12 May 2009 - Throwing Kath into Dover Marina
Back to index
Next article →
10 May 2009 - I might just make it onto the water today
← Previous article
16 May 2009 - From Kent to Plymouth and a new arrival
12 May 2009 - Throwing Kath into Dover Marina
A storm system has been blowing through for two days and, in Toby's opinion, it's been far too dangerous to throw me in the water anywhere! Fortunately for us a new friend was in town!
On 9th May we all went to hear Ellen MacArthur talk about her life; past, present and future. It was great to catch up with her and Lotti certainly enjoyed meeting her again as well. The Ellen MacArthur trust is sailing around Britain this year using the same route as us, but going in the opposite direction. Kath, the skipper of the boat, was at the talk and was reckless enough to make friends with everyone and offer us tea and cake on board "Scarlet Oyster".
Never people to turn down a cup of tea AND cake the whole team (except Paul, who was back at base working, but including Lotti who liked the idea of cake rather a lot) gatecrashed their team arrival party. At some point one of us persuaded one of them to dress up in a dry suit with my automatic lifejacket and jump into Dover harbour.
Kath was true to her word and we supplied her with a fairly large dry suit and extremely large boots. Despite the oversized clothing and my life jacket she still looked tiny. It all meant that we couldn't get the air out of her dry suit properly, which in retrospect was bound to cause problems with the lifejacket. Without the benefit of hindsight, however, we asked her to go in to the water and then try to float face down before the lifejacket went off. She was obviously a little taken aback, but promised to do her best to be a quadriplegic. (To be fair it would have been hard to bottle it in front of her full crew and ours...)
Although the air in her dry suit and the stabilising effect of her arms stopped the jacket from flipping her over, she did the job remarkably well. Toby jumped in to guide her into our parbuckle (roll mat) and Simon and Hugh had her out of the water and safely into the RIB almost before Toby had climbed back on board. Of course they then decided that it was "essential" to try out their own dry suits and both Simon and Huw were soon both in the water "making sure there were no leaks". I suspect that they couldn't handle the potential loss of face caused by a girl willingly jumping in to freezing cold water if they wouldn't!
Having dunked their skipper in the water the boys were soon asking the "Scarlet Oyster" crew if they could come on board for a warming cup of tea! Amazingly they were welcomed aboard with open arms. It's been great to have Kath and the gang around for a couple of days, but I know they will be getting ready to depart for the next leg of their trip as I write this. We are all looking forward to meeting up with them again later on in both our trips.
Page last updated on 13 May 2009 at 00:58