Greetings from cold and wet Southampton - in all fairness, although it was cold over the weekend, it was sunny - OK for me - I tend to work indoors.
Maintenance is going well. We had a HUGE crane here last week for a morning.
We have two yards off the mainmast, and they are prepped and ready for painting, and yet again we have the soft patch out - for the uninitiated , that is the area of deck in front of the main mast- to get the alternators out for servicing. this of course means a roped off area on the main deck which ,makes life a little awkward for our PD volunteers, but Neil our only WC volunteer is getting around the difficult parts very well.
Lots of sanding of capping rails has been going on, but this has been interrupted by the rain. At the moment someone appears to have pinched the helm ( I am told it is in a dry place somewhere being stripped down ready for lots of coats of varnish).
As always most of the engineering maintenance goes on in deep dark places that I try to avoid whenever possible, but the engineering guys have been very visible when they have been working on the air conditioning units.
Over the weekend we had a watch leader course onboard - one guy went straight from maintenance to training . We tried to get him back on maintenance but he thought he had better go home.
We started off with loads of maintainers, but the numbers have dropped off a little this week, so anybody out there who does maintenance and thinks they will be bored this weekend, do come and join us.
An important event to note. On Tuesday, Mr Catterson Junior (Alexander) made his first visit to the ship. He was extremely well behaved and interested in his surroundings, particularly when we were having dinner, and all he got to eat was the fist that he was happily chomping on!. Well behaved babies are very welcome, so bring him back again soon Janine.
As always maintenance periods are busy, usually a bit chaotic ( in an organized way) and hard work, but everybody always seems happy. We can't thank our volunteers enough for the help that they give us.
Sue, MP