Day 190, Year 9: Aussie Friends on Lady M
Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Weather: Overcast All Day; High Temp in the 40’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Our Aussie friends Geoff and Chris of sailing vessel Shambala are off on a very interesting adventure. I’ve written about Geoff and Chris many times. We met them in South Africa and we have seen them a few times here in the US in the past couple of years. When we sailed home from South Africa, Geoff and Chris made their way to the US and have been in this country ever since. This winter they have been living aboard their sailboat, Shambala, in Norfolk, Virginia, and a couple of months ago they were offered jobs on a 210-foot mega-yacht, Lady M, to serve as crew in getting Lady M from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Majorca in Spain. They had to leave the US anyway as their Visas are up tomorrow and they had planned to spend May and June back home in Australia before returning in July to start their cruising year. So this opportunity worked out great for them. The Lady M is the largest boat ever built by Palmer Johnson and its Captain is Gordon Scott from Australia—who is also a good friend of Chris and Geoff’s. Chris wrote to us saying, “Lady M is spectacular and it’s been amazing getting to know her. The website to look at the official photos is www.palmerjohnson.com and look for the 210 foot Lady M.”
This boat is incredible. I think the best place to see and learn about it is at: http://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-features/lady-m-palmer-johnsons-new-64m-flagship-offers-power-and-grace-in-abundance/ or you can just google ‘Palmer Johnson Lady M’ and you will come up with various sites. I didn’t ask Chris’ permission to copy her email here, but I am going to assume that she would enjoy sharing their story with you. We received the email yesterday and it details getting the boat out of Fort Lauderdale and on its way across the Atlantic via Puerto Rico. If I get updates, I’ll pass those along.
“We are currently running down the outside of the Bahamas – no it’s true, I didn’t make a typo! Plans changed and things happened so quickly – it was all very fast and furious. On Friday night we were told that work for all starts at 6:30am next morning for a 7am departure from Lauderdale Marine Centre. The boat in front of us was notified the night before that we were leaving and they would have to move, the tugs were ordered to tow us out the New River, 20 contractors/inspectors came on board to do the final inspections and stay with us for the sea trials and everything was ready to go. However, this poor young beautiful lady was again plagued by misfortune when the captain forgot that he had to move the boat in front of us and the tug boats would not move it without the owner’s permission. So that meant we missed the tide and we had to stand down for another 24 hours. Poor Scotty was shattered.
Talk about p…ed off! One man had flown in from the Cayman Islands! Anyway it was actually a good thing as it gave us all more time to get better organized. The carpet guy came and reinstalled the carpets which were pulled up for access under the floor, the fuel tankers came and Lady M guzzled a squillion litres of juice and lots of odds and ends were attended to.
Sunday morning we had another go at leaving and cast off our lines around 8am. It took ages to reach the 17th Street bridge and it was an interesting trip down the river around the very tight bends with the fore and aft little tug boats doing all the work maneuvering M this way and that. They are expert men on those tugs, at times having barely inches to spare and all the while lounging back making it look so easy.
All along the river, people ran into or out of homes grabbing cameras and flashing away as we slowly crept past with a procession of smaller craft held up by our size, tagging along behind. I had starboard stern position to man and keep watch over standing in the hot sun for a few hours. All down the river we had a photo shoot going on overhead from a helicopter so it will be good to see those pics at some stage.
Once under the last bridge we cast off the tugs lines and we were under our own massive power heading out to sea for the trials which took all day. By late afternoon she had passed her trials and we were given the OK from about 10 different organizations to leave so we brought all the contractors back into the 15th Street fisheries wharf and off-loaded them, cast off the lines again and spun around holding up dozens of small craft and headed out again. Our route at this point is Puerto Rico, Madeira, Gibraltar and final destination Palma in Majorca. There is bad weather heading for Bermuda so we are going out of our way to skirt it to save time and hopefully miss it all. We have one contractor still on board with us working on the teak deck and will drop him off in Puerto Rico.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) by late afternoon we are due to arrive in San Jan, Puerto Rico for a fuel stop and quick turnaround before heading straight back out and off to Madeira. We will just make it out before our Visa expires Wednesday night at midnight – we hope!
My watch is 2am-6am and 2pm-6pm which I like and Geoff’s down in the engine room is 12midnight to 4am and 12noon to 4pm. All is going well and our first night at sea has been very peaceful with calm seas. Lady M is flying along at 20 knots guzzling just a 1000 litres of fuel per hour. She feels like she is floating on air and wants to go faster which she certainly can but for now the Captain is happy with this speed and the Engineer, also.”
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| 140429 Day 190 Cape Cod, USA–Lady M |
