Preparations

Our first social occasion was the ‘Crew Supper’ on the evening we arrived in Las Palmas. Although we didn’t relish the occasion, it was actually enjoyable with a decent meal and plenty of liquid. The duck main course reminded me how good duck can be as it was really excellent. Seminars today on ‘Dealing with emergencies’ and ‘Provisioning’ were far from boring and threw up some interesting facts. Did you know that meat with a bone in will ‘go off’ before meat without, green apples last longer than red and wrapping carrots in tin foil makes them last considerably longer?

The fairly major job of re-positioning the water maker pre-filter with the re-routing of all the pipework resulted in a fully functioning unit – in the Marina…………… The water maker was installed by Northshore and it would be easy to blame them for this as well as many of my other problems but, on this occasion, it is difficult to apportion blame as the installation instructions do not highlight this issue.

Our pressing jobs list delayed us ‘dressing overall’ which is the flying of a full set of 40 signal flags – in a specific order don’t you know – so this is on the list for this morning and I hope to attach a picture of us properly attired in the next blog.

Unfortunately, Stephen has been delayed by the weight of patients and will now miss tonight’s fancy dress party on the theme of ‘80’s films’ so we are not able to post his medical update and the Great Britain team will be one short in our ‘Chariots of fire’ entry.

Bob writes:-

I hadn’t realised just how much was to be done prior to our departure. Apart from the seminars, which do provide really good information, it is very useful to meet with other crews and exchange anecdotes, especially since many of these people have made many Atlantic crossings and can advise of ‘real life’ situations. At the other end of the spectrum, I am amazed at the number of crews who have just purchased boats new to them for the crossing and are only now kitting them out! How can they really consider that prudent?

Barry is far too busy to come to the keyboard.