Hello everyone. It’s Laura, Sian (roof on the ‘a’), Claire, Josephine & Amy from Aft port here J
Well this morning was interesting, last ever 4am-8am watch for our watchJ, 4 o’clock start for Josephine & Claire on Anchor watch. YAY!
It was pretty uneventful really and the highlight would have to be Claire putting too much sugar in her tea and getting just a little hyper. This resulted in an endless rendition of Bob the Builder “Big Fish Little Fish Cardboard Box”, much to Sue the watchleaders disgust.
Then it was up onto deck to set the sails and brace the yards for today’s sail. We did so much work that John told us we could all cancel our gym memberships! Not that any of us actually had them in the first place! However we did manage, for the second time this trip, to leave the anchorage under sail. Captain Barbara said the engines were not used at all. Very soon we were going fast in the direction of Ireland. Now the ship is awash with secretive groups, all practicing for tonight’s big event... SODS OPERA!
Our watch is particularly excited about our amazing act using our incredibly attractive oilskin waterproofs and wellyboots (some better than others...)
Anyway must get back to practicing (playing cards Ha-ha)
HAPPY HOUR!!!!!
Well as you have probably gathered from all of the other blogs happy hour is definitely the highlight of the day ... NOT! However I’m sure that our cleaning techniques are getting better but mums please don’t get any ideas about getting us to do all the cleaning at home J Aft port were on heads today, a delight as always! So now the toilets and showers are sparkly clean and smell beautiful!! Unfortunately Sian discovered the holes in her gloves AFTER cleaning her toilets and is now severely traumatised, doing an extremely good impression of Lady Macbeth (thanks GCSE English!) Oh dear this has once again made Laura panic about her GCSE results that arrived home on Tuesday and are awaiting her return! :O But well done to everyone who has got theirs and did really well!
Before lunch Sian, Claire and Laura all wriggled into our climbing harnesses so that we could go out onto the bowsprit. We encountered the small problem of Sian’s caribena, which was screwed on so tightly that Neil ended up having to attack her with a saw (he actually only attacked the caribena but Sian was quite scared for a moment!) After that little drama we rushed to the bow and took our first tentative steps out onto the bowsprit. Due to the slightly bumpy waves we ended up almost getting splashed with water but still managed to pull a couple of Titanic and Superman poses.
Lunchtime was rather eventful; we managed to knock over a 5 litre bottle of juice. BUT Jo (who was on mess duty at the time) came to the rescue and cleared up all the juice before it all went down the hatch and got the cook wet.
LUNCHTIME INTERRUPTION!!!
Dolphins were spotted off the Port bow and suddenly the rail was crowded with girls watching and squealing! The excitement was unbelievable as the dolphins swam around and under the boat, gliding along the surface. Laura got an awesome photo of four dolphins all leaping out of the water!
Love AFT PORT xxxxxx
Emily and Amy very exciting and hands on day!!
Whilst everyone was saddened by the prospect of happy hour in the wind again, Neil specially selected us two to do a special task! (Later we found out that it was because we were the beefiest of the bunch, we took this as a compliment). So once we had got kitted out in the sexiest boiler suits we entered the chamber of death, dun dun duhhhhhh! Neil had taken us down to the water tanks to loosen the nuts and bolts so we can clean them later. This proved quite challenging as there was very little room as we soon found out after hitting each other with spanners and ratchets, accidently of course ;) It certainly put a new meaning to happy hour!
At 4.30 pm we were called on deck to hand the sails for the last time. They needed our beef again. We anchored in a bay and we need to get up at 6 am to go into Milford Haven.
As we still had our overalls on we were given an even more exciting job to do for the engineers. With Jenny and Nigel we tested the emergency fire pump. Excited David BM had to show us two how to kick start it in one attempt (we had several goes but ‘sure to be sure’ we failed every time). All in all we had a great time and came out covered in grease, sea water and with a few bruises, cuts and blood blisters.
Emily Syred and Amy Porter. (Marys Watch)
P.S while on watch we saw lots of dolphins.
X x x