Lifeboats have characters all of their own; No two boats are the same. Dave, Chad, Matt and I found this out on Wednesday and Thursday when we took Amble's Mersey (Four Boys, 12-19, ex. Sennen Cove) from Poole to Falmouth for her refit. For a start she only had East Coast charts in her chart plotter so we had to stop in Swanage and get our portfolio to upload. It turned out that their chart plotter had a significantly slower processor than ours and what should have been a quick job took ages.
It wasn't the only slow thing either, the boat was far slower than ours, perhaps as much as 2.5 knots slower (something like 15%). Over a long passage this becomes more and more noticeable. We concluded that having spent so long in Amble this pace of life had become customary!
One thing that wasn't different was the obligatory lifeboatman teddies provided by well meaning ladies (I have to say though, there's were much more smartly dressed than ours). There is something oddly reassuring about having these fellows along on a trip. I wonder if anyone out there could provide a more smartly dressed one for us?
No comments:
Post a Comment