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No cakes, try a slice of wood
By Lesley, assistant cook. 19 April. Well, I didn't get
a chance to make cakes the day after the action (see
my update from Monday). What I had to do was unload
200 planks of wood as they were brought up to the Warrior.
Yep, Greenpeace decided to borrow this wood from the log
ship and take it to the international political forest meeting
in The Hague.
So, as inflatables turned up loaded down with planks of
wood, I leapt from my cozy position asleep on the bridge
deck, threw on my gloves and hurled planks into a pile on
deck.
Then we left the log ship in peace! The entire crew (minus
the captain) of the log ship came out to wave us off and
we all waved back and gave them a big toot of our horn.
Then we went to meet up with the Esperanza in Scheveningen
and give them the planks of wood.
That was fun, going alongside the new ship. Crew were leaping
over the sides in all directions, meeting up with mates
and their counterparts. I first found the lounge area in
the Esperanza and, realising that you could smoke in it,
spent the next two hours smoking my head off and chatting
to people. Then I checked out the galley. Wow, you could
rollerblade around it, it is so big. I started to chat to
Miguel, the Esperanza galley slave and dragged him back
to the Warrior so he could compare galley size. Bless him,
he said, 'Well Lesley, I am small and so is this galley
so I think I could work here'!
Ah well. We then zoomed off and headed up the coast.
But yesterday was a 'grand day out'.
We had a family outing to one of the Dutch islands. Two
full inflatables set out from the Warrior at 10am on the
softest, calmest North Sea I have ever seen. We soon lost
sight of the Warrior and were zooming toward - well, I couldn't
see anything. Then Cees reminded us that the islands are
surrounded by sandbanks and we had to follow the buoys very,
very carefully. We did. It took much longer than any of
us thought. None of us was dressed up for two hours in an
inflatable. No gloves, hats or coats. Well, it was sunny
and warm when we set out.
And, just as Helen was congratulating us all on navigation
skills, she goes 'Ahh, we've hit a sand bank'. And we had.
It was so funny. Hans was in the nose of the inflatable,
paddling away like mad. Lanky Chris was at the back, shouting
depth measurements. We got off the sand bank eventually,
with much jeering from the other inflatable. Then we were
all off again. Past lovely seals who popped up to see what
we were. Then, to get into harbour, we had to drive the
inflatable in between trees!!!!!
Honest, there is only one channel deep enough for boats
to go through at low tide and it is marked by trees in the
water. It was surreal.
Once on land we all split up and ran to various needs.
I sat down with a white beer. Others got their binoculars
out and went bird hunting. Others went shopping or walking
through the sand dunes, others hired bikes (I did that after
my white beer) and cycled round the island. It was a lovely
day.
We had to leave by 4pm to catch the tide, and by that time
I had bought a black hat for the cold journey back, two
kilos of butter, two rolls of baking paper, 200 Dunhill
and four bottles of Chardonnay! I was happy.
We waved to the seals on our return journey and followed
the trees back out to deep waters.
Of course we were all perfectly knackered when we got back,
but as we'd all had a brilliant day out, we didn't care.
The crew didn't even care that, as both cooks had spent
the day off the ship, there was no dinner. They just sorted
themselves out.
And yes, we did have a bit of a party on board last nght.
Well, we were celebrating a good family day out.
Les
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