While in port we are divided into two watches (instead of three watches that we use at sea), and I am on the Starboard watch. Since we came ashore for the first two days while the Port watch stayed aboard the ship, then we had to return to the ship for two days while they came ashore. If you read my earlier postings you already know that we had a lot of rain when we were ashore. Well, it cleared up and the sun came out just in time for us to go back to the ship.
The water was much calmer for our return trip to the ship than it was the day we came ashore. And it was not so difficult to get from the longboat back onto the ship as I had thought it might be. Again, the secret is to watch carefully as the two vessels bob up and down in the water and wait until they are nearly level with one another. Then you can just step across, quickly.
Since there is no good anchorage by Pitcairn, we were hove to. Someone is assigned to do helm and lookout...one job, rather than two, since the helm is hard over to the right and there is no steering to do. Mostly we just sit by the helm and keep an eye out for wind shifts, squalls or anything unusual. Someone else is on radio watch at all times, standing by in the chart house to receive any radio calls. The rest of us are doing whatever ship's work needs to be done. In this case, since we had off-loaded several tons of cement, an ATV, a bandsaw (weighing 450 pounds), many cases of canned fruit, peanut butter, beer, wine and rum, and who knows what else, we had to shift a lot of materials that had been stowed in the chain locker and the sole of the Salon to the cargo hold in order to trim the ship better. And the second day we were on the ship we took on 28 barrels of diesel fuel, all of which had to be pumped into the two diesel tanks.
I was assigned to galley duty along with Brent and Morgan. Since the cook was ahore, that means that we had to cook meals as well as do all the dishes and clean up. I took charge of the meal planning and preparation: fruit salad, egg salad (everyone's favorite!), bisquick scones, and chickpea salad for lunch. After lunch I baked cornbread and brownies, made chili for dinner. Just as things were nearly ready for dinner, at 4:15pm, while the fuel barrels were coming aboard, a couple of our shipmates who were on shore leave pulled up in a small boat with one of the islanders and delivered three fresh yellow fin tuna!! They had been out fishing and caught 11 tuna. Jeff and Papa Jack took charge of cutting up the fish. I requested plenty of raw tuna for sushi and sashimi as well as tuna steaks to grill. I mixed up a dish of wasabi, put some rice on to boil and pulled out the nori to make nori maki rolls. We had a feast for dinner!! It's so much easier to cook for 23 people than for 51!
The weather stayed sunny from the time we went back to the ship on Thursday afternoon until Saturday when we found out what time we would be coming back ashore...then the clouds rolled in and it started to rain. Rain or shine we'll have fun ashore.
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