomine. A good towelling off after this, and settling to sleep, faintly
steaming like hot cattle, when........
5) Crunch creaK: the sound
of an intruder, coming down the saloon steps! We both jumped up, and
then identified the black shape looming as Ottilie prowling around,
looking for Anthisan cream for a mosquito bite that
was itching....
6) With the anchor
bridle untwizzled from the keel and dismantled, the boat was now really
rolling sideways onto the swell, so you get woken as you jolt from side
to side. Hey ho.
Lack of sleep seriously
interferes with our gruelling schedule of snorkelling and swimming and happy
hour....
 here are some boatkids
having a photoshoot!
Here is a sunset with
Canouan in the distance
 Here are some pictures of
Otti's first scuba dive, starting on the dive boat, and then
underwater.
      Well done Otti!! And
all of this on the first day!
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