Monthly Archives: April 2007

29/04/2007

valuable lessons in life

By hairygoose
 
first off
 
yesterday i logged onto the itunes store to download some music. i found the album i wanted, itunes wanted £11.95 to download it. i checked out www.play.com and got the same album, cd and all , delivered to my door for £5.95
 
The last lesson today – never charter a boat to germans! they may have produced one of the greatest formula 1 drivers of all times, but when it comes to boats, they are just shite. Yesterday, we had a german skippered yacht caught on our anchor chain, securely locked on by its keel, rudder and prop shaft – right now, i am watching a german skippered catarmaran stuck across the bow of not one, but two yachts!
 
and still they come

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28/04/2007

one week later

By hairygoose
 
ok, fair to say, yes, i am still in Rhodes but at least i have survived my first week in one piece. The owner arrives in 5 days time and we finally get to sail, all the way to turkey!
 
My week has been a bit full on really. I have had a crash course in Jongert engineering, thankfully , they are also famous for the way they create engineers manuals to explain layout and operation of everything they instal……you gotta love the dutch!
 
I have added a few photos from the boat. It has the best equiped kitchen {galley} that i have ever been in, a massive 22 litre V12 twin turbo diesel engine, two generators, a water maker and lots of hydraulic stuff to boot. I have spent the last two days making a full inventory of all the parts i have in stock and most importantly, which section of the boat they are stored in. i even managed to re-fuel the beast, the tanks hold a whopping 14,000 litres!!! Imagine picking up the tab for that one!
 
I also added a picture of my toilet. take a look at the size of the hole the poo has to get through!!!! and then think, who’s job is that if they block? and there are 6 of them on the boat! now imagine the size of the skiddies i can leave in the bowl !!!! excellent
 
I have made all of the engine logs i need to last, and also a data analysis sheet to look at the historical data they produce! the last engineer seemed to prefer not recording anything he did, assuming he did anything.
 
This afternoon we had a lttle fun without leaving the port. some german tourists on a rental boat tried to moor with their main sail half up. The wind caught them as you would expect and blew them across our bow so that our anchor chain was between their rudder and keel, rubbing on the prop shaft while they sat at right angles across our bow.
 
in the end, the mate from our boat had to get on theirs and take control to get them in!
 
tomorrow i have some work to do, monday and tuesday will be full on, wednesday will be final checks befor ethe owner boards and then thursday turkey bound just for one night, then we head to Kos, and then Athens.
 
I had a walk around Rhodes old town today. an amazing place, looked unbelieveably medieval and relatively untouched, a shoppers paradise, fashion shops, shoe shops, gold and silver shops, al fresco restaurants, it really was something beautiful. if you ever come this way, i recommend a visit.
 
I almost forgot!!!! the chef on board is absolutely amazing. she cooks two full on meals a day, the sort of meal you would pay top dollar for ina restaurant! this morning she cooked banana muffins with cherries and almonds on top, amazing! i reckon i might be a few kilo’s heavier by the time i return. the smell of freshly baking bread just drives me nuts, but man, she is good at it!
 
enough for now, dont forget to take a look at the photos to the right
 

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27/04/2007

last night

By hairygoose
 
last night, i had a blind date,
 
her name was
 
..   …    .      .     .  .
.    …    .      …   ..
 .    ..    …       .    …
 
 
 
 
 
 
authors footnote – the author recognises that the above joke was in extremely bad taste but 100/1 says you laughed or at least groaned
 
 

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25/04/2007

did you ever wonder?

By hairygoose
 
sometimes, you walk along the street and see a single shoe. i often wondered how someone could be such a dumb ass while they are walking, not to notice that they had lost a shoe, i mean surely you would notice right?
 
in addition to that, you would only ever see mens shoes, never womens, so naturally you would figure that men ae the dumbest of them all!!
 
thats what i thought until last night.
 
i walked off the back of the boat and went to put on my fip flops {or jandles depending on which hemisphere you are from}
 
imagine my amasement  when i realised one was missing. i can only think that a passing dog, the furry thief, picked one up on his way past and carried it off home to his dog wife as a pesent. now i know the mystery of the single missing shoe
 
 
 
 
 
 
authors footnote. for those that read them, and other readers comments. sometimes in life, people are just complete cunts. sometimes i just want to tell them that and other times i want to slap the twats while i am telling them. i have never deleted any comments fom this page and never will. so the other night, i got so fucked off wih someone that i wanted to tell you all but decided not to print it fully, hence the cryptic message

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23/04/2007

reality bites

By hairygoose
 
down to earth with a bump!
 
today i started in earnest, the boat has clearly suffered from a lack of good work and the previous engineer wasnt too good at keeping record either.
 
My first test was the water maker. you know the stuff, take in sea water and through a process of reverse osmosis, turn it into drinking water. well it took a while to figure out but i got there in the end and serviced the unit too.
 
tomorrow i go head long into a couple of oil leaks, a water leak and a stock order for our journey. its gonna be tough to take in so much before the owner arrives. The captain has not been with the boat long either so we are both a little short on general knowledge for the old tub. Whatever happens, i will succeed.
 
the owner is due in just over a week and we start our journey for athens. when we get there, we get 5 days off with the owner heading to land.
 
stay tuned for more adv enture on the high seas.
 
 
 
 
authors note , i would like to acknowledge many things here but instead i am going to keep stum, preferring silence as my weapon of choice.

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20/04/2007

a new adventure begins

By hairygoose
 
so , this afternoon is my last in mallorca for a while. my flight leaves at around 9 this evening and i will hit england at around 11.30. a night in glorious Crawley and then tomorrow afternoon i jump on with BA and head direct to Rhodes where my boat is waiting for me.
 
i am looking forward to my new adventure and also my new prospects of working with Nariida on a job share basis. I will stay with St Jean until the end of september and then head to england for a couple of days for my sisters birthday and to see the dentist again.
 
after that, i will head back to mallorca to collect my car, then immediately start my next road trip and head home to portugal for most of october.
 
at the end of october i will ready myself again for Nariida, she is racing to the carribbean in november so no doubt i will start that adventure from here again. when the race is finished, i will return to portugal until the boat arrives back in palma in january for refit. so , my year is meticulously planned as you can see.
 
the chance to do something new is always appealing, so is the ability to earn a lot of money so that i can get the builders to help me with the repairs to my little portuguese love nest.
 
in between all of that, i hope to get back into the water again and have some good surf.
 
so, my new adventure begins. i will be available on my spanish phone number while away although sometimes we might not have signal depending on where we are but i am looking forward to seeing Rhodes, Kos, Corsica, Italy, Corfu, Athens, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Santarino to name but a few.
 
No doubt i will be working hard, but i will of course update my space whenever i can with photos and fuckwit observations so please keep stopping by and saying hello.

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15/04/2007

will i be ready on time ??

By hairygoose
 
i wonder!
 
been a mad rush today, ok , that might be a slight exaggeration but i have been trying to copy all of my cd’s to my laptop so that i can take all of my music with me. at last count i reckon there would have been around 250 cd’s in my box. so , at around 12.30 today, i started copying.
 
it is now 22.30 and i am a little over half way, and getting bored with it! You know how it is, i have hours and hours of music, and , if i didnt copy all of it, the first time i wanted to play something specific, it would be something that i didnt copy.
 
i am looking foreward to leaving on friday, i have now had enough of mallorca, all it seems to do here at the moment is rain rain rain. i get a little pissed off with getting wet feet alll of the time from taking my shoes off to walk on the decks.
 
so my last four days have arrived and then, greece and the western med for at least three months. i may even stay on a little longer. That will put me in england at the end of september and hopefully then i can have a month at home, i havent been there since new year and i am now beginning to miss the place.
 
so i now have all of my photos on the laptop, i still have to download the old stuff from my web page but then i can start indexing everything and getting some form of organisation into things. I have also been able to offload all of the photos stored in my camera and most importantly get that snow patrol song off of the camera too. it was the only place i could store it to keep it safe! a perfect acoustic version of chasing cars, to remind me of teh dutch doctor!
 
well, i better get back to copying my music.
 
ate logo chums !

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10/04/2007

want to see my new office ??

By hairygoose

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06/04/2007

never take the first option!!!

By hairygoose
 
but this time i did. i have agreed to go to sea until august with S/Y St Jean. I spoke with the skipper this morning and turned his offer down as i wanted to stay available for Nariida and work around their season.
 
After a brief discussion, he asked if i could sail with him just while his owner is on board, from two weeks time until the first week in august. I made a call to Nariida and this seemed to fit with their schedule so i accepted his offer but not before i had squeezed a little more money out of the deal.
 
Once his owner leaves, i will be free to return to Nariida or stay on, the decision will be mine. Either way, i will be seeing some of the meds best spots this season.
 
So i have two weeks left here, for which i will be working very hard on the other yacht – Alexia. Last chance of shore based work this season i guess and maybe september will see me return home to portugal for a month or two.
 
Today being good friday, i decided to take a little time off and continue to try killing those pesky north koreans on my xbox. i am at a stage that is driving me absolutely nuts. i keep trying different tactics but always with the same result – the little men keep winning. When i leave here, i will be trying again.
 
I also decided to call things of with my recent squeeze, Andi. seems i did the right thing now that i have accepted a job offer that will take me away for a few months.
 
My washing machine is broken too – really need to try and fix it before i leave, i really wouldnt want to have my flat mates return to a broken machine, thats just not cricket!
 
so off i go, in hunt of those litte green men.
 
be good until i return

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04/04/2007

every day – a new dilema

By hairygoose
 
i may need a little guidance on this one.
 
i returned from france on tuesday after helping with the delivery of nariida. today, i have a couple of interesting offers.
 
1. a captain came to see me in the yard to talk about a job with him leaving in two weeks. he has a 41 metre jongert currently based in rhodes. his season consists of rhodes, Kos, Santarino, Athens, Corfu, Sicilly, Naples, Sardinia, Corsica, Tuscany and to finish mid august somewhere in the med. He has offered me 4000$us per month plus all expenses and flights of course with a contract that renews in november along with a guaranteed 5% pay rise. He wants an answer from me by friday lunchtime when he leaves for rhodes again
 
2. a boat called alexia, another wally, has asked me to start on monday for one month. i of course accepted as they were offering more money than i am used to.
 
3. then of course there is my old favourite nariida. i spoke with craig today and told him of the offer for rhodes. He suggested that they will do a trans-atlantic race in november to the carribean for which the owner is happy for a second engineer ( thats me) to be aboard. I would need to have more sea experience so i would also need to go on nariida again for the delivery to norway for the summer, a three week trip. Also there will be refit work again from january tiume when nariida returns to pàlma and also the race preparation before the caribbean trip and you know what – this is the one i want to hang out for although the Jongert would be a massive responsibility and a great 1st step into yachting and also jongert is my favourite boat maker – just happens to be dutch too – i think the doctor still has a curse on me!
 
so please – send some divine intervention and help me make a solid decision

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