Friday 31 December 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Friday 31 December 2010 בס"ד

Woke up at 0715, breakfast, and work. Jobs today were:

- paint a coat of buff on the primed jibboom parrils

- scuff entire jibboom and paint buff

- primer on starboard forward davit

- scuff, clean, corroseal, and prime starboard aft davit

- scuff the stepladder, penetrol wood, and repaint the stone parts

- assist riggers in rigging up the fish tackle

- primer on propane tank F and tropical blue its bottom

- primer on sponge hotel bolts

- ospho the bulwarks and tgallant rail from for royal backstays to main royal backstays

- scuff and varnish flyrail spindles B and C

- assemble town pump and touch up black paint

Today was another good day, and I cleaned and organized a great deal of the paint locker while the on watch mostly osphoed in the afternoon. Workshop at 1615, where we learned we would not be going to Maputo, Mozambique due to reports of piracy in the north Mozambique channel. We will sail from Reunion directly to Cape Town, RSA. Then we did our practical ratline seizings before dinner. A big wirey New Years ball was made by the engineers. After dinner, hung out on the aloha deck and talked about various history topics with the galley crew once they'd finished. Read some paint literature that I had found inside the paint locker, then watched Taking of Pelham 123 before the New Years festivities. Dressed up in a Tony Montana-like white suit and tropical shirt, and got ready to bust a move. On the hatch after 2300, but the music was delayed for a moment due to a suspect ship nearby, but once it was sorted out, we got on with the party. I was charged with lowering the ball, which was rigged up over the hatch, since I'm the New Yorker, and that's how we do (none of the non-Americans had any idea why we'd have a ball drop for New Years. Guess it's just our thing?) Partied until about 0030, then passed out. Happy 2011 and Shabbat Shalom.