Welcome back, dear reader, to this our second blog entry from the crew
of Infinity of Yar.
All our crew has arrived and preparations are going apace. All our crew
that is except for Oliver Davey the owner's younger son who arrives
tomorrow; by which time all the hard work preparing the boat will have
been done. Thus he will be known henceforth as 'Step Aboard' Davey.
Within the chapters of this blog we will examine the make up of the crew
and together we will unpick their characters as the adventure unfolds
but more of that later.
Let me describe the scene here on the pontoon at Meulle Deportivo in Las
Palmas. Never have you seen such a hive of activity in a marina. Back in
England we are used to marinas where 3/4 of the boats never move; here
we are surrounded by nearly 200 yachts and not a stink boat in sight. (
to my non sailing readers a stink boat is a motor boat - Ed.) Every one
of those yachts from 38 different countries will be leaving here next
Sunday and they are all busy provisioning, up the masts checking rigging
and generally carrying out maintenance on everything from water makers
to bilge pumps, fridges to sat comm systems. The pontoons are heaving
with reps from every manufacturer helping and hoping that it will not be
their bit of equipment that fails and gets slated in Yachting World.
Yachting World are here hoping for the story that the manufacturers want
to avoid.
We have had our free rigging check courtesy of Admiral Insurance
carried out by the amazing and ever vigilant Jerry the rigger.
His nugget of advice for us? "If you need to go up the mast mid Atlantic
my advice is 'Don't' and if you really must then wear a cricket box and
a climbing helmet."
We are surrounded by yachts from Sweden, Australia, Finland, Germany,
Italy and Great Britain.
The Swedes are well behaved and studiously polite; the Fins say very
little and keep themselves to themselves; the Aussies are loud and
friendly; the Germans are well organised,in bed early and ready to leave
a week early, but the Italians? Well the Italians are different, they
party until three in the morning and are noisy, very noisy. More than
once our neighbours have been heard rising from their bunks at 3am and
normally mild mannered polite people from all over the world who have
been pushed beyond their limit of tolerance have been heard shouting in
their best English " will you shut the f... up ". The Italians carry on
regardless and the next morning they rise at the crack of midday to
troop off to the latrines in their towelling coats returning freshly
showered and fragrant just in time for lunch!
We have attended seminars on just about everything with advice and
experience from 31 previous ARC's. Copious pictures of previous
disasters gradually reduced your author to a nervous wreck, requiring
studious attendance and diligent participation in the many evening
parties to rediscover his normally fearless demeanour.
At the start of one such day in the classroom a skipper seated directly
behind was heard to turn to his neighbour and ask "Will your wife be
attending?" "Good Lord no" came the reply "I don't want to frighten her
off."
Well, dear readers, as you have been good enough to wade through another
of my epistles I am going to leave it there for today. Future missives
will arrive on a daily basis until the start on Sunday. I can feel from
Las Palmas the wave of horror coming back at me but the good news is
that with frequency comes brevity and thus whilst your collective pain
will be sharp it will also be mercifully short.
I realise that I had promised to introduce you to the crew but that
particular avenue of pleasure will be denied now (to quote Basil Fawlty)
until tomorrow.
Until then from from Buzz and all the crew we bid you farewell by saying...
" To infinity and Beyond "