Tuesday 28 April 2009

Finally getting round to putting fingers to the keyboard after an excellent weekend out on the boat - yes we went sailing yee ha! We had 5 excellent young sailors by the names of Daisy, Dan, Harriet, Jack and Tom. Friday evening was fish and chips night for Cath and I with Harriet, Dan, Jack, and the Trust's Tracy and Simon T. It was then an Uno marathon - with Harriet doing rather better than everyone and everyone else doing miles better than me! At least with 2,500 miles to sail on the boat and evening stop overs I should at least manage to win one game?!

Daisy and Tom arrived Saturday morning and brought with them both sun and wind. Unfortunately slightly too much wind as we motored down to Yarmouth praying to the wind gods for slightly less breeze for Sunday. However, this breeze was put to good use on the playing field when we eventually managed to untangle the kite!! What a perfect evening flying the kite, watching the sun go donw and a great rendition of 'Let's go fly a kite' from Mary Poppins by Jack.

Sunday dawned and out prayers had been answered - tremendous sunshine and just enough breeze - how excited were we!! Frank soon arrived with photographers, video men, the sail makers. It was all go - think one of the funniest moments of the weekend for Dan being the photographer looking slightly worried whilst being hoisted up the mast to film Dan!

Land photos finished we headed out for the first hoist of our sails. Oh the joys of electric winches!! Main up, genoa out heading west towards the Needles in a wonderful breeze with the sun shining - it doesn't get much better than that! Loads of photos and video later our five excited sailors were taken off the good ship Scarlet to be ribbed back to Cowes for more photo shoot / interviews.

Cath and I had then had a wonderful sail back to Cowes on our new home for the next 5 months. Our excited young sailors, I think had a ball and are all very excited about the trip. Good luck to those who have exams between now and when we next see you - hopefully my Uno skills will be better!

Until then
Karen Out

Sunday 19 April 2009

Two weeks to go!

I've just finished my first week with the Trust on Scarlet Oyster. What an exciting week and what a difference a week makes. Scarlet was certainly very easy to spot in the boat park on Tuesday when I turned up - since I last saw her she has been all spruced up with her new colours and branding - looking tremendous. Down below she was smelling sweeter and sporting clean freshly painted bilges and a sparkling clean engine bay. Everyone had clearly been hard at work before I arrived, although there was still a lot of hard work to be getting on with - starting with anti-fouling the hull.

Now the anti-foul said white on the tin and on opening it was exactly that. However on adding some special granules it turned a lovely colour of plum!! On application it was very pale plum and I think we nearly gave poor Cath heart failure as she came back to a plum hulled boat. Anyhow, as it said on the tin - 'Will turn white on submersion' - we were optimistic that on launching the following day it would lose the plum colour and turn white again.

Wednesday was launch day - all very exciting as not only were we launching our home for the next 5 months, this was my first boat launch!! All went smoothly - and the hull, although not quite white looks really good.

Back to Southampton tomorrow morning, hopefully for the last time, and we'll take Scarlet back over to Cowes for final preparations. Exciting week coming up as we take delivery of the new sails and get ready for the photo shoot next weekend - can't believe this time 2 weeks we'll be off on our tremendous adventure!

Until next time
Karen out