9am is our meeting time at Southern Child, but before that we head for breakfast at Zee Best at the marina, one of the few places without wifi. But the breakfast is very good, eggs benedict was delicious. All set now for hopefully a day of training. We meet the rest of our crew David and his wife Carolina, Giacomo (Jack) and Mauricio and from last night we have Joe and missing in action Sean!! Altogether that is 10 including Marcus our skipper, Tony and Vadim. We are still 1 short waiting for Gabriel to arrive this evening.
Sean eventually turns up at around 10ish, wearing the same as he did when we met at Jimbo's last night... We here mumbles of drama's, meeting crazy people, sleeping on th beach, it's all a bit vague and he is looking slightly jaded!
So, time to run through the usual routine safety and how to rig the boat. The problem being we don't seem to know how to rig this particular boat!! No one has sailed it properly before. Luckily for us as we start to run the lines in for the spinnaker Jamie (previous owner) walks past and outs us straight on what to do. He then runs through with Marcus everything on the boat, the speed, the sails and answers all his questions. Jamie is really helpful and we need it!!
Unfortunately, all this means we don't get to leave the dock today and simply run through the safety speech and do some land manuevours pole, up, down, gybe's... It's pretty chaotic and no one (except me) in the crew has flown a spinnaker.... so this is going to be an interesting few days. It's alot of information for everyone to take on board in one day, so will see how much sticks.
After the first nights shinnaningans everyone is ready for an early night so it's a quick drink at Jimbo's, simple dinner then early to bed to be fresh for getting on the water tomorrow in order to catch the 11am bridge out.
The next morning we meet at 9am ready to head out for the bridge again at 11, I'm in charge of lunches so make up some wraps. Everything is already set up so it'sjust a recap and then we slip the dock and wait for the bridge to open, passing the yacht club everyone waves as the queue of boats all head out for training day! It's quite hectic, lots of boats but even with that there is a very polite queuing system that takes place.
As expected training is a bit messy to say the least, the lack of experience showing and also people not listening to Marcus makes it tough. I pitch in as much as I can, and seem to be levitating down to the pointy end.... Not somewhere I've been for a while, but at times I quite enjoy it. The thought of offering myself up for bowman on the fastnet is becoming a bit more interesting an option, will see though. A few of the crew also seem to be feeling a bit motion sick, so that's not great as it means not everyone is 100%, a lot of lying down!
Gybe's are very messy, but we keep persevering until we get at least one good one, this leaves us on the 5.30 bridge back. Getting the spinnaker down and the Jib back up is a challenge, not least because somehow the jib has been twisted so needs to come straight back down... I head back up to the bow to pitch in correcting it with the crew so that we can raise the sail and head back to the bridge.
The bridge makes times a bit of a pain as you are constrained, miss the 3pm and the next one is 5.30. Northern Child and EH01 have the right idea, they have an anchor in the harbour ready for use so that the crew can go for a swim!!! Nice...
So not the most successful day, and sadly the only training we get before a pretty hectic race tomorrow The Commodores Cup, 3 races windward leeward with each leg about 7-10 minutes it's fast paced manuevours and I think we will be lucky if we do well at all.
Tonight though, it's the Mount Gay Rum Secret Party that obviously is not much of a secret. Ita at the Soggy Dollar bar the other side of the bridge from the yacht club, overlooking all the maxi super yachts!! I head over there to meet everyone, but it's early and the party hasn't really started. I run into an old friend, Paul who works on one of the super yachts and have a catch up with him and the guys hanging around the pool table. It's not long before the music ramps up and soon the gang arrives already well oiled from Jimbo's and ready to party. Gabriel has now arrived and we have our full crew ready to race in the morning... Well that's if they survive the party!
The Heineken girls are out in force, and all the guys are happy to apply the Heineken tattoos to various parts of their body, Sean with one cheek out waiting for his to dry, gareth with it on the front and back of his head, Marcus leg... and so on! I'm getting pics where I can, and having a good old dance as the house music blasts out.. The Heineken Girls hang around and we attempt a photo shoot... Gareth's words I think "my face, his arse and you!" not sure the girls are too impressed.. So it's just Gareth's face with Sean's butt! And so it continues into the early hours... I leave at 1.30am the rest still going strong.
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