THURSDAY 6th JANUARY 2011
Well, well, here we are back again from Christmas at home in Ireland, and was it cold, brrrrrr brrrrr blooming freezing, apart from all the snow which we very rarely see in Ireland, the frost caused so much damage and broken watermains that half the country were without water for almost 2 weeks. but apart from that , we enjoyed the trip very much..... We got to see our new grandchildren , our children ,our mothers, brothers and sisters, and our friends, the weddings, the parties, the dinners, and the Christmas dinner of course, but more on all that in bits and pieces over the next while.
Looking back over the last 12 months since we left St. Lucia on the 6th Jan 2010 , exactly a year ago , we feel proud of our achievments to date, In that 12 months we have sailed just over 19,000 miles, visited 15 different countries and stopped at 92 different Islands, ports and cities. We met so many wonderfull and interesting people, not to mention all the Irish we met in almost every spot we stopped at.
The variety in food, the variety in living standards , the variety in people, the variety in economies was amazing , and in all that time we were very carefull not to eat or drink anything suspecious for fear of getting food poisining, skipper had to wait untill returning to Ireland to get a good dose of jelly belly from a sausage roll.. would it not make you laugh. not at the time...... ohhhhhhh, s***t
" Oysters" winter magazine has an article about the first part of our trip and they presented it very well, well done Oyster and all their team.
Back to today, North sails returned our mainsail ( Steve Meek, who sailed in Cork week a few times ) and we duly hauled it up the mast and tried it for size, It all looks good. and in particular the new top batton, They also returned our repaired "Parasail " or as we usually refer to it as the " KITE ". The riggers reinstalled our spinniker halyard, and we had Terry ( female diver ) clean the underside of the hull, and she did a fantastic job. All in all, we were nearly ready for road and our new companions for the next leg arrived at midday.
Sham and Emily , who live in "Knysna" south africa, where we met at the beggining of december are sailing with us to St Helina and onto Salvidor in Brazil, Skipper knows Sham since our teens and some of his children would be good friends with ours. So for the moment they are our N.B.F,s. Later , they went off in their car and purchased some of the provisions required for the next month.They did this at " Woolworths" We are sure you all remember woolworths back in Ireland and England, which of course closed down a few years ago.but out here, the shops have gone from strength to strength.... Meanwhile Skipper and Aileen went off and had lunch in the Waterfront.
16.30 hrs We all piled into the car and headed to " Hautbaay" for the skippers briefing and party, however, we decided to go and have a meal in an adjoining restaurant called " Mariners Wharf " after the briefing. The food was excellent , most of us had fish and really enjoyed the overall surroundings, a couple of glasses of wine and we were in top gear. We have a lot of catching up to do, but then we have a month to do so.
23.00hrs, we arrived back at the boat and had a night cap with " Destiny " before hitting the scratchers, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Ohhhh, would you belive this, despite all the warnings I give to people NOT to send attachments, photo,s or brochures, we still recieved a good number over christmas and the whole system crashed, we could not send or recieve, so Skipper had to sent a text to our French friend and IT man " Arnaud Disant " and get him to delete all messages sent after the 6th Dec. Now we are back in buisness again.
Happy New Year.
Thats it for now,
signed :- Stephen Hyde ( Skipper )