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Infinity of Yar - Infinity of Yar Blog Post 2



Welcome back, dear reader, to this our second blog entry from the crew 
of Infinity of Yar.
All our crew has arrived and preparations are going apace. All our crew 
that is except for Oliver Davey the owner's younger son who arrives 
tomorrow; by which time all the hard work preparing the boat will have 
been done. Thus he will be known henceforth as 'Step Aboard' Davey.
Within the chapters of this blog we will examine the make up of the crew 
and together we will unpick their characters as the adventure unfolds 
but more of that later.
Let me describe the scene here on the pontoon at Meulle Deportivo in Las 
Palmas. Never have you seen such a hive of activity in a marina. Back in 
England we are used to marinas where 3/4 of the boats never move; here 
we are surrounded by nearly 200 yachts and not a stink boat in sight. ( 
to my non sailing readers a stink boat is a motor boat - Ed.) Every one 
of those yachts from 38 different countries will be leaving here next 
Sunday and they are all busy provisioning, up the masts checking rigging 
and generally carrying out maintenance on everything from water makers 
to bilge pumps, fridges to sat comm systems. The pontoons are heaving 
with reps from every manufacturer helping and hoping that it will not be 
their bit of equipment that fails and gets slated in Yachting World. 
Yachting World are here hoping for the story that the manufacturers want 
to avoid.
We have had our free rigging check courtesy of Admiral Insurance  
carried out by the amazing and ever vigilant Jerry the rigger.
His nugget of advice for us? "If you need to go up the mast mid Atlantic 
my advice is 'Don't' and if you really must then wear a cricket box and 
a climbing helmet."
We are surrounded by yachts from Sweden, Australia, Finland, Germany, 
Italy and Great Britain.
The Swedes are well behaved and studiously polite; the Fins say very 
little and keep themselves to themselves; the Aussies are loud and 
friendly; the Germans are well organised,in bed early and ready to leave 
a week early, but the Italians? Well the Italians are different, they 
party until three in the morning and are noisy, very noisy. More than 
once our neighbours have been heard rising from their bunks at 3am and 
normally mild mannered polite people from all over the world who have 
been pushed beyond their limit of tolerance have been heard shouting in 
their best English " will you shut the f... up ". The Italians carry on 
regardless and the next morning they rise at the crack of midday to 
troop off to the latrines in their towelling coats returning freshly 
showered and fragrant just in time for lunch!
We have attended seminars on just about everything with advice and 
experience from 31 previous ARC's. Copious pictures of previous 
disasters gradually reduced your author to a nervous wreck, requiring 
studious attendance and diligent participation in the  many evening 
parties to rediscover his normally fearless demeanour.
At the start of one such day in the classroom a skipper seated directly 
behind was heard to turn to his neighbour and ask "Will your wife be 
attending?" "Good Lord no" came the reply "I don't want to frighten her 
off."
Well, dear readers, as you have been good enough to wade through another 
of my epistles I am going to leave it there for today. Future missives 
will arrive on a daily basis until the start on Sunday. I can feel from 
Las Palmas the wave of horror coming back at me but the good news is 
that with frequency comes brevity and thus whilst your collective pain 
will be sharp it will also be mercifully short.
I realise that I had promised to introduce you to the crew but that 
particular avenue of pleasure will be denied now (to quote Basil Fawlty) 
until tomorrow.
Until then from from Buzz and all the crew we bid you farewell by saying...

" To infinity and Beyond "




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