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| Day 96 |
11 July 2000 |
| Aru Sea |
| "Tacks and Food" |
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Rain showers, squalls, choppy seas and no lucky shift in the wind. The weather has not been as kind to us as it was yesterday. Slow progress on a pleasant day is one thing, slow progress in the rain is another. There I go talking about the weather again, but I make this excuse: out here the weather is in your face in quite a physical way.
Duyfken's crew have tacking (turning the ship through the wind) down to a fine art. The watch on deck pre pares everything, throwing all the coiled ropes off their belaying pins onto the deck ready to run. When all is ready someone calls down into the deck : 'All hands on deck! Standby to tack!' The watch below comes pouring out of the hatch as if somebody stamped on an ant's nest, sleepy faces blinking in the light, sluggish limbs wrestling with wet-weather jackets. Fingers grasp the lines ready for the call.
'Helm's-a-lee!'comes the call from the officer of the watch. We have started the manoeuvre. 'Let fly the foresail and spritsail sheets! Sheet home the mizzen! 'Spilling the wind from the forward sails and hardening in aft helps turn the ship into the wind.
'Mainsail-haul!' The main and main topsail yards swing around in an arc above our heads with an agreeable creaking sound.
'Let go and haul!' The last command of the manoeurve brings the fore yards around to match the angle of the main yards. The sails fill on the new tack and the ship starts to gather way again. Sounds easy? It keeps thirteen people very busy for a lively ten minutes. There are about forty ropes to haul on or slack away.
Lunch today was rice and stir-fried vegies, the last of the green stuff, and delicious it was too. Beans, kangkung, egg plant, sweet potato, shallots and garlic. The only fresh vegies left are pumpkins. The meals are getting progressively simpler, yet somehow more delicious.
There is something about this simple life that is delicious too. I will try to describe it in a future journal, but for now it's time for hammock.
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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