Return Crew Day 7 – 14 February 2020
By Robyn Wolstenholme
For dinner last night we had pasta and sauce with made by Kristy and Francois with actual meat. Towards the evening the cloud cover cleared up and we saw a sunset for the first time in a couple days. After the sun had set we looked up to see a wonderful display of the Milky Way. It was the most stars that we had seen the entire journey. All the okes that were in the cockpit just looked up to admire the view for at least an hour before heading below deck. In the morning we witnessed the first proper sunrise of the trip and it was breathtaking. The new day brought sunny skies and constant wind. We put the lures out in the hope of catching some fish but did not catch any unfortunately.
The pleasant weather has lifted the atmosphere on the boat as witnessed during the day by all the singing and silent dancing along to music. We took showers off the sugar scoop using a bucket. This lead to many squeals after the first bucket was poured. Rory and Oliver took the opportunity to do their washing for the first on the trip. We baked bread for lunch and added different spices to them to get more variety. The one loaf came out hard as a rock and the other was perfect. We then added gammon, baked beans and mayo to the combo. Francois kindly went up the mast to fix a pulley block for the stack pack which he completed efficiently with his good technical skills. The block then accidentally had been pulled all the way up the mast after Francois had come down so Cam took a turn to go retrieve the toy from the neighbour’s yard and was hoisted up.
We have all settled in nicely to our shifts and occasional have hot coffee before the early morning shifts. We have also noticed that the sun rises and sets earlier each day. My own shifts use to be the one at sunrise and the next shift after the sunset shift but they are turning more into one after sunrise and the other once the moon is up type shifts respectively.
An Update!: Oliver reeled in our first fish, a small Jack Fish. It’s just a taster for the plenty more that we expect to come. “The last time I saw people move that quickly when the fishing reel started squeeling was when someone was being mugged” commented Kristy.
Today on ‘Who’s on board!” we have Clare Cole. She is 60 and a grandmother to her youngest daughter’s little girl. She is originally from the UK and moved to SA after a horse riding holiday several years ago. Clare had 2 careers – as a principal and teacher. Clare also enjoys photography and has been trained in horse dentistry. The answer to “Why did you come on board?” is simple she says as she really enjoys sailing.