Week Three: Welcome back to the Corpulent Porpoise...

Last week, we all rejoiced in the fabulous news of the Corpulent Porpoise sailing once more. My predecessor, and last year’s sailing program in general was plagued with a series of problems. This was not helped by renaming the boat, as is the tradition of the camp. Well, I believe that this is one of the unluckiest things that you can do to a boat.

So, in an attempt to skirt around the boat’s bad luck, I have kept the name this year. This is by a large, in opposition the rest of the staff, who wish the tradition to continue. I have however, put my foot down, and kept the name.

And sure enough, Monday was a glorious day. The ‘Porpoise sailed beautifully on Monday morning, and everything went great. Perhaps all of my fears had been in vain, and my simple action of keeping the name have solved the situation. Wrong.

Sailing back into dock on Tuesday, the boat was quite sailing as I had expected it. We were getting very near the berth, and we began to lower the main sail (theory being that we could sail in just using our front ‘jib’ sail). Suddenly, we heard a ‘crack’, and the jib sail fell down the mast, and fell into the drink. Acting quickly I ordered paddles onto the deck, before the wind could blow us too far away. I hauled the jib sail back on the boat, and we moored up (or parked for those of you that don’t speak nautical).

Upon closer inspection, the rope that keeps the sail at the top of the mast. Now here’s a big irony – one of our assistant camp directors helped us set the boat up. He is not known as a man of great competence (unless you are talking about the camp’s money, or reversing vehicles). So when he said to me ‘that line will never hold’, I of course did the exact opposite. How was I supposed to know that the one time Tom would be right this century was this time.

So anyway, I was now left with a merit badge class to teach, and a pretty vital metal wire stuck at the top of a 25ft mast. Bugger. Apparently the curse of the Corpulent Porpoise continues.

This was a pretty major problem. The best way to complete the job would require us to bring the ‘Porpoise out of the water, lower the mast, sort the problem out, and then reset the mast, and launch again. Unfortunately, this would require the use of a pretty strong vehicle (maybe the Suburban?), and the cast of Ghandi (well 3 or 4 people). I didn’t really want to make use of that many of the camp’s resources, so I developed a plan. Cue Hannibal Smith from The A Team: ‘I love it when a plan comes together’ he says putting a cigar into his mouth.

Using Terry’s car, I would transport an extension ladder to the boat, have another staff member hold the ladder against the mast, whilst I climb to the top of the ladder, and grab the wire. One of the advantages of being a member of ‘Adventure Sports’ is that I have a larger staff that I can call upon for support. So while my assistant Jaffle carries on with the sailing merit badge on the small SunFish, I could borrow another Adventure Sports staff member, and some ‘toys’.

With Terry’s agreement, I loaded the ladder on Wednesday morning, and Mike and I headed for the lake, armed with a climbing harness, a sling, and some lobster claws (like safety clips on the end of two ropes). We arrived at the boat, and set the ladder up. Mke held the bottom, whilst I climbed half way, to throw a sling around the mast, above the spreader bars to secure the ladder.

At this point, I feel the need to point out, that this boat has a fair amount of bad luck surrounding it. The boat is 34 years old, and the securing point that the mast attaches to is weakened. I am about to scale 25ft of this mast, right to the top, whilst it’s in the water, and still wobbling about. Nothing could go wrong with this plan at all! Of course, I wasn’t afraid to carry this out…

In an attempt to go less far up the mast, I had borrowed a long armed magnet from Handicraft, so that I could just magnet the metal wire from just over half way up. Unfortunately the wind had wrapped the boat around several other wires, so the magnet plan wouldn’t work. With all the bad luck, and poor equipment in mind, I nervously began to scale the ladder. I found the wire that I was after, and began unwrapping it quickly. I wasn’t going to hang around here longer than I needed to. Job done, I came back down the ladder, and relaxed.

In the whole operation, nothing went wrong. Which was a good thing, because despite wearing a climbing harness, and having lobster claws attached to me, I never attached the lobster claws to anything else! But hey, I had safety equipment with me.

But the curse of the boat continued. On the way home, we hit a small bump at 25mph, and one of Terry’s roof bars snapped. Well, not actually the metal bar, but one of the silly bloody plastic feet. I was understandably furious, and very upset that I had damaged Terry’s car. I apologised to Terry, and offered to replace the part and/or pay for it. Terry proceeded to say don’t worry about it, as he explained that a replacement would cost $200! Can you believe that? $200, and it can’t even hold a flipping ladder?!?!?!

Following this, I have asked the camp’s gun-totin’ chaplain to exorcise the boat of all it’s demons.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the garage have finally contacted home about Ernie. You may remember that a bars in my rear suspension snapped. Well, the garage agreed to hold on to Ernie until his MOT this week, saving Dad having to pick him up. W Jones have never been bad to me, and they have always contacted me if it was going to be a big job. Bearing in mind that the largest bill I have ever paid is £400ish, and the car is only worth £300-£400, you can understand how angree and annoyed I would be at W Jones calling my parents, and saying ‘It’s ready to be picked up, that will be £850 please’. They’ll be receiving a phone call on Monday morning from the United States…

This has been a really bad week, and I was very confident that I was heading for depression. But it is amazing how easy I am to cheer up. One of my friends took me to the local town for some latin American food (which was delicious by the way). Whilst we drove around, Jordan let me drive his Jeep Wrangler!!! Not only is it a small American 4 by 4, but it is also manual. It felt so good to drive automatic again!

Well, here’s hoping for a happier week…

If you knew the jib halyard wouldn’t hold, why not leave a comment saying that you are as knowledgeable as Tom.

If you didn’t know that the jib halyard would snap, why not leave a comment saying that you under estimated the curse of the Corpulent Porpoise.

Quote of the Week: ‘Yeah, we believe in God, Jesus, all that crap’ explained one staff member, as we discussed his faith in Roman Catholicism.