28/12/2009 - Tenacious

When I first boarded the Tenacious, the first thing I saw was the food. The food has kind of been an ongoing characteristic of life aboard the beautiful Tenacious.  We had a briefing in the lower mess, dinner and then a few of us went out for some drinks in a quaint little pub behind the first set of buildings in the harbour.  We did the usual thing, i.e. buy the drinks; but the pub kept setting food upon the table for us to devour, and devour we did, despite having recently had dinner.  Firstly they brought out cubes of Maltese sausage and some wafer things; a few minutes later they brought out some different hot sausage covered in tomato ketchup and brown sauce; then a huuuge boat of fat chips.  We went home after having as much as our groaning stomachs could take, but I’m told by those who stayed behind that they brought out yet MORE food!  Perhaps you can imagine our apprehension while we were trying to figure out who is paying for all of this delicious, filling food.
We spent that night in harbour, and the next day we set sail (I love being able to say that) to head to Siracusa, Sicily.  We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day in the harbour at Siracusa and we are setting sail again (on Boxing Day) as I type to you now.  I’ll have you know that I am not slacking in my duties!  I’ve been assigned to the fenders (big orange things that stop the ship hitting stuff), but I have been made redundant due to reasons too complicated to elaborate upon now.
The days have kind of blurred into one of good food, so you must forgive me if my facts are not entirely correct as to what happened on which day, but Christmas Eve was a pleasure.  I believe it is recounted in Robert’s report.   Christmas day was a true joy.  We all got a lie in (08.00 instead of 07.30!) and true to form, I stole an extra ten minutes, and was consequently late for breakfast.  Thankfully, the crew and the messmen were accommodating, so I had a twenty minute lie in this morning.
So…..Christmas Day!  I spent the day in a sleeveless t-shirt.  At our briefings we were told we were going to be given an ‘EDR’ day, which upon further enquiry turned out to be an ‘Eat, Drink and Rest’ day.  Fine with me!
I had my Christmas present that day.  Being disabled, I had not been permitted to go up the rigging when the others had gone up (second day).  So Nick (Bosun) took me up on Christmas day.  All the way to the flag!  If you look, you can see an inflatable Santa Claus tied to the flag pole (although I regret to say I cannot claim the glory for tying him on).  That was Jemma (my wonderful buddy) and Sarah (Bosun’s mate).
On Christmas Eve, I was given a three pronged Christmas hat to wear and was told that if I wore it for the whole of the next day, I’d get a prize.  The prize was cook.  He tried to fob me off with a bit of left over Christmas pudding, but I’m having none of it!
Tenacious seems to have become a bit of a celebrity, all day and all night people were coming to snap pictures.  People brought their babies, and around 02.00 (I was on watch) a fire engine pulled up and offered to take some photos of some girls.  So, firemen and girls alike were posing in front of Tenacious, while we waved and said “ciao”.
Bella on behalf of Forward Port watch.