On the morning of January 13th, 2011 the Picton Castle cleared out with Reunion customs and immigration and headed back out to sea bound for Cape Town, South Africa about 2200 miles away. One of our beloved crew, Lorraine, originally having planned to sign off in Cape Town, left us here in Reunion to move onto other adventures (maybe Paris?). We will all miss her humour and laughter – although we will hold her to her promise to meet us in Antigua for the classic regatta and, of course, in Lunenburg! Siri’s sister Hege joined us as a trainee here. She is already throwing herself into ships work and will make a great shipmate.
With the pilot aboard, the Captain took us out of Port Ouest and into the lee of the island. We also brought a local compass adjuster aboard the ship with us and for two hours we motored around in circles as the compass adjuster worked his magnetic magic. We swung the compass and had a deviation card made up before we left Nova Scotia, but a ship such as ours, on a long voyage such as this one, needs a proper compass adjustment at some point which invloves moving magnets around and seems more than a little like spells and incantations.
Chief Mate Mike led a fire drill and an abandon ship drill and when the skiff left to bring the compass adjuster back ashore we conducted a man overboard drill. The exercise this time was to retrieve the victim without a rescue boat but only using the ship. Second mate Paul was handed the task of manoeuvring the ship to the bobbing coconut that simulated the victim. When the skiff was hoisted the crew was broken into their regular watches. As 12-4 watch took the deck as we motored out of the lee of island and into the South Indian Ocean once more. In a few hours we were under full sail once agian making 6 plus knots.
Merci beaucoup Reunion!
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