Turned around

A fortnight into the refit, we turned the ship around today. That involved quite a lot of work - taking off the frame supporting the awnings, taking down some of the awnings and tarpaulins lining the ship's side, casting off the mooring lines and weighing anchor (covered in grey gloopy Whangarei mud). Captain Jim turned the ship on a dime, beautifully, and we went back in bow first. We dropped the anchor again only to give the guys who work at the shipyard a heart attack; they reckoned we'd dropped it on their railway that lifts ships into dry dock. Jim disagreed, but we lifted it again anyway to keep them happy and attached a long rope borrowed from the dockyard to the bows. It's shackled around a pohutukawa tree on the opposite bank and should enable us to bring the starboard side out so we can get it painted. The awnings and so on are mostly up again, and work's already begun on the port side. Meanwhile below decks we're wrestling with the appalling paint job that had been done in the ship's larder - it's all peeling, so we're trying to find the quickest way to get it off before repainting it properly. Anyway, all on schedule still, which is good news.