02/02/12 - Lord Nelson

We awoke to clear blue skies this morning and after a hearty breakfast, had the voyage photo taken. The engineers deliberately, I believe, had us facing the bright, low sun so that we were all forced to squint and gurn at the camera to prevent our retinas from burning out. I'm sure that the photo will provide much hilarity to anyone looking at it!

The majority of the voyage crew then departed on a tour of La Palma, complete with packed lunch, whilst others explored Santa Cruz independently.
A few stayed aboard and relaxed in the sun, reading a good book.

The PC and cadets continued to work aboard, with Jon the Mate and 3 cadets testing manual bilge pumps hidden in the deepest recesses of the Bosun's Store, sail and starboard anchor locker. The latter required all 650 feet of chain to be lowered to the sea bed and then, later in the day, to be stowed.
The cadets' brand new, white boiler suits now look suitably rufty tufty and sailor-like rather than like and advert for Daz!

Kirsten the BM replaced a T'Gallant sheet whilst BM Fiona painted scuppers, portholes and anything that didn't move.

Captain Chris after doing Captain-y things had lunch ashore with his parents whilst the engineers emerged on deck for smokos and lunch.

I greased wires, davits, bottlescrews and got rid of the rubbish. Ah, such a glamorous job is that of a Bosun!

We're now awaiting the return of the tour bus so that we can enjoy Cookie Dave's fish pie for supper.

Lesley, the Bosun.