Friday 9th December
Nowcrew
Fri 9 Dec 2005 17:11
Position: Berth A58
Rodney Bay Marina
Hang over and
cleaning day!
Last night was a lot
of fun. We met all of the crews that had come in at the Yacht Club
party last night and enjoyed exchanging all of our stories from the
crossing.
It was amazing how
we all shared so many similar experiences. We had a few beers with the owner and
skipper of Spellbound which is the only boat we saw mid Atlantic and agreed to
exchange the photographs we had taken of each others boats. They had done
exceptionally well since we crossed paths and look like they could even
win.
Ron, Ian and Andy sat on deck early in the morning and
watched as the crew from Shalan, who arrived earlier that morning, were downing
a few beers for breakfast, their sea legs only just helping them stagger back to
their boat.
At breakfast we
bumped into the skipper of La Royair, Thierry, another Benateau 57 like ours
which is a Sunsail charter yacht. He had paying guests to look after one of
which had been sea sick for 14 of the 18 day voyage!
We had beaten them
in over the water and had taken the same northerly route as
them.
The big clean up
started late morning and everyone did a great job getting the boat back to it's
normal polished standards. The deck lockers were stripped and dried out, decks
scrubbed and cabins tidied and vacuumed. Laundry was sent off to the cleaners
and we were beginning to look ship shape.
Ron and Andy set off
for the chandlery to purchase the spare parts required to start the running
repairs and soon we had the mast monkey (Chaz) hooked up and ready to go up the
mast. When we brought the main halliard down (The rope that holds up the main
sail) to hook onto him we noticed that it had worn through at the main
stress point at the top of the mast and was very close to breaking. We were very
lucky that this had not happened at sea! Another repair to
fix.
Later in the day we
met Laurence the skipper and Andrew the owner of Charliz also a Benateau
57. They were in a day before us and we had a lot of laughs with them over a
long afternoons session in the bar. This was the boat we had chased across the
Atlantic. They were always ahead of us but we had taken an identical route to
them and they were the boat that motivated us every day to catch. It turns out
that they are also based in Palma and we anticipate having a few more races and
beers with them when we all get back to Europe next year.
More and more boats
were arriving in during the day and early evening and we were up to about 55
boats in by the time we ventured out for dinner. The Charliz crew joined us for
a steak at The Big Chef Steak house in Rodney Bay. Del Boy took us
there by water taxi, we think he will be guide for the time we are here in St
Lucia, every time we move he is there offering to take us
somewhere!
Ron had stayed in
for the night and had set about fixing the air conditioning which did not appear
to be working. After 4 hours sweating away at it he found an isolator switch
under the main cabin bench that just needed turning on!
After dinner it was
bed for Bails who had not slept for two nights and the rest of the crew were off
to Scuttlebutts for more lemonades!
Nowcrew
out.