Saturday 8th March
LAST TANGO IN THE GALAPAGOS?
Barry and I were at the market at 06:45 and Barry with his pretty good command of Spanish, (and after only 2 years at school!) organised our supply of fruit and veg for delivery the next day whilst I mainly sat down as my
back was killing me!
After that a trip to the garage for gas supplies, only to find they were closed, but open the next day and the laundry for the 3rd time that week!
Sue and I later transferred to the Red Mangrove Hotel, where we stayed the night, had lunch and were later joined by Lori and 'Norfy'.
The skippers meeting started late as the meeting room was under a corrugated roof and the rain was so torrential that not a word could be heard until it eased off! Then we had to queue to get our passports stamped and pay the
Galapagos tax, which had somehow been reduced to $50 by the agent Ricardo from $100. Being on excursions I hadn't heard the announcements about paying up and didn't have enough cash, but fortunately James came to rescue and offered the diesel money he owed from Monday's refuelling.
We ate at the Red Mangrove with Barry and Lori, who later went off table dancing at the 'Rock' with the crews off Kealoha, Cleone and Graptolite! Regrettably no opportunity for Barry to practice his Tango, which he had
been learning and dancing till very late every night during his pre-WARC month in Argentina!
Amazing sights as we had breakfast on Sunday morning, aside from the usual collection of around 100 Pelicans in Pelican Bay, another 100 or more seabirds all circling and then diving into the sea almost simultaneously in pursuit of shoals of small fish. Watched them for half an hour or so - magical!
Saturday 15th March
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK!
The wind has come more aft this morning and somewhat belatedly after trying our best to coax more speed out of Quasar with a reefed main, Barry and I shook out the remainder of the reef; but we are still not quite hitting the
8 knots on this point of sailing!
Malcy (a former pyromaniac) is feeling better this morning, although sitting on the aft deck cutting up plastic in the sun, albeit in a hat, is probably not the best medicine! He has a new scheme: form a raft with all the empty plastic bottles, pile the rubbish on top, douse it with petrol and set fire to it! No doubt reminiscing about the fire ships we launched against the ISORA fleet in the 70's!
We have received 2 St Patrick's Day quizzes, one from Nick on Kealoha and one from Hugh on Blue Flier. Hugh is stipulating that for his quiz you are not allowed to have the help of any Irish nationals, so we won't be doing that one! But Barry has completed with some assistance Nick's quiz!
We all spent the afternoon watching the first half of one of my favourite films of all time 'Ryan's Daughter'. Stunning scenery filmed mainly on the Dingle Peninsula overlooking the Blasket Islands and a good plot, although Malcy says it lost money at the time and even though it won 2 Oscars David Lean apparently admitted he got the love scenes wrong, but I never thought that myself! Sobering to think that it was made in 1970, when I was 25 years
old and was one of the last films I watched at the cinema! (And thanks to Chris Abbott. who I cheekily borrowed it from after a dinner party just before I left)
Menu planning is becoming a bit of a problem! Malcy won't eat many things anyway and is on a special diet now to help his guts recover and having stacked the freezer with beef no one wants to eat it! Only 3 of us for dinner tonight. We ate Barry's Argentine steak, which was good, but everything was late and by the time I had cooked it I was past eating!
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