14th January 2009
POLISHING QUASAR V BEFORE HER ARRIVAL AT ST.HELENA
This morning brought with it dreary tidings of grey cloudy skies and choppy seas. Poor Quasar was yawing and sliding through the waves in the most ungainly of fashions. We were running, with the wind directly behind us blowing about 15 - 18 knots, pulsing to 23 knots, with the occasional backing to the ESE.
In the long grey silence of the morning, we received a call on the VHF: 'yacht to my starboard, yacht to my starboard, this is yacht to your port, yacht to your port.' It was a single-handed sailor called Ewourd who was participating in the Governor's Cup Challenge, a race from Simonstown to St.Helena. We were the first boat he had seen since leaving port back on 29th December. An excitable exchange of pleasantries ensued and we agreed to rendez-vous in one of the pubs on the island.
That was the first and last bit of social activity of the day as Malcolm issued a cleaning directive which involved scrubbing and polishing every square inch of the good ship Quasar, which we duly did with the enthusiasm of a fish trying to negotiate it's way off a hook. That was until Malcy's management skills came to the fore as he set in motion the theory of Pavlov's dogs with the simple utterance, 'you can all go straight to the pub when we arrive at St.Helena tomorrow if you finish cleaning the boat today!'
The drooling commenced!
St Helena beckons .. we anticipate arrival tomorrow morning at 0900 hours, 15th January. The log could go quiet for a couple of days as we busy ourselves with tours, provisioning the boat and dealing with admin stuff (immigration etc).