WEDNESDAY 12 May 2010 . ( Presently in " Raiatea" Society Islands, Tahiti )
Gosh, It rained heavily all night, really very heavy stuff.
We met some of our neighbours and Donal organised the port cabin for the two boys, " Snorre" and his cousin " Stian", both 17 years old and from " Ronja " and of course they hail from Norway. They will stay on board with us for the next 4 days, and help us in the " Pearl Regatta "
Once the lads settled in, we had a calamity with our French neighbours, when they were leaving the dock for the practice race. They tore chunks out of our teak toe rail and scored the starboard side of the hull in a couple of places. When they returned, they agreed to have an estimate done for the works and pay us the cash, as we cannot this repaired now, so we will have to wait untill we reach Australia, Bloody ejits.
Once when we were chartering a yacht in Greece, the manager of the company said that he had people with the equivalent of a masters degree in a yacht masters cert, and they would sink the boat before leaving the marina. The moral of the story............. People buy Certs, on the net or where, and they are worth nothing, and so people with yacht master certs dosent always mean that they can sail a boat......
12.00hrs Donal did a light lunch for us all, later the boys and Donal did a tour of town, while the skipper walked to the " Moorings Yacht Charter " marina,, God , that was a much longer walk than anticipated and took 1.5hrs, however he managed to bum a lift back to the boat later. Later, with the help of the boys, we repared the frayed outhaul on the boom, and refastened the tack of the mainsail to the gooseneck.
18.30 hrs, We all went to the regatta breefing at the restaurant where we were having dinner later, The dinner was excellent, and included chineese duck, lemon chicken, rice and some local dishes as well as a few bottles of wine. There was , of course the usual dancing and wriggling by the girls;
At our table we had the crews from :- Voyageur and Ciao. Later we met up with " Casey" and his son " Warner " and Irish Sean from the same boat " Wild Tigris" and had a few more scoops.
A Fairly late night before we got to the scratchers. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Thats all for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde ( Skipper )