Barqueing Mad - Picton Castle World Voyage 2010

Watch was mustered at 8 to be dismissed and we turned up to shouts of happy Birthday from the oncoming watch,.. it was Logan’s birthday and apparently he had promised to wear whatever he was given for his birthday,..appropriately he was presented with a pair of boxer shorts signed by everyone in the watch, a hat and a bowtie… he looked quite smart, and not a little silly!!!

Dan, Josh and myself decided to go and see the Casco Viejo in the daytime,..  it was quite different than traipsing through it at night and I was finally able to check out a map and realised how close everything was,.. on more than one occasion we were warned not to go down certain streets, it was nice that people seemed concerned about our safety, but a little disconcerting that so many areas were deemed “peligroso”.  The Casco Viejo is a fascinating environment and reminds me of Barcelona’s old town, about 20 years ago.  They are renovating all the buildings one by one and some are absolutely beautiful, whereas others are just façades or merely 4 walls! It will be quite the place to be in about 10 years assuming things are renovated rapidly, if not, the undergrowth could overtake all the infrastructure and destroy it completely, there were trees at least a few metres tall growing out of the side of some buildings!  However, we are talking about an administration that owes millions to the company that makes the car licence plates (the reason that so many cars in Panama have no licence plates!) so whether they have money to redevelop this area is doubtful!

That afternoon (after another brief visit to the mall) I decided to rent a hotel room, I was surprised at myself for this, but I had decided that after sleeping on the hatch for the last few nights I deserved to be able to sleep in an air conditioned comfy bed, shower myself clean and enjoy uninterrupted internet without having to hack into someone else’s network.  I booked myself into the Bahia Suites hotel in town under the recommendation of our incredibly friendly taxi driver from the first day,¡ Jaime.  A fairly basic room for 69$, but there was a shower and reliable, albeit slow, internet, as I turned on the telly to have a brief kip before finding out the plans for the evening I was surprised to find the majority of the films on the channels to be in English and Master & Commander in full flow on one of them,.. perfect!  I had been wanting to watch it again, now that I understand a little more what being on a tall ship is like!  I settled in for a relaxing evening before heading out for dinner with the waitress from the previous night.

I was woken from my daze a little while later by a huge noise from outside and was greeted with a procession outside my room window, with full brass band,.. I was later informed that this was practising for the Independence day parade… wish we could have been here for that, looked like it was going to be a huge celebration!

At 8pm I headed out to a 24 hour restaurant with Lucimar and we had a lovely mixed fish grill and talked continuously for a good few hours before she had to go to work, I walked her home and got a cab back to my hotel,.. showered again!  Hot water and an air conditioned room,… absolute luxury!

Watch started with me a little on the quiet side as I waited for the hangover to dissipate, which was surprisingly mild, and spent the morning hanging on the headrig painting the non-white bits white and the red bits red..

The waitress Lucimar turned up mid afternoon with 2 friends for the tour we had agreed and I have never seen 3 people more excited about seeing the ship, between the three of them they must have taken 100 photos and were fascinated by all the different elements of the ship, unfortunately we had just oiled the quarterdeck so they weren’t able to go up to the wheel, I promised them they could come back a few days later.

Our watch had agreed that there was to be absolutely no drinking on duty (personally I was surprised we were able to drink at all on watch) and so the evening was spent quietly watching Happy Gilmore on the hatch.  Thank God!

Nicksa, Donald, Dan, Jimmy, Fred and myself were up early to ensure we could catch the first game of the World Cup; South Africa vs. Mexico,… both teams played horribly and it was all Nicksa (Nick from South Africa) could do to keep from crying at certain points.. the second half was a different game completely and it could have been anyone’s match,.. a 1-1 draw was an acceptable score!

We decided that we needed to go shopping to buy things for the ship that we were missing as well as presents for our hosts on Pitcairn.  Apparently what happens on Pitcairn is that we go ashore for 2 days and nights and the islanders put up a crewmember each, in return we bring them gifts.  We were advised previously that “useful” gifts are the most common way to earn good favour!

We asked the taxi driver to drop us off at the mall,.. now we had been joking that since everyone had been talking about buying things in Panama the country must be one long strip mall, however when we saw the Albrook mall we were forced to eat our words, none of us had seen anything like it, it was quite simply the most enormous shopping centre I had ever seen.  To give an idea of size it would probably take you 45 minutes to walk from one end to the other, a good few km long!!

Dan & I opted for the hardware store type of useful and like kids in a candy store we bought every useful piece of kit we could afford!  So for the remainder of the afternoon we walked around armed with at least 4 machetes each, a range of screwdrivers, knives and (in my case) a load of industrial Velcro, if we’d have thrown in a Swiss army knife it would have made Macgyver’s day!  But I did feel that we could walk through any area of the Casco Viejo without fear with our shopping!

This evening I was having a drink with Joanie and Sophie on the dock when Nicksa turned up and advised me that he was going to head into town to meet up with people, not having a plan of attack for this evening I sprang back to the ship, spruced up and was back at the gate within 10 minutes.  We met the pro crew at a bar called Mojitos sin Mojitos in the Casco Viejo owned by an American called Eric who had moved down here a few years ago and showed no signs of returning.  Their burgers were fantastic and sangria was more than acceptable so we hung around until close on midnight at which point everyone seemed to want a change of atmosphere and we headed down to La Casona again… It was much busier than the previous night and was absolutely packed with locals with some funky dance music.

There was a large sheet draped over the only wall and people were drawing on it,.. strangely enough the central image was a ship’s wheel, I discovered Logan, Mike and Rebecca were not only talented seamen, but also talented artists as various images of the Picton Castle began to appear on the canvas! We later discovered that it was to raise money for a local kid who had come off his skateboard, was in a coma and needed money to get him to a good hospital,.. we all donated generously.

The Picton Castle crew are a reggae-mad bunch and despite requesting reggae, nothing was forthcoming so it was decided en masse to find a new venue,..  So we commandeered a couple of cabs and headed into the centre of town and “41 street” which is apparently where all the bars are found,.. we found a couple, but nothing had really got moving and it was widely agreed to head back to El Casco Viejo…. As we entered the area we passed Mojitos sin Mojitos where we came across the remainder of the trainees… Niko was passed out on a chair and Meredith was announcing loudly that she was the best at getting people into places!

I was told that there may be a couple girls on board who had crushes on me, which is a real self confidence boost, but relationships on board have already been shown to be tricky and fickle and we have only been at sea a month.  We have had one breakup, as far as I can tell, 3 (possibly 4) couples that are “together” and the odd surprise hookup.  Rumours abound on the ship and it is impossible to keep everything gossip free, the key here is “see everything, say nothing” and the 3 rules of ship relationships (apparently) are:

·         Keep it below deck (i.e. absolutely no relationship except for the professional on deck).

·         Keep your head (Breakups do happen and the other person will probably hook up with another crewmember).

·         Ensure you maintain other friendships apart from the romantic one.

But I have no intention of shitting on my own doorstep, at least not until the final section of the voyage,… we’ll have to see what happens!

Things begin to get a bit hazy at this point, but apparently we didn’t stay long and headed back to the ship,… I am not sure exactly where I woke up, but I remember having a pancake thrust in my face and pictures surfaced later on in the day that show me asleep on one of the salon tables,… I still reckon they were photoshopped!!!

So as ordered I was up at 3 with Dan to make more coffee than you could point a stick at,.. we made 2 carafes, 2 pots and a big saucepan,.. no mean feat when it takes about 15 mins to boil a kettle.  However, we received compliments, so the effort was obviously worth it!

Even with that amount of coffee, it still ran out after 10 mins and more had to be made,.. 50+ tired crew means a lot of liquid!

At about 04.30 the pilot came aboard and we motored towards the canal, within a few minutes a boat pulled up alongside and the 6 boat crew clambered on board, these guys were really nice and as Mate Mike discovered I could speak Spanish I was put on “communication detail” in case anything needed to be explained to the boat crew… for the first time in over 2 months I felt useful!!!  As with most central/south Americans the main theme was football and I quickly discovered that there were a lot of Real Madrid supporters in the crew,.. but the big surprise was that the Football World Cup starts tomorrow!!!  I had completely forgotten and so had all the football savvy guys on the crew!  It is incredible to think that we are now so disconnected that we can forget about the biggest sporting event held!!  Long discussions were held on the topic of Messi, who would win the world cup etc and I chatted with them over coffee, tea biscuits and “Cocoa/Cacao” which they drank copious amounts of.

From time to time they actually had to do some work and the lines came aboard to be attached to the bits so we could be dragged through the canal and be positioned centrally by the “electric mules” or “locomotora”.  Everyone was banned from the breezeways as they recounted horrifying stories of colleagues who lost both legs when a towing wire parted, flicked out and severed them both in a second!  Then another where a co-worker lost 3 fingers…

Despite telling them my name on numerous occasions, I was monikered “Español” or “Catalan”, which was obviously easier to say than “Liam”,.. didn’t mind though,.. have I mentioned I felt useful!!

WT was sat on the Aloha deck with me and at one point he looked concerned and pointed to one of the bits that was being used by the “electric mules” to pull us along, it was actually parting from the deck!!  We told the boat crew who told me to tell the mate, who would tell their crew boss, who would tell the pilot who would tell the driver of the electric mule…. However when I pointed out the large crack appearing below the bit they started shouting, yelling and waving at the driver of the mule and he let off the line immediately,… so much for the protocol!!  WT and I decided that we would just yell at the driver of the mule as soon as we saw it happening again!!

This crew was only with us until we reached the large man-made lake in the middle of the canal so we bid them farewell and gave them some Picton Castle caps as a goodbye present which they seemed very happy with!

The lake in the middle of the canal was beautiful, lush rainforests bordered it and apparently it was common to see monkeys on the shoreline although I don’t think anyone saw any!

We made the most of the freshwater and carried out a deckwash, and an on deck power shower,.. desperately needed as everyone had been up since 3.45 and was tired, sweaty and dirty.

As we neared the southern side of the canal to go through the “esclosas” or “locks” we were approached by another crew carrying boat,.. now these guys were entrepreneurs in the most extreme sense of the word, as soon as they were on board they started to introduce themselves to all the female crew,.. 2 kisses were mandatory, they immediately started to hard sell key rings, caps and silver dollars (all out of view of the pilot) until they were ordered aft to start preparing the lines… as soon as they came across me they tried to sell me the same sort of things,.. with the addition of a small cube of something that looked like hash,.. perplexed I read the paper that came with this odd looking little brown cube “do not use whilst engaging in oral sex” it declared, and on reading further it became obvious that it was some kind of “delaying” herb,.. I laughed at the guy and told him to put it away.  Realizing they weren’t going to make any sales whilst on board they decided to make the most of the ship and one by one each boat crew member came up to me and requested caps, sweaters etc,.. by the end of the 2 and a half hours they were with us I had had enough of their sleazy ways and simply told them that the captain controlled all that and I would ask, but couldn’t promise anything… when we finally said goodbye to them, they received a Picton Castle Cap each and one of the boat crew approached me and said “is this all?”…  whilst chatting previously to one of them he told me that they thought we were all Americans and that is why they came aboard to try and sell us stuff!  If this was to be our first Panama City experience, it was going to be an interesting few days!

So we were in the Pacific, we passed under the Panama bridge and as we turned the corner into the bay where our marina was we got the first view of Panama City,..  to me it looked like “The City” in London, skyscrapers, most of the tallest still under construction littered the skyline, dark ominous clouds stained the sky above the city (the rest of the sky was clear), to me it looked like something out of a horror film where some horrible claw is about to descend from the heavens!

I don’t know if it is due to having spent the last 2 months in a tiny coastal town in Canada and a month on a ship or just that it is not a nice looking city, but I decided that I really don’t like big cities.  And this is from someone who lived in central London for most of his life!  Maybe I’ll move to some small pacific or Caribbean Island after this trip!

The crossing of the canal had only taken us 8 hours,.. we had expected 13 or 14!!  So our mooring was occupied by a fishing trawler with engine problems and so to ensure they knew we had arrived and try and intimidate them into giving up their spot we moved into the small marina and dropped the anchor,.. everything was fine until the wind changed direction and wee were suddenly in danger of taking out a  section of the marina,… we upped anchor and using the rescue boat to push the bow round we headed out to sea again.  Murphy’s law was in full effect as the fishing trawler suddenly took the opportunity to escape from the marina and we motored back in towards our mooring and dry land… I can’t believe it has only been a few days since we were in Bonaire, everyone is desperate to clean their clothes, get a hotel room, a cold beer etc.. god help us on the pacific crossing when we are 6 weeks without landfall!!

The captain managed the ship perfectly and we moved onto our mooring with the ease and elegance that the ship deserves.  A small crowd had assembled to watch us come in and they happily clicked away as we organized the lines on deck and fixed on chafe gear (canvas, rubber and assorted material that we wrap around the dock lines so that they don’t wear through as the ship moves with the swell whilst moored).  I was sent up to the bowsprit to furl the sails and together with Brad and Dave we managed to furl them incorrectly 3 times… I learnt a lot though!

All hands muster was called and the Captain gave us a briefing on what to expect from Panama and the watch schedule.  Post was also given out and I finally received my Irish Passport and a loving and lengthy letter from my dear parents “love your blog.  Love mum and dad” was all it said… I understand it was sent very hurriedly though.  Sophie received a letter from someone who wrote entirely in non-water resistant ink, the letter had obviously received a good soaking from the inundations over Panama city we had seen as we arrived and about 30% was legible… it’s the thought that counts though, isn’t it?  Hope she could figure out who it was from!

Yet another power shower was required by most people and after a freshwater power shower thanks to the dock’s water supply we headed into town to find somewhere that could quench our thirst and provide us with a cold beer.  After paying a cab driver an extortionate 20 dollars to get to the Casco Viejo (old quarter) we found a lovely little jazz bar called La Platea and I played translator while people ordered drinks and food.  Despite cold beers and cute waitresses, (one whose number I got and invited to see the ship) people wanted to find somewhere to wake us up and we went and got lost in the Casco Viejo (Old neighbourhood) of Panama city.

Found an interesting bar called La Casona,.. Essentially just a ground floor of a dilapidated building on the shore.. they had put 4 tables, some music and a bar,.. very cool.. and before we knew it, it was 1.30am,..  I had been awake for the best part of 24 hours!  Got back to bed!

As soon as we were awake, the call “Hand to the windlass” rang out and we moved to an anchorage within spitting distance of the canal entrance. Final preparations for the passage were started as soon as we were mustered and we were met with a damp start to the day as it drizzled non-stop throughout the muster.  The skiff was lifted out of the water and loaded onto the hatch with even more ease than when we moved the Monomoy onto the galley roof, with minimal yelling and the areas that required final monkey shining were repainted or repaired in preparation for the passage the next morning. 

The Captain mustered us to explain the situation which was that the passage would probably take 12 hours, that the pilot would be coming aboard at about 4am, that we should keep out of the line handler’s way and then proceeded to give us some background info on the canal and how it developed over the last 97 years (it was constructed in 1914!).  The stories were pretty horrendous with accounts of how 10000 workers died due to various diseases (mostly mosquito borne), the explanation of the phrase “chinaman’s chance” (when they sent the immigrants down to light the fuse for the dynamite) and various other interesting facts about the canal which I am going to let you google for yourself!

Having washed myself the previous evening at the yacht club I was disappointed on being told to go down into the chain locker and heave up all the lines for the moorings so that everything would be ready for the dock on the pacific side.  As far as I am concerned, the chain locker is even worse than the hold for humidity and I immediately become drenched with sweat in the hold so you can imagine the state I come out of the chain locker in,.. after 10 minutes heaving the mooring lines around and sending them up to the deck Second Mate Paul popped down to confirm the lines he wanted next and on entering exclaimed “Geez, you guys stink!”,.. to be fair to us I think he was confusing the smell of the oil on the chain with our own manly odours.  Regardless, both Shawn and I decided we probably needed a shower,.. 2 showers in 2 days!!!!???? My skin’s going to start to disappear!!

As I took off my harness I glanced down at my trousers and noticed the sweat had completely soaked the top of my trousers,.. they were going to need a wash!!  I combined them with my other work trousers, borrowed some of Niko’s washing liquid and went to work,.. even after the 3^rd rinse, the water was still black,.. which brought home just how filthy they were,.. and they were clean only 4 days beforehand!!

The 8-12’s were on night watch and I was to be on watch with “Mike 5” (or “Jelly” as it had been rumoured that he could be called – later discovered it is spelt Jehle) at 23h,.. I was looking forward to showing him how to do the ship check, check the anchor, fill out the log correctly etc, but within a few minutes Mate Mike had decided that my coffee making skills were more useful than my instructional skills and put me on the 3am watch with Dan with a clear “LOTS OF COFFEE TO BE MADE” note next to the amendment.

After yet another power shower, I was sat in the salon enjoying a small glass of wine with Vía, Leonard, Jimmy, and Tiina.  Whilst discussing peoples strengths and weaknesses, in her normal straightforward, no messing way Tiina piped up with a phrase that I think summed up how most of us feel about our co-trainees “I thought all my friends at home were interesting and incredible people, but since I’ve been on board, they all just seem really normal!  You guys are all incredible!” I couldn’t agree more, it was completely true, complimentary to all us and an indication of the varied and interesting type of people we have on board, I think we are all going to learn as much from each other and about ourselves through that as we will from the pro-crew about the ship!

Another day of monkey shining greeted us this morning and never has a monkey looked so shiny!  I spent the morning painting rusty bits of the quarterdeck yellow and was given a ladder to clean up and put grip tape on as apparently the Panamanian crew require certain criteria to be reached before they will set foot on a ladder.  Paula read the requirements and there are something like 17 pages of ladder requirements to be met!  I felt quite honoured to be given such an important task and I stuck the grippy tape on that ladder like my life depended on it!

As soon as I had lashed that ladder in place WT immediately gave me another to do,… the curse of a job well done on the ship is that you tend to get given the same job over and over if you do it well!!

Another prerequisite of the canal traverse is that all the boats had to be placed inboard (normally they sit on davits hanging off the side of the ship) and I was very interested to see how we were going to manage this.  It wasn’t without the odd panicked shout, but between 3 tackles and 50 crewmembers it went surprisingly smoothly and  the was fairly straightforward to lift the boat out of the water and place on top of the galley house and shouting was kept to a minimum as everyone followed their orders,..

We were moored off the XXXX yacht club and having been on duty all day, our watch was free to go ashore and make the most of the showers, pool, restaurant, and more importantly, bar that the yacht club had to offer.

As we walked into the bar the cold air conditioned hit us in the face like a cold wet fish, refreshing, cooling, yet at the same time a little disconcerting and initially uncomfortable,.. it was so cold it actually hurt our throats as we inhaled!  It didn’t take long to get used to the cool air though and the ice cold beers slipped down our necks like the drips of condensation on the bottles.

I stepped outside to see some of the crew who had gone for a swim and as the sweat erupted instantly on my skin I decided a swim was definitely in order,..  the water was great and I spent a good 15 minutes pleasantly soaking and chatting neck deep in it (although mostly because if I stood up I would just start sweating again!).  Swimming was one thing, but I felt like a freshwater shower would really wake me up and make me feel a 100 times better and found a small shower just by the pool, only the cold water worked, which was fine, the door didn’t close (which was also fine except someone walked in and went to the loo whilst I was showering!).  I shaved, washed and saw myself in a mirror for the first time in about a month,.. holy crap, I really have lost weight,.. damn love handles are still there, but I am generally looking a lot thinner.  Donald’s food is not the healthiest and the carb content  is up there with a big mac meal, but we are obviously burning it all up… interested to know how much I actually weigh now,.. I was 74 kg or 165 pounds when we left Lunenburg,.. will try and weigh myself in Panama.

After the shower and recognition of weight loss I immediately decided I would try and reverse it by having the chicken wing special and yet more beers.  Since we were moving off early the next morning and the bar shut at 9 we all assembled outside on the dock to await Nadja and the 21.30 skiff run.  Myself, Joanie, Michael, Niko and Katie were sat waiting on a small balcony with the security guards office just behind us.  At one point I noticed the TV was on and glanced in, looked away and had a comedic second take, I needed verification;  “Michael”, I asked “Is that hardcore porn they are watching in there?”. “Yep”, he said succinctly after glancing over my shoulder…  Once we had got over the initial shock we found it quite amusing and we were making enough noise about it that the guards obviously overheard, and instead of turning it off, they just knocked on the window, I assume to get us to be quiet, maybe they were having difficulty following the plot!!! 

The engine was running as I came up to deck for breakfast this morning, (an hour after I woke up as I was still on the previous day’s time) and a land mass was already visible in the distance off the port bow, Panama was already in view,.. unless the engine gives up the ghost within the next few hours, then I have definitely lost the ‘time of arrival’ bet

This morning was uneventful, bog standard ship work, but as we approached Panama everyone was commenting on two things; the lushness of the green hills visible on the coast and the quantity of tankers manoeuvring disturbingly close around us.

People were exclaiming how they were going to climb and explore them.

Before long we discovered why there was so much greenery as we could see rainfall in the distance.  The captain was right, it was almost rainy season and we were going to get rain!  It wasn’t until we were all ordered up on deck at about 16.15 that the rain really hit, HARD.. we’ve had storms before, but nothing quite as persistent as this rainfall, it was physically painful to look forward into the oncoming rain and as nothing could happen while it was raining so hard we were all stood around on deck getting soaked for a good half to three quarters of an hour! 

We discovered that after 2 months hard ship work and 45 mins of rain that we could model for “Zombie hands weekly”.  Since we have no moisture left on our hands and the calluses we have formed soften and come away in the wet our hands look like we have aged 50 years in a few minutes!  Fred and Dave were neck and neck, but Fred pulled ahead as the back of his hands really looked like he was 120 years old!

As luck would have it the rain dissipated as we entered Colón, an incredibly industrial port with tens of tankers milling about the entrance to the canal like bargain hunters waiting for the sales to open.  The rain stopped completely as we dropped anchor and the captain came onto deck to explain the situation.  It looks like we are going to be here ‘till Wednesday, but we would be moving into the canal at 3am.  Tomorrow would be a very busy day as nothing can extend past the hull of the ship as we pass through the canal which means that the port anchor has to be brought onboard, the 2 boats must be brought onboard and the yards have to be cockbilled (hoisted up and angled), I honestly have no idea how we are going to get the boats from their davids onboard,.. going to be an interesting and exhausting day!  All the new crew are arriving today, which means we will have more crew than bunks for a couple of days before Crista (our doctor) and Nicksa (who is leaving us to join the Denmark – another tall ship) depart, which is going to be interesting, Katie has to move back into her leaky bunk, a couple of people have agreed to sleep in hammocks and a couple have agreed to sleep on the salon tables!  It is going to be an interesting few days!  We don’t have customs clearance yet to go ashore so as it stands we are stranded on the ship,.. no big issue, but it is a little frustrating to be so close to shore yet not be able to go ashore!

It is strange having new faces aboard and I cannot imagine how the new trainees feel being thrust into a society already built and constructed around a month of preparation for the voyage and a month at sea, bonding through new shared experiences, pushing ourselves to the limits, enduring new environments, new scenarios and in everyone’s case, new relationships with unknowns, be it people places or situations!

As the evening progressed, the distinction between trainee, AB and mate became more distinct, it’s not easy to define the social norms that are created in an environment like this, but the first mate and the captain seem to be very separate from the rest, then there is the group of ab’s who’s experiences, both together and on other ships give them a bond that is difficult to break and finally there are our trainees, whose bond is formed as we grow into experienced seamen.  I hope the barriers will be broken down as the voyage matures and we get to know our mates and Abs on a more level footing.  We have heard much about their adventures and personalities through rumours, but they always present us with their respectable and responsible façade,.. we shall see!

The trainees hung out either on the hatch or the well deck, whilst the ab’s played extreme dominos in the fo’c’sle head and the captain and first mate stayed in the mess.

Bed beckoned early and after a cigar and a few shots of rum I was in bed by 10.30!

At breakfast I decided I really needed a haircut, it had been a good few months since my last one and the heat and sweatiness meant that I constantly felt like I had dirty hair and an even dirtier pillow!  Maggie, the purser of the ship, is learning how to cut hair and after seeing her handiwork on a number of other crew members, decided to go for it.  It took mere minutes and was a very professional job, made even more remarkable given that it was carried out in 10-12ft seas!

Our watch was a very relaxed affair this morning, as it was a Sunday there was no ship work so we busied ourselves practising our lines, our knots, boxing the compass and doing maintenance on our belongings.  For me today’s job was to sew back together my sandals which were beginning to show signs of wear and tear and had begun to resemble roadkill attached to my feet.  I spent a good hour ensuring that all the stitches were more or less straight,.. my sandals now more closely resembled Frankenstein’s monster than roadkill, but at least they would now stay on my feet,.. or at least that’s what I thought.  Within a few minutes one of the stitches had come out as I realised that the synthetic twine I had used was not gripping itself and the knots were coming undone.  As I constantly remind myself, another day, another lesson learned!  Oh well, more to do for next Sunday’s maintenance hour!

It was announced that the seamanship derby was to begin at 15h and so after lunch our watch congregated on the hatch to go over our introductory skit.  Jo had spent a great part of the previous 2 day’s watches creating the “Real Housewife’s of the Picton Castle” which apparently Americans knew all about, but I had no idea.  To sum up, it is a reality version of desperate housewives and given that we are the “domestics watch” we were going to create a Picton castle version.  There were a lot of in-jokes and a little dressing up, but all-in Jo did a fantastic job and after a brief rehearsal and the distribution of sarongs (our uniform apparently!) we were ready.

At 15h a general muster was called and before long the hatch was filled with trainees and crew alike, all dressed up in line with their watch’s skit theme.  The 12-4’s went first with a bizarre “we do it in the dark” rap song which was actually very amusing.  The 4-8’s version of “then I got stoned” needed a little more rehearsal, and to be honest went on a bit,.. but was also very funny.  Our watch carried out the Housewives of Picton Castle skit with aplomb, some of the jokes were well received, but a few were a little too subtle for our audience’s obviously crude taste and were missed but all in all a good performance and we earned enough points with our bribe of home-made marshmallow rice crispy things to earn us an acceptable 2 out of 3 points.  As we discovered our competition had made a real investment in bribes and we stood empty handed and looking a little frustrated as watch after watch handed out cold beers to the judging panel and earning extra points for each one!

The following challenge was a “pin chase”, now we had been led to believe that a line/rope would be called and we would have to run to it (except of course you never run on board, only “walk sharply”).  This was the case in only about 2 of the 20-odd chases! There were bizarre ship parts that even some of the pro-crew had never heard of, the second mate shouted out a fishing line, the captain yelled out some ship parts in Norwegian and general confusion ensued as people misheard lines and ran in the wrong direction, Bob even sat down in a huff and refused to play as she deemed it “a silly game” and was only brought out of her sulk when chocolate cake was promised at dinner.

Some people got overly competitive as this part of the event developed and there were bloodied shins, people slipping over on deck and not a small amount of pushing and shoving on the way up the stairs to the quarterdeck

For the next challenge all the mates uncoiled all the lines on the hatch and welldeck and each watch was timed on how long it took to coil all the lines, the judges then evaluated the quality of the coils,.. we kicked arse on the time, but apparently our quality was a little lacking, and despite bring my speakers on deck in the hope of gaining some style points we were robbed and given a paltry 33 points.  However, we brought it home in the next two events, knot tying and boxing the compass, Bob even got us bonus point for being able to tie a bowline one-handed behind her back!!  A secret talent that no-one knew she had!

The final event was a bucket race, which involved dunking a bucket over the side and filling a tote with water, the first team to fill it wins.  Despite losing a member of our team who injured herself and having a bucket with a hole, we still did sterling work and came in second.

Once the final scores were tallied, we came second overall, but as Sophie pointed out, ours was a moral victory, the other teams had to rely on bribes to ensure their points, yet we didn’t use such underhand tactics and still came a close second… it was mentioned that the watches may rotate and we would soon find ourselves reorganized and allocated to new watches with new watchmates, I have to say I am quite content in the watch as it stands and we all get on well… hope we don’t change soon!

This evening we are “retarding” the hours, despite sounding like a non-pc way of insulting people this actually means that we are reorganizing the watches relative to the new time zone as some watched cannot do their allocated ship’s work as the sun either comes up too late or sets too early.  To this end, each watch will extend their watch by 20 minutes and tomorrow all the clocks on board will go back by an hour.  For someone like me who gets confused just putting the clocks back and forward once a year, this was way too complicated and decided to just do what people told me to when they told me to do it,.. although it was made easier by the fact that my watch had broken and so I never know what the correct time was anyway!!

We were suddenly thrown from our dreams at 1 am as the boat heeled over until it seemed like the mast touched the water, I was thrown into the small shelf on the outboard side of my bunk and I heard smashing and crashing as items were thrown around the hold, benches were overturned, the contents of people’s bunks were thrown on top of them and the entire carpenter’s workspace emptied itself onto the floor … We later discovered that Jimmy had decided that he would rather head to Costa Rica instead of Panama by overcorrecting a misturn of the wheel in the wrong direction and we ended up pointing 4 points in the wrong direction just as a huge swell broadsided the ship and bounced us around like a cork.  Apparently even the captain came up onto the quarterdeck to find out what was going on!

The night’s excitement was the talk of breakfast and the only respite was Davey who came down to inform us that there were dolphins surfing on the bow wave… despite having all seen them on a fairly regular basis over the last month, they are always alluring, fascinating and intriguing at the same time.  This pod was having a lot of fun using the 6 knot bow wave we were creating to really propel them forward and they were to-ing and fro-ing for a good 15 minutes until they got bored of us and disappeared.

For that morning’s ship work WT took me aside and instructed me to get the grease gun, and grease all the nipples on the ship, for those of you who do not yet know how a grease gun works, the parts that require greasing generally have a small metal nipple which feeds directly into the part to be greased.  The gun then has what can best be described as a “nipple receptacle” into which the nipples clip allowing the operator to squeeze the lever and inject grease into the required space.  Now this doesn’t sound very thrilling, but the double entendre potential of this job is fantastic and I take great satisfaction in wandering around asking people if their nipples need greasing or expressing my disdain for blocked nipples to whoever is closest,.. immature I know, but fun!  This job has the added bonus that I am pretty much my own boss and involves a lot of grease, which, let’s face it, is kind of fun in a messy juvenile way too! 

We had a surprise for dinner, Donald had decided the time had come to clean out the freezers and so we had a meal of “Liam-caught” tuna and “Dave-caught” Mahi-Mahi,… it was spectacular and everyone was very complimentary.  As I piped up after every compliment, “there is plenty more where that came from,.. we just have to catch it first!”

The evening watch was mostly spent practising knots and everyone is getting increasingly nervous about “boxing” the compass, the pin chase and exactly what the Seamanship Derby will consist of.

Another Galley duty day and Tiina and I finally got to spend some time together!  We used to see each other a lot in Lunenburg, but since we were put on separate watches we hardly see each other and ironically she sleeps under me! (in the bunk below!).  We thanked god that it wasn’t a Sunday and we didn’t have to cook all the meals ourselves, but Donald still kept us busy.

Our task was to clean out the containers section of the scullery, however, the captain had noticed that the plastic scullery cutting board (which doubles as the top to the cooler) was grey and grimy and needed a serious clean so I was put in charge of making sure that it got a good scrubbing.  After 20 mins continuous scrubbing it became clear that this really wasn’t going to make any difference and so I tried bleach: no cleaner, then we decided on TSP an industrial cleaner from the carpenters workspace: no difference, sandpaper: nope, wire brushing: nothing, wire wool: no change,… eventually I discovered that the most effective manner of cleaning the board was to scrape off layers of the board and then clean out the cut marks with my knife and the industrial cleaner.  This process took a couple of hours and resulted in me being covered in plastic shavings, but the board was virtually unrecognizable from its previous self and everyone commented on how clean it had become,.. I wonder how long it will last!

Cleaning up after lunch it was noticed that there was a lack of 2 corner sponges and WT was brought in to organize a system to ensure that there were enough sponges to go round.  Now, the sponge system on the Picton Castle is as follows:

Full sponge: washing up dishes sponge

One corner (missing) sponge: eating surfaces

2 corner sponge: Non-eating surfaces

3 corner sponge: interior walls/bulkheads

4 corner sponge: Heads/toilets

The sponges move from one classification to the next based on how grotty they become until they are not even fit for use in the head and thrown out – mind you at that point they are little more that small pieces of yellow and green plastic and actually dirty things more than clean them!

Now no matter how many 2 corner sponges are created, there always seems to be a lack of them and we believe that this mystery has baffled some of the greatest minds for centuries (or at least since the Picton Castle was created in 1928!), along with the Bermuda triangle, the Marie Celeste and the whereabouts of Michael Jackson’s real nose.

Every location now has the correct sponge allocation and (gasp!) new sponges were even brought out of the hold! Which just goes to show how serious the situation had become!

We were advised of another splicing masterclass in the afternoon and so I decided to sharpen my, by now, very blunt rig knife.  As I was on the well deck and sharpening it on the block from the carpenter’s workspace I noticed the captain walk past and glance at me,.. a minute of so later he passed by again with his knife out and proceeded to explain how to sharpen my knife.  This lesson was greatly needed as I had heard a number of different versions of the best way to sharpen a rig knife, I could boil it down to 3 distinct elements 1) Use the whole grindstone so you don’t wear down any particular area, 2) if your knife ends up being sharp, then that’s a good way to do it! and 3) Don’t oversharpen your knife as it will become brittle.

His system definitely seemed to work and I turned up at the splicing masterclass feeling prepared!  We all hovered around the hatch in heightened anticipation as we noticed that there was an additional cutting block with 2 coconuts beside it.  The captain turned up with his normal unassuming aplomb and proceeded to give us a pre-workshop workshop on 2 different types of coconut and how to open them; the first was the coconut that I was used to from Ghana that the captain described as a “drinking coconut” or “waternut” and demonstrated his way of opening them, which was similar to the Ghanaian way, except using a sharp knife to carve off the outer husk instead of using the machete/cutlass to hack away at it.  He then showed us the hard coconut which he described as mature and how to open it with the machete/cutlass.  The splicing masterclass was fairly straightforward and I found splicing two ropes together easier than splicing the same rope back onto itself to create an eye.

Thanks to the captain having promised a ship a new mainsail Panama, this morning we tried a completely new activity,.. sail making!

Since the majority of the other watches had also been working on the same sail, we had been left some sewing to do.  Not ever having sewed I was not going to be the best choice for seamstress (or the male equivalent), and so Sophie nominated herself as the one to do it.  Frank (as the sewing machine had been named) turned out to be a fickle workmate and if the bobbin hadn’t run out, the tension was wrong or he just made a peculiar noise and stopped!  I can see sewing being complicated at the best of times and trying to do it on a moving ship with a sail twice the size of the deck we were working on, with an unpredictable sewing machine and inexperienced help (me and Jo) it was near on impossible to make a straight line and Sophie became increasingly frustrated as the morning moved on,… I had never heard her raise her voice in the last two months, but this morning she was acting the sailor she truly was and turning the air blue with poor old Frank bearing the brunt of her insults (although I received a few myself after the odd asinine remark – which I probably deserved).  Since I was on helm I was forced to distance myself from the obscenities and spent an hour happily keeping the ship on course and watching a gull diving for fish.  The way he tucked in his wings and disappeared into the water without a splash was incredible and most times he surfaced again with something in his mouth!  If only I could learn to dive like that!

This afternoon the captain had organized a splicing workshop to teach us how to create an eye in a length of rope (as we learnt; a rope is just a rope until it is put to use, then it becomes a line).  He sat on a workman’s bench placed on the hatch so that everyone could see and explained how to splice.  I had done this before, but Lunenburg seems like a lifetime ago and without practice I had obviously forgotten as my first splice looked more like a bowl of spaghetti than a neat and tidy splice,.. but practice makes perfect and by the time the workshop had ended it was beginning to look acceptable.

That evening we were all surprised by a procession of a very clean and well dressed Lorraine, Via, Bob and Josh heading towards the scullery. As it turns out they had been invited to dinner with the captain which will apparently happen to all of us,.. although very pristine, they also looked a little nervous,.. none of us had had dinner with the captain and like many things, no-one had any idea of what to expect!

Whilst on lookout this evening I noticed we yet again had dolphins surfing on the bow wave and advised the girls who were cleaning the galley.  The three of us leant over the rail trying to catch glimpses of their bioluminescent trails in the water below and making appropriate “ooh” and “aah” noises every time they appeared at the surface, jumped or made a noise.  Due to the increased waves they weren’t as clear as the first time I saw them but still impressive and they really seemed to be having fun zooming around the water below us!

We were making great time as the wind had been steadily increasing since we left Bonaire and were averaging about 7.5knots

Finding it tricky to catch up with writing,.. 3 days in Bonaire having no time to write my journal really left me having to catch up!  And now of course I have no free time!

Morning watch was pretty uneventful and consisted mainly of wandering around the deck and trying to figure out what went on the previous night from analysing where people where sleeping, who was sleeping in the proximity of who and who was missing!  Deciding that it was too late at 6 to go back to bed I decided to get on the internet again and try to download the emails again,.. finally success, that is until Eveline (whose internet I was stealing) obviously woke up and logged on, kicking me off!

The morning was spent preparing to set sail, lashing things down, lashing objects in the hold and cleaning up ready for the off,….  One of the tasks we were given was to clean the hull of the rubber and paint marks left by the “bumpers” on the docks where they pressed against the hull,.. after 20 minutes of endless scrubbing we were getting frustrated with the uselessness of the cleaning products we were using, then it struck me, we had been told that green knight used citric acid and for that reason we had to use gloves and safety glasses,.. what else uses citric acid,… well oranges of course, so what better way to determine the effectiveness of green knight against its key ingredient than to use orange skins,.. once scored the orange skins were fantastic,.. admittedly they didn’t get everything off, but they really made a dent in the blue paint that had rubbed off on our hull! Mythbusters eat your heart out!

We were informed by the captain that we were going to sail off the dock which is meant to be quite tricky, but the wind was blowing perfectly and although I didn’t see it personally (I was too busy pulling on lines and generally running about), I was told by Brad (who was stranded on dock for a few minutes) that it looked very professional and impressive,.. even got a good picture of it!

En route once again to Panama (for the 5^th time!) we were all on duty until lunch and the doc finally had a good look at Niko’s ankle which was still about double its normal size, she decided that it may have a small fracture and if it was still in a bad way that he should get an x-ray in Panama.  This afternoon we noticed a sign pinned to the scuttle,.. “Seamanship Derby, coming soon!”… this perplexed most trainees as we had absolutely no idea what a seamanship derby is and neither did our Ab’s…

Today we were on watch, so while the rest of the watches enjoyed another beautiful day in Bonaire we were put to work painting and rust busting. My main job today was to rust bust, wire brush, sand, corroseal, prime and then paint the plimsoll marks and surrounding hull.  Now these marks show the legal depth the boat can rest in the water in different types of water; Tropical Freshwater, Tropical Saltwater, Saltwater, Tropical Saltwater and North Atlantic Saltwater.  Now in the morning we set up a scaffold at just the right height a few inches off the water line and I got to work, however after lunch the swell increased, and we also took on a few extra cubic metres of water, with the combined result that I was sat waist deep in the water for a good couple of hours,.. now this being the Caribbean I wasn’t too worried,… at least until the mate started to do some guided tours and one of the attendees decided to use the salon head (toilet), the “exhaust” of which is about a metre to the right of the plimsoll marks,.. I discovered fairly rapidly that I can jump out of the water, scale the scaffolding and vault the bulwarks (all without touching my new paint) within a few seconds!.. I then gave it a good few minutes before returning to my post!

A brief tropical downpour brought our painting and varnishing to an end and we made the most of the respite by rehydrating and trying to figure out how to get beers on board for that evening.

People began to return to the ship and Adrienne proudly showed off her new bunk fan, which quite frankly wouldn’t have looked out of place on the wing of a Boeing 747, I really have to find myself a decent one as sleeping below is akin to trying to sleep whilst packed between 2 obese people on the London underground at rush hour (no air conditioning)..  Seriously, it is pretty uncomfortable and waking up at 3 am drenched in sweat is not the most pleasant experience and I have taken to drying out my sheets on a daily basis on the washing lines.  I have decided to invest in a decent bunk fan when we get to Panama,..

We appeared to have missed another “Best Day Ever” as Fred and Davey returned in their rented Jeep to exclaim that they had “Jeep-F*#ked” the island and animatedly described their off-roading,.. Cheri returned in a slightly less elated mood having had the steering column fall out of her Jeep,.. but then expertly repaired (albeit for the short term) by WT who lashed it together with Seine twine!

That evening we discovered that we could get internet on the other side of the dock, so I attempted to download my 300+ emails from the last 3 weeks so my account wouldn’t get shut off!!  I was then on watch from 5am the next morning,.. so “early to bed, early to rise!!

We woke to find out that we missed yet another huge party the night before,. Dammit!  In Anguilla we missed the first night party (it was a public holiday!) and now we missed one ‘cause we went to the wrong place,… we will get a party soon!

Today was the first dive day and the 6 qualified of us headed off to the dive shop which was all of 2 minutes walk away.  Myself, Meredith, Yohanna, Josh/Jon, Dan and Tammy enjoyed a shore dive right in front of the dive shop at “cha cha cha” beach, which was a great re-initiation to diving as it had been a couple of years since my last dive,..  The more experienced divers were paired with the less so and luckily I noticed the air tube to Meredith’s BCD wasn’t properly connected,.. that would have been fun!

We then left to dive in another location called Angels City where we saw Barracuda moray, etc

On our way back from the dive we tried to find somewhere to eat, but got distracted by a place that rented scooters.  En masse we decided to rent all the scooters they had,… Sophie wandered by and was convinced into coming with us,.. however since all the scooters were gone, she ended up riding pillion on Nadia’s ATV,.. they looked hardcore!   Everything was going according to plan until Niko actually started his scooter, accelerated too hard and ended up face down on the road with the bike on top of him,.. everyone froze, his leg was trapped underneath and it didn’t look good. The rental guy jumped up in an instant and lifted the bike off him, he had a few cuts and bruises, but didn’t look too bad, it wasn’t until a little while later that we realized his ankle had swollen to twice its normal size, but he was determined to continue and we zoomed off looking like something from Quadrophenia.  After taking the wrong road up the island we discovered a place that sold smoothies and decided to stop,.. unbeknownst to us the guy had no ingredients and I spied him a few minutes later coming back with what seemed like a supermarket bag,.. the smoothies were good, but either his maths wasn’t good or something wasn’t right as he tried to charge us exorbitantly for something that took about an hour!  

While waiting for the most expensive smoothies most of us had ever tasted we discovered that Shawn’s bike had decided to give up the ghost and was about as effective as our erstwhile waiter,.. after a few minutes I managed to start it with the kick start, and we left it running in the hope that it would recuperate!

We weren’t best pleased with our extortionate milkshakes and headed off to the flamingo reserve,..  Shawn had zoomed off ahead in a bit of a huff and after a few minutes we caught up with him,.. he had reached a beautiful lookout point and had inadvertently turned off his bike,.. could we start it?,.. could we bollocks!  But at least the view was nice,.. after unsuccessfully trying to kick start it at the cost of my sandals which parted with the effort we sent Niko to a high point to see if he could get reception and call the bike rental guy to come and pick us up… he returned a few minutes later saying he would be on his way in a few minutes!

An hour later we had sent everyone else off and Shawn and I were still sitting there and chatting when he turned up and pointed at us while saying,.. “you owe me 25 dollars!”.. secure in his conviction that he’d be able to start it within a few minutes… 10 minutes later he still hadn’t,.. both Shawn and I were relieved we hadn’t ended up looking like arseholes and while the bike and Shawn were loaded onto the van I zoomed off away from the setting sun to see if I could beat them back to the shop…

We managed to convince them not to charge Niko anything for the scratches on the bike and Shawn got a discount,.. although to be honest 17$ was a reasonable price for the afternoon anyway!  Plus they let him borrow an ATV to go on an ice-cream run!

Dinner consisted of some burgers at a local burger joint before heading to Little Havana in the hope of re-enacting the previous nights party, despite a lot of people being hung over!

After a while the party got started along with the dancing.  Although no-one was at the same level of the night before, en route back to the boat via the beach road at about 1am we were disturbed by shouts coming from the beach, only crew make that sort of noise and as we peered into the gloom we could vaguely make out pale naked bodies splashing around in the water.. within minutes everyone was in the water and Marco Polo and Chicken fights ensued, despite a few people being stung by the coral and Jimmy receiving a cut eye, possibly thanks to Yohanna, everyone returned to the boat safe and sound,.. but the night wasn’t over yet, before long, rum, water and throwing lines appeared on the dock,.. apparently a PC tradition, rope skipping/double dutch is something of an initiation.  I was absolutely crap at this and failed miserably,.. jimmy however could jump in and out of the ropes like he was an experienced 8 year old girl….  (in a good way!)

At about 4am,.. I think I headed to bed!!

Another southerly wind day!

Just as Sophie started her morning motivation speech to get us started on our daily duties we intervened and presented her with her presents,.. a t-shirt we had made in Anguilla with her favourite phrase “Hydrate or Die” on the back, and signed by the whole watch including mate mike and a “birthday princess” hat,.. she was made up with the t-shirt and proceeded to wear it for the majority of the morning,.. she didn’t want to get it too dirty so changed into her normal work gear after a few minutes, but I think she genuinely loved it!… preparations for arrival in Bonaire were in full force and we spent a large chunk of the watch bringing up lines from the chain locker.

True to the captain’s word we arrived in Bonaire at lunchtime,.. however being a Sunday, there was almost nothing open… we trekked around the main town of Kralendijk, sweated and stopped for a much needed beer.   At which point we noticed a rather sweaty Niko cycling round and round the block we were on,… once we stopped him and asked what he was doing we pointed him in the correct direction for the supermarket where he had been sent by Donald and off he trundled!

We discovered a dive shop and spent a few minutes organizing the dive trips for the qualified and introductory dives for the non-qualified divers,… between watches and qualification, it was pretty complicated, but worked out well!  In total 16 of the crew were going diving!

At the dive shops recommendation a few of us headed up to Playa, a posh beach resort about 10 minutes walk from the dock.. it had a beautiful beach, a bar and music,.. everything we required and looked like it was going to get busy later on,… it didn’t!  We chilled there and ate till 10.30 ish and after an unsuccessful attempt to chat to some dutch people at the bar we headed home with one more drink on the way.

Today we awoke to a dead calm,.. almost no wind whatsoever and obviously still motoring.  We did however get one reprieve which was when it was decided that we were going to have a power shower.  In brief, this is when the emergency seawater hose is rigged up to the shrouds and water is jetted downwards onto anyone below, whether they want to get wet or not! Most of the crew showed up and a communal shower ensued.  The interesting thing about salt water is that soap does not lather up and so is pretty useless if you want to get the day’s dirt off you (or week’s dirt in our case!), there are a couple of solutions, a) you can use specialty salt water soap designed to be used in salt water,.. or b) you can use certain types of washing up liquid that just happen to lather,.. as skint trainees we decided to go for the latter option,… I don’t think there hadn’t been that many clean people on board since Lunenberg!

We had a muster on the quarterdeck by the captain and were informed that due to this low that was hanging to the south west, the traditionally strong easterly trade winds were non-existent and any wind we did get was a southerly,… exactly where we wanted to head!  I think his exact words were “I don’t want to motor all the way to Panama as it is expensive and I don’t really like motoring so we are going to stop at Bonaire until the winds change!”… having only just left Anguilla, the news of a stop in another Caribbean island was received with smiles and hushed whispers.  I was particularly excited as I had been to Curaçao a year or two beforehand and had loved it,.. thanks to an ex of mine I even knew a few words or Papiamento!

The evening watch was a standard affair, there was almost no wind and due to the peculiar weather we had a fantastic sunset, I even tried to get some silhouette photos of the watch, they kind of came out!

I whiled away the watch organizing a SCUBA list in anticipation of Bonaire, which is basically an entire marine reserve,.. we had a number of people signed up within minutes,.. all I needed now was the watch list, how long we were going to be in Bonaire and most importantly, a dive shop!

It was Sophie’s birthday on the 30^th and unbeknownst to us the pro-crew had decided to bake her a cake and present it to her at midnight,.. however due to the fact that there was actually nothing going on during the watch Sophie had gone to the fo’c’sle head to get her sextant and walked in on them decorating it,.. “Oops,” she said on returning to deck “I just walked into the fo’c’sle head and when I saw them with the cake they said “well, happy fucking birthday Soph!!””,.. not long after, some lights were noticed on deck and despite a novelty drink umbrella being set on fire the huge chocolate cake was presented on the well-deck without much incident,.. except for the fact that she had seen it and so it was presented at 22.30!  Happy birthday was sung and the incredibly sugary cake was consumed within minutes.

We were to leave Anguilla today, so everyone had to be on board by lunchtime, everyone was on time and one person in particular drew interested stares as he climbed on board from the skiff,.. “Clark, what the hell happened?” was the general question. Initially it just looked like Clark had parted his hair in a new way, but on closer inspection it was obvious that a large strip of hair had been removed from one side of his thick head of hair,.. “Via was cutting my hair and the trimmer slipped” he mused dejectedly!!  It did actually look quite cool, if a little “gangsta” for the normally soft-spoken Clark!

The 8-12 was on watch all day until we left, but as we ended up leaving at 15h, we discovered that we had pulled the short straw as not only were we on duty all day until about 4, we were also back on duty at 20h until 24h.

The morning was spent doing ship work, painting, rust-busting etc and we were all desperate for a swim call! But no such luck and my heart sank as I was told to de-rig the swing-rope

We had our first real “weigh anchor” experience and the windlass was pretty hard work, everyone gave it a go and we were 2 shots up in no time!

As we motored away from “sandy Ground” and Anguilla the squalls yet again began and by the time we were back on watch it was fouly weather once again,.. I couldn’t believe yet again we had got squalls – our watch had become known as the “Squall Watch”!

On night watch we couldn’t believe that mere hours before we had been sweating and cursing the heat and here we were wearing foulies and although not yet cold,… not far off!