Back to the future..

Well, it is almost time for the long lonely walk out of the tunnel and onto the field of play. We depart on Wednesday 18th at 1100, and assemble outside the harbour for the start at 1200. The past week has been a blur of fantastic seminars – notably from JC himself – as well as some other excellent speakers.

Back on Enterprise its been a week of checks and tests. We took the boat out this morning for a spin with Marco to calibrate the autopilot.All went very well. The fridge is fully operational and awaiting the onslaught of Pete’s cordon bleu “surprises”. The gas bottles have been switched to propane from butane since that is no longer available from the Islands and beyond. The rigging and sails have been checked; engine checked; electronics checked; water maker and generator checked; and a new Dilithium Crystal installed. All systems are GO.

I had a lovely surprise visit from Joe (son) on Wednesday. Thursday night saw the presence of Gerry (flew in Thursday), Joe and of course Pete who flew in Thursday evening. Some beverages were drunk – some might say to excess others may say to a high degree of merriment. Friday was a quiet day. Joe flew back home for a rest. I am sure he was suitably impressed with the decorum with which his elders and betters conducted themselves.

I have published a rota and stuck it above the companionway steps. Watch Rota- 2 people – Nov2015. Note that “Inspection” does not mean a role call…”Mylett P”…”yas sir”. It means inspect the boat for breakages; chafe (no smutty jokes please) and potential problems.  The title of this post stems from the fact that “Ship’s Time” i.e. the time displayed on all the ship’s clocks; chart plotter and used in the Log is always UTC. But, our personal watches / alarm clocks will be set to Local Time. This means that as we proceed westwards, every time we pass 15 degrees of longitude we will put our personal clocks back 1 hour. This Local Time will govern the rota and our daily routine. So sunrise;sunset and midday should be experienced at the correct Local Time. From the point of view of our body clocks our day will get 1 hour longer at these points – if you see what I mean. BTW Pete and I are still “hotly” discussing this….answers on a postcard to “K,E,Y,N,S,H,A,M”.