The Picton Castle is having an excellent passage in fact this whole voyage has been full of excellent passages; good winds and fair weather. But this passage across the Indian Ocean, with the exception of a few rough days before Christmas, really couldn’t be nicer. The sailing is the kind where it feels good to have the cool breeze on your neck and the warm sun on your face, it feels good to look up at the sails all set, it feels good to lie in your bunk being gently rocked to sleep, it feels good to sit outside after dinner and watch the sun go down, the sailing plain and simply just feels good. We have been going a steady 6+ knots and it feels like 4 (that means it feels comfortable!).
The riggers with the help of the Captain are doing some serious work, they have taken down the port fore cap stay, a ‘stay’ is basically a long piece of wire for strength and support for the mast. It goes to the cap at the top of the foremast and then down to a big turnbuckle and chain plate on the deck. This particular stay backs up the fore lower tops’l yard. It is a big job to clean it up, do the required maintenance which consists of reserving the lower half, replacing the four wire seizings that clamp it together and then send it on up again. This stay on the Picton Castle is made from 1″ wire and is about 35-40 feet long. Yesterday they took all the old seizings off and all the servings, they wire brushed it and cleaned it. Today they have reserved it. They do this so the wire is protected from the elements and rust.
We have also started to take off the taff-rail cap on the quarterdeck so that we can rust bust underneath and make it all pretty again. Another big job! And it’s loud.
Joe is making hamburgers for lunch and homemade burger-buns, this is an exciting lunch to most of us.
It seems like we have just gotten back into our routine again when all of sudden we are nearly in port, we expect to be making landfall at the very end of this week or early next, but how could it have come so soon???