St Helena Sunday 27th and Monday 28th December 2015
Well what a busy social life we have had these last two days, man are we warn out.
I had planned to do a bit more cleaning of the decks, but as luck had it I got out of it, real quick.
Savo from the yacht Dora (the explorer) and another crew member who we thought was the Captain of the vessel, came over early and asked if we had any spare screws or bolts, as they had damaged their rudder coming here.
This always makes us feel better, this is a very modern expensive boat and they have break downs too.
They found exactly what they needed and left us with an invitation to come ashore at around 1.30pm as they were going to try the cafe here called Ann's place and see if they could BBQ the rest of their swordfish.
Two more cats came in this morning and as we were going past one of them we were drooling over oh man it was something to see, and looked very new and very expensive.
We were the first onshore as we wanted to check emails and such, and as we are walking up we asked a few places here and there if they knew anywhere were you could BBQ , all said maybe try Ann's place, it so strange that there is just no public areas to do this.
We get to Ann's place and there is a big sign out front saying closed, but we could hear people chatting inside.
The Captain goes in for a chat, and before we know it, we have some wifi, the BBQ is all arranged and they open the bar.
Man who does this, they are closed having a little family dinner and they open up a little area for us arrange coal and timber for the BBQ, drinks internet all with big smiles and just happy to help out.
We meet the rest of the crew and skipper and his wife from Dora ( the explorer), Louis and Betty from Ave Del Mar joined in, and also the crew from the cat that we drooled over as we were coming in.
Man what a fantastic bunch, the cat called Ondine was a 1.6 million US dollar boat. Brand new, first off the assembly line, maiden voyage and the guys were delivering it to the Miami Boat show.
Two crew members Sasha and Nel were going to be permanent crew, and had two guys helping with this delivery, Vernon and Conrad.
We had all nationalitys there were South African's, Aussies, one from Croatia, a German, two Dutch, one from Peru, one from Canada and An American, and all ages and we just had a fantastic time, maybe a bit too much to drink and we left the younger ones around 6pm still going strong to catch the last ferry back to our boat, the others had brought their dingy ashore.
The guys from the cat Ondine wanted to have a look at our boat, this always amazes us, we are the oldest boat here, and looking very sad at the moment, but they all want to have a look.
I guess that was also the attraction with us when we first saw her in the beginning, she just has that old worldly look about her.
They had also invited us over to their boat for brunch as we wanted to have a look at theirs.
Sasha and Nel came and got us and looked over the boat drooling the whole time saying this is what they want to end up with and then we went over and drooled all over theirs...haha
But it's not really the kind of boat we would want it sure was something to see, talk about modern, we drooled over electric winches, inmast roller furling, electric toilets, air con, fridges and freezers that actually work, the open deck, oh the list goes on and on.
But you know they had their fare share of break downs too, the one thing we noticed was its not as stable as we thought it would be, we were rocking and rolling just as much as our boat does, which really has us rethinking of getting a cat now.
After another late afternoon, Vernon and Conrad braught us back to our boat and had a look around as well, both loving her, Vernon is a fishing man so I got him to look over my supply and give me a few hints on this and that, they also wanted to do a bit of diving so they borrowed our dive weights and a pair of flippers, I'm on a promise for some interesting shells if they find any.
Well tomorrow us another day.