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White Satin - Brain overload



Thursday 10th November

 

Today has been spent in the sumptuous surroundings of the Real Club Nautico where we have had our brains almost overloaded with advice and guidance over five different seminars.  Three of the talks were given by Chris Tibbs (whose wife, Helen, is our ARC pontoon rep) who has 25 Trans-Atlantic crossings and almost 300,000 miles under his belt; needless to say we were all hanging on to his every word. These were entitled Management of Emergencies, Route & Weather (Chris is a meteorologist by profession and wrote the RYA book on Weather) and Downwind Sailing.  Today’s photograph is of Chris showing us an example of a GRIB file, which is a method of presenting a prediction of the strength and direction of the wind.

 

Lunch at the yacht club was spent sitting with a German family with an adorable four-year-old daughter (she will have her fifth birthday at sea); they have a seven-year-old son as well.  This family have sold the house and the car and are not going home for at least two years – it makes our plans seem very tame.  Don’t worry mum, we will be back next Spring (we have a house to finish building).

 

Jerry the Rigger (who has been up our mast) is normally based in Gosport but comes out here for a month every year to do a rigging check on all boats who request his services.  Jerry gave a very amusing and interactive presentation, which was tremendously worthwhile – the message was LOVE YOUR RIG and to be even more gentle and loving with it than you are your wife.

 

Clare Pengelly gave all sorts of useful advice on provisioning, storing and preparing food; interesting meals are vital to keep up morale at sea but we will not be able to do ‘Bake Off Showstoppers’!  All three speakers had their own style of delivery and were experts in their fields; the day was over far too quickly.

 

Informative times.

 

Vicki



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