mustard and meat

So we are sailing at last. We departed Cape Town at 11am on Thurday 5th Sepember 2012 on the good ship “Pelagic Australis”. The crew are Magnus Day, Kali Khan, Ed Hewett and myself.

The last week or so in Cape Town was a bit of a blur for me as I had a severe bout of flu and my concentration was definitely well below par! I was trying to tie up some loose ends related to my own projects for “Morgane” and not to drop the ball on the “Pelagic Australis” project as well.

We had planned on leaving on Wednesday but discovered a small fuel leak in a fuel line in the starboard corridor which involved dismantling some framing and removing a pump which services a black water tank. The pump should have been clean and dry and appeared to be so when Kali dismantled it however a time bomb was contained within and very old turd came slopping out into the spotlessly clean bilge. Luckily I had been away getting a tool at the time and was out of range of the explosion of ancient poo. Once the poo had been cleaned up we dealt with the leaking flange as best we could and reassembled everything ready for a morning departure.

The weather gods were kind to us for the departure from Table Bay and we were also treated to fine display from nature; whales, dolphins, seals, penguins, etc.. Who needs to go all the way to Antarctica? We settled into passage routine quickly, assigned watches and chores etc. We had a minor drama when a sea water pump in the engine room decided to split it’s casing and squirt water all over the place. The others got the boat sailing (we had been motoring at the time) while I got the spare pump. tools and necessary odds and ends to change the offending unit for a spare. Half an hour later everything was back to normal.

Kali cooked a great piece of roast beef with roast vegetables for dinner.

When I offered Ed some mustard to go with his roast beef last night he came out with the quote of the day “if God had not meant us to eat meat he would not have given us mustard”.

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