Thursday, 26th August 2010
05.00hrs Neil Tritschler from Waterford, Ireland joined the boat, and will sail with us as far as South Africa. We will leave Darwin next Wed 1st Sept, and sail to Bali, then Cocos Islands, Mauritius, Reunion Island, and Richards Bay, Durban, S.A. A total distance of - 5,950 n miles. We will pick up Terry and Niall in Bali, so there will be five on board from there to Mauritius, where Niall is leaving to go home and Colette will be joining us and sailing to S.A. We spent the morning checking the sails and cleaning up the boat.
12.00hrs The mechanic arrived to service the engine and generator.
12.30 Niall and Mary dragged all their bags and baggage (with Skippers help) up the marina to the taxi as they are leaving the boat and off to Singapore on route home to Dublin. Niall said that all his possessions were in his back pack, so what was in the bags? oh oh, don't go there. We were sad to see them leave. We enjoyed their company, and farewells are always, ahhhhhhhh terrible... We think they enjoyed their time on the boat as well. Soooo, all the usual hugs and waving and all that stuff .
Skipper spent the afternoon watching the mechanic (Nafea, from Egypt) service the engines. Its interesting to watch the different approaches that different mechanics take to servicing an engine and this guy seems confident in what he is doing.
Paul, from World ARC delivered our repaired E120 unit to the boat, so Skipper and Jan Mortan (Ronja) connected up the unit in its housing in the cockpit and voila, it all works! So for the 1st time since Panama, we have our Chart plotter, our Radar, and our AIS, all working again. We are making progress..............
Niall T. and Aileen went to town for a bit of therapy, and returned to the boat at 17.00hrs.
18.30 The three of us went to "Christo's Restaurant" the one only 50 yards from the boat, we were invited to dinner by
another Christos who is one of the crew members of Lady Ev VI, and sailing around the World with us. The interesting here is that both Christo's are of greek origin. We always got on well with Christos and Aileen always looked out for him, so now he was hosting a greek dinner for his NBF'S (remember, NBF, New Best Friend). So there were ourselves and Neil T., David and Sue and Sue's twin brother Peter from Voyageur and a lot of his German friends and crew, as Christos lives in Germany. Total at dinner, about 12.
Dinner consisted of a whole roasted baby lamb, and a whole goat dish, plus all the normal things like Greek salad, roast potatoes, roast veg., etc. All in all, it was just terrific food, from one Greek to another, and we had some Greek dessert to add to the calories. A great night!
We all went to the scratchers early, as most people were off on a tour early in the morning. NO night caps.
That's all for today
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)