06/05/12 - Lord Nelson

6 May Lord Nelson, Southampton........I've just returned to work after 6 weeks off, whilst my torn calf muscle repaired itself. It's amazing how quickly I'd forgotten what life on Nellie is like; we're in the middle of maintenance and it is very busy.
The inside of the aft watertanks have been chipped and cement-washed by Tristan, Aimee and Jack. Captain John was even seen in there wielding a grinder to remove a surplus pipe.
BM's Katie and Emma volunteered to clean the inside of the diesel tanks, whilst Ollie and a team bent on the Fore-Topsail. The veggie locker has been painted and cleaned by Cadet John and the on-deck cleaning locker has been emptied for repairs and painting. Rowan had been in the chart room correcting charts and Jon, the Mate is walking round with a notebook.
Marco advises me that the engineering team are busy doing "lots of stuff", whilst Jane and her team are busy trying to clean and paint below decks, despite the chaos everyone else is causing. It's curtains for Camilla and Joyce, who have been re-hanging all of the Fo'c's'le, whilst Chris T has been doing highly technical things with the ship's computer, which none of us understand but it looks great. Neil the BM, is doing woodwork whilst Dave, with the help of Jude and Kevin continue to turn out fabulous food for all.

Dinner this evening was separated into two distinct teams; footie fans watching the FA cup final in the upper mess and non-footie people in the lower mess. Marco nearly concussed himself on the deckhead whilst leaping from the bench to celebrate Chelsea's first goal against Liverpool. We then couldn't find pudding as Jude had hidden the fruit salad in the (empty) aft lifejacket box, which had previously been used as a temporary veggie locker.

This evening was very sociable in the bar with MP Tony popping down and getting envious of Jane's organised and tidy linen cupboard. Marco and Clive highjacked a game of dominoes and spent the evening building ever more complex lines of dominoes running between the bar tables and across the deck, using beer cans, poles from the book case, a tube of Pringles, books, jenga blocks, a leeboard and a pint mug to help topple the dominoes. They were made to tidy up before bedtime!

So, all in all, a normal day of maintenance aboard Lord Nelson!

More Maintainers are due to arrive tomorrow, including the Norfolk Mafia, but John H our welder extrodinaire, is unable to join us this time and we all raised a glass to him in his absence.

Lesley, the Bosun.