Tuesday 7 September 2010

Picton Castle at anchor off Palmerston Island; Tuesday 7 September 2010 בס"ד

Yesterday I slept in a bit, then hung out with Paul for a while watching him make some drums for us from freshly cut mahagony wood. After lunch, I went for a walk around, and eventually made my way to the men's dance practice at 1500. We learned two dances for the big island event for Tuesday, and it was pretty cool. We also made outfits out of palm fronds. Then I played some frisbee and a few matches of volleyball and found out I'm “married” to a 12-year old named Mehau who followed me around everywhere with her friend. After dinner, little Anne Marsters very patiently taught me some Maori beats on the drums. Bed.

Woke up at 0800, but slept in til about 0930. Had breakfast, then left with my watch on a 1030 boat run. We heard there was an earthquake by Fiji or Tonga somewhere a few hours earlier, but no tsunami warning. Just cleaned up the deck until lunch, then organized all the Frenchy's clothes with Tiina and Anne into Adult Summer, Adult Winter, Kids, and Miscellaneous, then stuffed them in the forward sole. Then cleaned up a terribly sloppy forward garbage bin that had nasty food plastics in and some grime water leaking all over. At 1530, half the watch returned to the island, and we did our dance and had dinner before returning. Then the other half went to eat. While on the island, the Captain performed the ceremonial hair-cutting of Melbourne's son (who is named Daniel Moreland Marsters after the Captain). The dancing was good fun, and the ladies had their stuff together. Came back to the PC, cleaned the galley, swept the deck, and worked on fixing my computer which has several keyboard keys not working at all (one of them, “O,” I need for my password!) I was finally able to log in as a guest and copy and paste the letter O into administrative preferences and just removed my password, when I saw it said Wednesday 8 September for the date. I freaked out, thinking I'd forgotten Rosh Hashanah, but after doing Tashlikh, I realized my computer is set to UTC, so it's Wednesday in Greenwich, England, but still Tuesday here. Phew. Hung out in the forepeak with Dapper and Jan and finished sewing my bunk curtains. Now to bed for 0400 night watch.