(Actually I think this was written on April 4th)
Spent the morning doing osfo and doing spot painting of the starboard bow topsides.
It was nice and cool, sitting on a plank suspended off the rail, as that was the shady side of the ship. This
afternoon we are going to be doing the same but on the port side which is facing the sun which will be
really hot.
The schooner Spirit of Massachusetts was anchored here. Her captain was 2nd mate on the third world
voyage of the Picton castle and came alongside for a visit. When she was leaving she sailed across our
bows and saluted with a shot from her cannon and a proper dipping of her ensign. We responded with a
good horn blast. Very cool.
David and I went ashore yesterday and wandered around the town of Roseau. The town is beautiful and
still pretty much as this area was 50 years ago. The buildings are mostly two story with the lower story
stone and the upper story wood.
The current crew hangout is a fabulous bar/restaurant called the Ruin Rock Cafe. It is built inside the
ruins of an old building and serves an amazing variety of flavoured rums that they make themselves. The
Guava was definitely “dangerously yummy” :-) They also have things like coconut pineapple, ginger,
tamarind, lemon and other fruits as well as very exotic ones like snake and centipede ?!?.
I’m hoping to go on an around the island tour when we get ashore tomorrow.
More later…
It’s later and I have a very sore left hand. Blah.
I’m going to file the following under the “It seemed like a good idea at the time” file or maybe the “20/20
hindsight is a bitch” one.
After lunch I shifted the scaffold over to get at the last spot on the starboard bow. In doing so I tried to position it such that I could reach it from the rail. Well, as I tried to lower myself down I realized that the
plank was about a foot too low! Unfortunately I didn’t find this out until I was so far over the rail that I
couldn’t get back up!
Then I made my big mistake. I figured I would just hand over hand my way down the rope to the plank, it
was only 1 foot after all right? Wrong! The line was too thin to hang onto and before I could get both
hands onto it I slid down the rope, missed the plank and ended up hanging off the end! I also badly rope
burned my left hand, ripping most of my callouses off and giving myself second degree burns on my index
finger and the palm of my hand! Ouch.
So there I was hanging over the brilliant blue sea by my fingertips feeling like a right great goof. I tried to
climb back up onto the plank but because my weight was on the end it kept swinging away from the ships
side. I yelled “On deck!” and got an immediate response and then yelled “Help!”. There wasn’t anything
anyone could really do and in hindsight I should just have dropped into the drink to swim over to the
ladder. Ben and Susie were working alongside in the skiff and they came over to see if I could clamber
into it before letting go but I ended up swimming anyways.
To everybody’s credit nobody laughed, which was nice
David, helped me bandage my hand, fresh water rinsed my gear and hung it all up for me while I found
some dry clothes. Thanks David!
It’s a good thing I have a couple of days off to let the blisters break and get a start on the healing process.
Hauling on lines is going to be a pain for a while.
It’s also a good thing I mostly type with one finger :-)
Thanks for reading.
KJ
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