Medicinal tonic... Part 2 begins

On the 1st Dec 2016 Paul drove Stewart and me through the the frozen (-7 degC) Sussex countryside at an unearthly hour so we could catch EasyJet flight to sunny Tenerife. Stewart is the second deck hand to join the voyage. Paul remains behind to complete the second part of Medical Emergencies at Sea course. This will allow him to source lots of exciting equipment and controlled drugs anywhere round the world as well as giving him practice in sewing (up of wounds...), giving intra muscular and intravenous injections, and insert catheters... let's home that the worst we have to deal with is nothing more serious than a mild case of sunburn and an insect bite!

It's been a busy time back in the UK. I spent a week at home catching up with my boys, William & Elizabeth and mother and Ioan. Paul, Anne and I celebrated mother's 85 the birthday a bit early as we had to start part 1 of the Medical course. This 4 day course prepared us for assessing medical emergencies from unexplained collapse, serious wounds and fractures, poisoning and burns all aboard a boat on the high seas days away from assistance.

Stewart and I will spend the week doing some repairs and maintenance aboard Tin Tin and hopefully have time to do a bit of exploring too. My first concern was to see if the freezer was still frozen! The possibility of finding a soggy rotting mess was not a pleasant one... so it was a great relief to open the companionway and not be greeted by a foul smell! In fact the freezer was reading -12.6 Deg C exactly the same as when we left it.

It is now the evening of the 3rd and we have ticked off a large part of the long list of things we have to do. The water maker has new rubber feet and a flow meter, the small leak in the forward heads was solved by tightening a few screws, a cupboard door that gets damaged by crew putting their shoulder through it has been substantially reinforced, put up some netting to hold fresh fruit and veg in the saloon and fitted the new canvas tube cover on the RIB.

Paul is due to return to Tenerife on the 6th and we will set of for the Cape Verde islands on the 7th. This should take four to five days and will mark our first foray outside European waters.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Wolverine creek (67.61265N, 152.26408W) from my tent at midnight on the 9th Aug.

Not everything in the sea is nice!