02/01/12 - Lord Nelson

Happy New Year all from the 'Nellie'

We arrived in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the early morning tide of the 31st, after gybing all night. The night watches had been interesting, trying to keep the ship on course. After successfully docking at 10am, the greenhorns were introduced to 'happy hour', which I am sure you would all think would not be an hour of cleaning and swabbing the deck. We then got together for assisted climbs with Erica climbing to the 2nd platform of the fore-mast, Amanda to the first and 3 voyage crew hauled aloft in their wheelchairs (that reminds us, we should go and get them down now. Oh dear, need to speak to my watch leader immediately. Not sure who's going to be in trouble for this, lol). This was followed by a buffet lunch which was, as usual, totally superb, after which we stood down for the afternoon.

We met up again at 7pm for 'engineer PO punch', very moreish and with all the fruit in it, we certainly all had our 5-a-day. Mr Chipps, Arlene and Phil provided an excellent barbeque, which surprisingly was cooked on-board ship. I think the fire safety officer was ashore? The next few hours were spent drinking, eating and in general merriment in the run-up to midnight, The old year was rung out by Ken and the new rung in by Lucy on the beautifully polished (by Andrew) ship's bell. This was followed by another highlight to an already excellent eve; a spectacular fireworks display. We all stood on deck and watched in complete amazement. The next couple of hours were spent playing Twister and in the discussion of New Year's resolutions, dreams and the proposing of New Year's business ventures, which included 'the nearly good fireworks company'.

Next morning, a few fuzzy heads were present at a delicious late, late brunch. This was followed by the group photo, during which two local police officers came over and disturbed our photo-shoot. Things were looking very serious and the Captain and a few others members of the crew where looking extremely worried (what did I do last night that I can't remember??) but it turned out that they just wanted to be in the picture! What a wave of relief went through the crew - so funny we all burst out laughing; it was brill.
After that bit of excitement, we all spent the rest of the day at leisure.

The Nellie crew of voyage 801