Tough Night and Spa Emerald
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From: Mark Tilley
[mailto:emerald {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com] Tough Night and Spa Emerald We’re all a little bit jaded today as we ran
into squall after squall last night. All the boys were on deck at one point
trying to get as much sail down as possible while being thrown from one side of
the boat to the other. Then just to add insult to injury (none serious
thankfully) it decided to bucket it down with rain. Oh lovely. When you
weren’t on watch trying not to be swept overboard you spent the whole
night being thrown from one side of your bunk to the other. I felt like a ping
pong ball between my holdall, which lives next to me in my bunk, and the lee
cloth with holds me in on the other side. So needless to say we are all a bit
sleepy today. Thankfully the boat made it through with no damage though I hear
this morning that some of our fellow ARC crews weren’t so lucky. One thing that happened during the night which made
us all chuckle. In the small hours Mark was down below making a cup of tea when
from up above he heard a loud schlep and George exclaim ‘what the
hell…’ It turns out that George had had a run in with a flying fish
that thought it might be good fun to hurl itself at the back of his head. It
flapped around a while on deck while Mark saw the funny side and captured the
moment on camera then it headed back off into the ocean. This morning Becci and I decided that after a week of
not being able to shower we were completely sick of ‘boat hair’ and
drastic measures would have to be taken. Two appointments were made with Chez
Emerald and we headed off up top with two buckets, two harnesses, an assortment
of shampoos and Mark for his bucket-full-of-water hauling strength. Against all
the advice of various hairdressers (‘leave it and it will clean
itself’. Oh yeah! Have you ever tried it?) we washed our hair in salt
water using buckets dragged up from the sea. Now instead of chip-pan-hair we
have straw, but at least its clean straw! The fuel cell is currently topping up
our batteries so Becci is looking forward to straightening it with her
straightening irons later. At the moment Becci is making everyone hot dogs for
lunch and they are starting to smell great. Till tomorrow. Justine |
