A Hand Too Few

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Wed 16 Sep 2009 17:28
Position: At anchor off Tarifa, Spain
Wind: South west, fresh breeze .
Weather: Partly cloudy, mild.
I had a bit more of a wander around Tarifa yesterday afternoon through the more modern part of town. It reminded me of beach towns the world over, in particular as I walked down the main street it reminded me of Glenelg in Adelaide, and as I thought about it I realized that the old city reminded me quite a bit of Annapolis. While the architecture was very different, the sort of shops were very similar - lots of restaurants and bars, T-shirts and sunglass shops, jewellery shops, tourist junk shops, ice cream shops, and one bookstore (but clearly far inferior to the .Annapolis Bookstore). So I guess the market economy works.

Today has been a maintenance day, had another go at repairing batten #2, did a bit of painting (the whole coach house needs repainting so a work in progress) and the bastard job of the day was replacing a broken batten car. I managed to get myself in one of those impossible situations that are the joys of single handing. If there was another person there I would have simply said, "Excuse me (insert name), could you just help out for a sec and hold this please? Ta." And that would have been problem solved. But instead here I find myself not having thought everything through thoroughly before hand and the result was that I am holding up a stack of sail slides with one hand, holding a loose slide with the other and no where to put it, threatening to spill all its bearings out, and no third hand to put a second tie in place which I should have anticipated before I started. Now I know this is all gobbly gook even to someone who has a clue of what I am talking about, but I think you get the idea. I was furious with myself. In the end I lost a whole bunch of plastic ball bearings - watching them fall to the deck and bounce neatly over the side one after the other like a nice little physics experiment was a little heart wrenching (a small bag of these things cost $50) but if at that point I had let go of the remaining batten cars I would have lost hundreds of the buggers. I eventually managed to salvage the situation with a screw driver wedged into the lower batten car and a short length of line that was lying about and within reach (thank goodness for my odd slovenly and unseamanlike behaviour) and managed to stabilise the situation until I could bring a second halyard to bear. From there it all went pretty smoothly. The broken car has been replaced.

Then the cat decided to complain about his food - bad move!

All is well.

Bob Cat:

We are still rolling around a lot. Skipper Bob seemed to be rather vociferous on deck for a while today, seemed like a good time to add a few turns to the screw and up the anti in my single pawed protest movement. . . . Meeowrgh! Mrggghhh! Mm . . . Well I never! I had to beat a hasty retreat to the quarter berth for a while but all is calm now, good thing I am such a resilient little soul A minor setback but the campaign continues.

The settee berth is the best spot when rolling around like this . . . Zzzzzzzz.