Mercury Rising scrubs up for arrival.
Mercury-rising
Sat 10 Dec 2005 17:12
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Well dear reader, with arrival somewhere (not sure
exactly where yet) due tomorrow, the crew have been digging around looking for
long forgotten personal care items. Razors, soap and, for the lucky ones,
shampoo are being dragged out of storage where they
have languished untouched for weeks. Some crew members are having to
re-read the instructions for some of these things - it having been so long since
they were last used. Those crew members who have adopted slightly more, shall we
say "alternative" modes of dress (more like perverts to me - ed) while on voyage
will be required to choose more orthodox clothres for our landfall and
so avoid the risk of arrest and possible deportation. The skipper is also
due to give a lecture on dos and don'ts for visiting sailors when reaching land
for the first time in weeks. For some reason he insists on giving separate talks
to the male and female members of the crew.
In the last miles of the epic voyage skipper is
having to reconcile the needs of the various groups of holiday-makers on board.
The Sea Cadets have been clamouring for more speed at any cost while the Saga
Holidays representative has been complaining that unnecesssary high speeds makes
looking at the Reader's Digests and National Trust magazines in the ship's
library much more difficult. Hopefully a compromise has been found with
alternating days of sedate progress for the older passengers
with adrenaline rushes for the more tempestuous.
Navigating has become easier too, thanks to a
crew-member recalling a long forgotten fact that the sun rises in the east and
sets in the west. This means that when we wake up in the morning we just turn
the boat so the back, blunt end with the swimming platform (the "stern") is
pointing towards the sun, and then with the sharper end (the "front")
we follow the sun as it moves across the sky until it sets over the
horizon. We just hope that the ship's course does not change too much over the
12 hours or so of darkness, but as we have seen other boats going our way we
assume they must be using the same navigating techniques as us, and are getting
it broadly right.. Around the middle of the day following the sun gets tricky as
it appears to be almost directly overhead, so we have solved that problem by
having a long, leisurely lunch, and when we wake from our naps the sun is
usually close enough to the western horizon to follow.
 We are told that there are apparently several
islands around our destination and it is important to make sure you are in
the correct lane well before the junction. We asssume everything will be
adequately signposted. Land will come just in time, as it appears that our water
supplies have run out. "Black Adder" fans will know the consequence of
this.
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