In Bermuda, Sunday
Sunday morning, beautiful day, high cloudless blue sky. Wind is brisk and while it has been out of the North for many days, in our teeth if we were sailing to the Azores, it has now swung around from the South, an ideal day and wind for the start of our passage. Unfortunately we are still tied up in Bermuda, awaiting the parts that are being flown in, and can only look at the weather and hope that it stays.
An easy day, everyone on their day off and many have headed to various parts of the island to explore. I’m enjoying the leisure and have chosen to write the blog, walk around the town and precincts and lie on deck reading my book while the landscape is still level and not bouncing around the horizon.
Blue Clipper at dock
Unlike Tecla who had a permanent crew of 3 including the captain plus a cook and a guest crew of 10, Blue Clipper is awash with crew. There are 6 of us guest crew, plus a group of 10 Trainees who have been aboard since St Maarten and working towards various certifications, and 8 permanent crew, for a total of 24, a full house for meals. I’m sure this will be hugely easier on everyone with lots more hands to spread the load but we are still on watches and and while there will be 5 or 6 people per watch, there are 3 masts with gaff rigged sails to manage instead of 2 as on Tecla so I expect we will still be kept hopping. Crew, as you would expect, is very young and I’m by some distance, the old man of group.
Last night after dinner, a number of the young ones wanted to watch a movie and since my ipad has a phone card I’m on a fast phone network and can stream Netflix with no hiccoughs. Everyone wanted to watch Adrift so a day before our departure for an ocean crossing we watched, irony of ironies, the travails of a sailboat in the throes of trying to survive a storm and dismasting at sea. They all seemed to love it but a bunch of young blue-sea sailors are not going to let movie makers errors go unpunished!
Salt water Mallards unfazed by an owl efigy, probably have never seen one in life!
Tomorrow is, with any luck, our last day at the dock and if the long-awaited parts arrive on time, we should be good to go on Tuesday morning.
Stay tuned!
