hog island
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Sun 2 Apr 2006 12:58
Hog Island, 2nd March 2006
(Sunday)
We are having a final
weekend at anchor before going into Prickly bay tomorrow to get the rigging
sorted, and start the enormous washathon and cleanup.
It is really lovely here,
the sea is very flat as to get here you have to zig-zag inbetween half a dozen
reefs. Some of these are marked with buoys, and some arnen't, so you just
have to eye ball your way into the little bay behind the island. So we chugged
in very slowly indeed.
We have got Bob dressed
up in all his sails and rigging, and have been whizzing around the bay
behind the reefs in him. Otti and I went for an experimental sail
yesterday,(Otti says: 'Novice double-handed'), which ended in Otti being bonked
by the boom and semi-capsizing in a down-wind jibe,(I have to say that just for
once in this nautical mishap I was NOT helming)............. Before that,
she nearly shot out of the bows where she was tucked in, as we ran aground so
hard onto a reef bank between two islands,(ok, I WAS
helming), that the dinghy went from whizzing to dead-stopped in an
inch. Funnily enough, it all happens silently, (apart from cursing
from me). In a car there would be a loud squealing sound and a few
crunching noises. The centre-board only has a LITTLE ding
in it. Her comment,'Mum, maybe that's what that buoy is for!', I
thought was really inspired....How you are meant to steer, hold the sails
correctly for the wind, AND look where you are going at the same time is
obviously beyond me.
We all had tuna pie,
watched 'The Sound of Music', and slept in a heap in the focsle.