You cant buy experience
Norman G III
Tue 22 Nov 2011 19:03
our position today at 1800 tuesday is
24 07 53 N 018 25 48 W
and all is well. There is plenty of wind and all are feeling a bit better but only skip knows why hes really here--- I think Jason Golly and myself are questioning our motives and getting ready for a difficult mental battle as well as a bit of physical hardship
its not so much the actual physical work thats difficult but the stress of not sleeping and having to be awake for a watch system at a certain time and then not being able to sleep more than 6 hours until its your turn again saying nothing about the constant movement of the boat and the continual noise. I bet you wish you were here!
I didnt write so much as I was so tired yesterday- but I slept a bit better and so today I can update you on events
the team is getting its roles sortd out. Everyone is mucking in with most jobs and everyone is enthusiastic. As I write this I can see Golly in the kitchen preparing his first meal for all of us.. hes tried everything to get out of it but the rules are the rules so hes cutting scraping and preparing at the moment and when its at the table we have to try to guess what hes prepared
yesterday was quite eventful. the night was stressful as we were all very tired and so skip wa awake most of the night with me. come daybreak we had to change the sail plan in a big sea which meant going to the fore (front) of the boat and working with the bost moving all over in 2m waves. We were to move the position of the spinnaker pole which is vvv heavy from one side of the boat to the other and just as we began the attachment at the boom broke landing the pole between us scrambling to save ourselves and the pole. im not so sprightly and so had to scrabble arounbd on the deck moving the pole around because to stand up would have certainly led to a man overboard for me.. Luckily Jason came to help and is turning ought to be a natural at sea with good balance etc-- he makes us sick
after a nice cup of tea we were feeling less unsettled so decided to try to send some emails.. this then decided to pack in and took me a good hour to repair-- things were not going well
My latest hobby on board the boat is fishing. Ive now read every book there is on the topic and have made significant investments in rods reels lines lures clothing gloves and every other piece of modern equipment needed to catch fish. we are trying to catch dorado or tuna for eating so Jason and I decided to get everything out and use the best artificial lures money can buy to catch our dinner. it took us another hour to assemble everything and just an hour and a half befor sunset we were ready and put out the lines. If i was a fish id have taken the little green octopus bait i had chosen for my rod which i could see skipping along the front surface of the waves about 80m behind the boat. after an excited hour ----nothing. Beginning to think the night may have beaten us out pops skip with a tatty old bit of cotton on a childs reel using a rusty hook and a bit of sausage as bait
Mind if I put out my line he asked
of course not i said but dont get tangled up with my line because its a special bit of kit- a super chugger with a aluminium bubble head
no problem he said im only going to drop mine a few feet behind the boat-- i learnt this when i sailed the pacific-- blah blah balh i thought another of his fantasies
20 minutes later its about packing up time when skips reel started screaming. he was below so i started to pull it in-- its a hand line and normally wihout a fish its heavy but this really was super heavy.. skip came running back up and took over. after a great fight he landed a dorado over 4ft long and well over 10kg in weight-- a monster
you can see the photo for yourselves.
we ate like kings last night and again today
you see you can buy all the kit but nothing beats experience
tonight a big hello to gavin and thanks for repairing our sat comms and all the guys at oyster and foxs who helped us in Palma-- we appreciaste it
until tomorrow
sleep tight
MG
