Tuesday 21st October
WHO NEEDS WEIGHT WATCHERS?
Ian has been rewiring up forward for some time today and Malcy is waiting on him for more works in the wet locker.
Have seen 2 ships on the AIS this afternoon. Spoke to the second one "Northgate" with the standard question "Have you picked us up on your radar?" The answer was no! He was carrying a cargo of iron ore from Brazil to Singapore and making 10.2 knots, so sounds like a long time at sea!
When last on the boat I lost a stone in weight. Don't think that's going to happen this time. In fact quite the reverse! Ian like me has an addiction to chocolate, which is of course essential to keep one going on night watch! To make sure we didn't run out we bought about 40 bars of Cadbury's in Woolworths, Darwin, mainly fruit and nut plus Kit-Kats, Maltesers etc. Not a great deal of course for what is only going to be 4 weeks actual sailing, but when you consider each bar was 250g, we probably bought 12 + kilos of chocolate altogether! The stock is disappearing fast, but there may be the odd bar left for John (another addict) when he rejoins the boat in a couple of weeks!
There wasn't a great deal of fresh food in Cocos, so we are now down to potatoes, onions, oranges, apples and a few carrots. Everything else is in tins, packets or the freezer. Small problem in the freezer is that the bottom layers are completely solid and although I spent some time extracting a few the rest are beyond me at the moment. Its not been helped by Malcy putting 8 bags of 24 ice cubes in the freezer many of which have escaped and stuck on the bottom layers adding considerably to the problem!
The usual card game of rummy is played by the other 3 prior to "sundowners", Clare and a bacon stir-fry. Having prepared everything in the afternoon with the actual cooking in 3 batches, with the lower heat gas took about an hour - crazy! Ian is consistently my best customer at meal times and can always be relied on to take 2 or 3 helpings! Taste is variable Malcy thought lasts nights attempts were good, but he didn't really know it was supposed to taste of sweet chilli and soy sauce as he had already poured a bucket full of Lea and Perrins onto it! Ian thought it interesting, which I sometimes interpret as a polite way of saying . It could have been better!"