Things that go bust

31 March 2014

When you are sailing for weeks on end the wear and tear is unimaginable and things inevitably break down and need repair. Our appreciation of the professional crew reaches new heights whenever they manage to fix a problem that for us would mean we would not even know where to start.
A while ago, the schooner topsail, according to some ‘the engine’ of the ship, needed repair. Peter and David dismantled this sail high op in the mast as we were moving along and let it down on the deck.  David subsequently spent many nights stitching the patient back to health, with he help of some of us. In the meantime the spare topsail did the business. Also one of the staysails was repaired whilst on the bowsprit.
Yesterday, during Sunday rest, something happened to the delicate plumbing. This meant an afternoon work for Frianko and Jacob in the crawling spaces near the bottom of the ship. Jacob is also called the greasepit priest, excuse me, the greasepit priest sir, but it is first mate Frianko who knows every nook and cranny of the ship and whenever he gets involved you know it is serious. The appearance in unwanted places of what the crew euphemistically calls ‘grey water’ is feared by all of us but especially by those occupying the lowly situated cabins.
In the meantime next to all the routine work to be done everyday we are scraping, sandpapering and painting. You may well ask, why does our ship need to look like new when we arrive in Rotterdam after two years around the world, but then you wouldn’t know the program. The ship will have no more than a week or so of maintenance in Rotterdam before she is off once again to new horizons. So we sail on.