can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

Merlyn III - Log day D-5: We shall not starve (nor thirst)



We new boys, James Courage and I, joined the crew last Saturday evening, anxious not to upset the prefects by putting their caviar back in the wrong spot or use the showers til they were perfectly perfumed.  

Merlyn III is on the furthest possible pontoon in a vast marina - in fact, Las palmas itself is far bigger than expected - 800,000 souls live here on the edge of the trade winds.  Next door to us is a very different craft: a small, fragile-looking catamaran of no more than 20 ft.  A mad young bearded Frenchman is set off on her across the ocean ‘demain’ without visible self-steering gear or food - and with only a tiny pod on which to rest.  He lost his partner on the other pod after an argument last week but he is carrying on alone, none of us having volunteered to take the spare place...   

The rather more stately Merlyn is receiving her finishing touches.  As always seems to be the case, it’s two steps forward, one back. The two whisker poles on which all our downwind rigging plans depend both refused to be detached from their fixed points on the boat two days ago.  We were unsure whether we were missing a simple release mechanism or it was just corrosion from sea water, but, twenty-four hours later, after a couple of cans of WD-40 and McLube, sea water won.  Restoration complete, we had ‘read through’ of our roles in the complex rig on our berth yesterday, followed by a full dress rehearsal out on the open sea today.  It is fair to say that the ‘read through’ went better than the dress rehearsal, but the rig did perform once we had each mastered or lines on the heaving deck. 

The backward steps have come with the bilges where the pump packed up in protest at the cleaning fluid inserted - and with the watermaker which has also gone on strike at the thought of virtually continuous duty for the next two or three weeks.  

Perhaps the most productive work has come from ‘Marco-Pierre’ Perring and his assistant, both of whom have been submerged since James and I arrived beneath sheets of menu plans and drinks programmes.  From these the duo have now generated the necessary orders to Las Palmas’s various emporia.  The resulting stores are to be delivered over the next three days in an exact sequence: we may have to charter a mother ship to provide the necessary storage.  I am not sure we will have a bilge pump or a water-maker but ‘we shall not starve (or go thirsty)’.  

David Lough





Previous | Next