31.59W 19.03E
Meryon.bridges
Wed 2 Dec 2009 14:03
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Dear All
In case you haven't found it yet, our position is
now appearing on a map on the website. If you go to the Mailasail website
and click on Diaries and Blogs you should get a listing of all diarists.
If you click on Meryon.bridges you should get an option to look at a map
showing our track and latest position.
Running Down the Trade Winds
Glorious sailing now. We are running,
running, running westwards at 5-6 knots, covering around 140 miles a
day, with a fresh breeze right behind us. Brilliant blue seas dotted
with white crests by day with clusters of flying fish erupting from under our
bows. Fluffy white clouds drift across an azure sky. By night a full
moon lights the restless seascape, and apart from the odd scientifically aimed
wave top coming aboard (Peter M managed to collect two the other night), we ride
dry across the waters. Quite large waves roll up astern, perhaps 3 metres
high at times, and Ares' stern lifts to them. As she accelerates forward
the wave crest collapses in a gentle roar of bursting foam just behind us and
the body of the wave rolls forward under us. The bows rise, shouldering
aside a mass of broken water and we sink into the trough, foam racing past
our sides, ready to repeat the process seamlessly and endlessly. The
ceaseless march of waves coming up behind us becomes quite mesmerising, like
watching fire.
The movement of the boat is quite
gentle, though every now and then she shears off to one side or the other
and rolls on the face of a wave before "Flossy", our wind vane self steering
gear, takes control and straightens her up again. Down below it's
extraodinally peaceful, with almost all the water noises filtered
out. While it's taken us some time to get used to her, and she still
sometimes gives us the odd problem, in these conditions Flossy is brilliant,
freeing us from the drudgery of manual steering for hour after
hour.
The proud sailors who run this ship naturally
became offended by the sight of the crew, released from steering, now enjoying
themselves just lazing about in the blissful warm sunshine, and promptly
introduced a rigorous programme of housekeeping, starting with cleaning the
loos, where else? The crew acquiesced to this in good heart but the veiled
threat of keel hauling around a winged keel may have heightened their
enthusiasm. They even volunteered to mark up all the tinned goods in the
bilge before their labels disolved away though self interest was a big motivator
here - sardines with pear halves for pud anyone? That said, what are
GFS?
Despite being kindly given these constructive
occupations, however, mutinous lot, one succeeded in finding time to compose the
following seditious message:
From "The Purser":
I sail as the one member of the crew who has not
got quite a major psychiatric problem. While of course I would not dream
of discussing this with anybody, Hippocrates said nothing about
Blogs.
Interestingly the two Navigators/Mechanics as I
call them both suffer from the same malady, namely Holden's Variation of the
Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome. From early in the voyage I noticed this
manifesting itself in a tendency to stow, unstow, restow lockers, to take things
apart and re-assemble them, but what they most like is a problem. Given a
problem, they pronounce it both insoluble and terminal to the success of the
enterprise. They then proceed to repair it and for the next 24 hours they
are really quite pleasant. Unfortunately, deprived of a suitable problem,
they become fractious, critical of the hard working crew, etc.
To counter this difficulty I and my assistants (of
which more later) have come up with a system of minor sabotage. Amazing
what you can do wiuth a screwdriver! I then casually remark that such and such
seems a bit loose and they rush off with their spanners, to return quite happy
and bearable for the next 24 hours.
The fourth member of the party, on coming on board,
immediately set up a graven image next to the fridge. This took some hours
of work and at the end it bore a remarkable resemblance to a car radio.
Now he spends many hours before it, head bowed and eyes closed. Apparently
it is called a "thing" and it has a very full sex life. At least he often
remarks that it is "copulating" (delicacy restrains me from using the actual
phrase). He also confides that he is having trouble with his USB
Port. I was not quite sure what he meant by this until last night, while
on watch chatting to my assistants, it came to me. During my time in
the profession I have heard that part of the anatomy described coyly in so many
different ways (an RAF man who kept referring to his afterburner had me fooled
for weeks), but I must admit that USB Port is a new one for me. I
intend to sidle up to him tomorrow with a tube of soothing cream and advise him
to put it on his "USB Port" twice daily and after defecation.
My assistants are of course the big news - we have
two beautiful mermaids in the forepeak and during my watch at night they come
and join me in the cockpit. One of them sings beautifully, angelically
would not be too strong a word, while the other chats to me about my problems
and we plan he Navigators' problem list for the following day.
I may say I feel so happy. Woof,
Woof - The Pursar
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