TNS454 28/11/15

Hello good people and followers of the JST blog. Once more we write to you with what seems like nothing to say and yet so much to type. We shall start with a public service announcement. Following yesterday’s happy hour Dr James has been banned from watering the deck due to irresponsible use of the hose. Fair winds escape us once more as we are making progress slower than a bicycle. Inevitably, there is talk of the doldrums and a search of charts is being made to find their locations. Is this a taste of things to come and will we be forced to use our infernal combustion engines to keep us underway despite the best efforts of our sails. Hope abounds for better winds sooner rather than later so we no longer have to listen to the infernal engines
monotonous drone or resort to pedal power. The backgammon tournament arranged by the Boson’s Mates (which they assure
is not rigged) has begun with a training session for those new to the game and Clare of Forward Port was the first newcomer to take the scalp of a more experienced player beating Dr James in a training game. But then anything can happen in backgammon says Dr James (sounds like an excuse to me).

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of our fellow voyage crew as well. So we shall say Happy Birthday to Ian and thank you to Micah for the cake. Birthday cake is wonderful due to its magical property of having negative calories. That’s a real thing right?!? Once more our watch has learned new information on the story of the 2nd engineers hat. He has repaired the hole with a particularly fruity number in terms of the cloth and looks as though he is transporting a mobile fruit machine. Not sure where the lever is though..

I have also been asked to write about the cup poem. Two of our intrepid voyage crew’s more literary members have written a delightful piece explaining which coloured cups should be placed in which mess. This is to help those numerically challenged as they no longer need to count past ten. Instead, using the colour code they can place the correct number of cups in the correct basket. The temptation to alter the poem or intentionally sabotage this system may be too much for some of our errant crew.
Our captain has brought up the weather and agreed he hopes for better wind though some motoring may be needed along the journey. Still, at least, we can motor unlike the commercial square rig vessels of old. Our tame Orca also known as Dora the explorer (who is also fluent in whale and dolphin, or as near to fluent as one can be I assume) has today given a talk on the things we may see as we cross the sea. Well ocean but we can argue nomenclature later. For the meantime we learn about the potential marine life we could see and how to identify them whilst reviewing what has been spotted so far.
Finally on this auspicious day of sun and rain we have witnessed the maintenance of the magnetic compass (binnacle) and the temporary removal of its purely cosmetic balls. Normally made of iron aboard a steel ship they are not needed on a wooden ship but apparently it just didn’t look right without them.