Chapter 26

The flock had gathered in the Rec Room. They had doffed their skin suits and were hooked about the table except for Slow who was still in the Cabin but on the intercom. McCock took a deep suck on his bulb,

"Now, tell me about the yacht," to Polack and to Slow's gurgling chortle "and you stay out of this M'lady."

"I've got to talk to you about 413 first, Aggy, its important." McCock considered momentarily.

"Go, but I still want the story on that yacht."

"The work on 413 is a lifted cleat. Don't know why but I did a Doppler probe – probably for the practice, I got an anomaly that I couldn't put down to that bollard. Took me half a day to locate it but the middle third of that deck is stress fractured. Once I got a cut it was easy. The apex of the stress area is where they bolt a power windlass and it spreads out and away from that bollard. Enough tension on that winch and that deck would lift. With the bollard and that, it needs a metal survey and that's out of our capacity. We could do a quick and dirty and put the molecular seamer on it but I worry about the condition of the rest of the hull. If it's crystallized, 413's a write off and Galbraith won't like that. I won't sign it off even repairing that fracture line without a survey. That's my recommendation, and if Galbraith won't do it and I don't really know their rep, we should go to the Harbour Master."

"Satan's canines, you do find them don't you?" muttered McCock.

"I'm sure they'll go with it," offered Slow, "they have a good rep in the port and we've seen their work over the past days. Toby seems an alright guy."

"We'll play it by the book! The yacht?" rejoined McCock

"You remember a couple of weeks ago I was all into that yachting catalogue? Well, I've been subscribing to it for years and just before we were sent here I had decided to order a kit and build one. I've been fascinated by them since we started at the Marina at Settlement. I hadn't really spent my pay on anything much and it just mounted up; you wouldn't let us go shares on that expense, so..."

"How did you get it into A?"

"Oh!" laughed Polack as he realized McCock was more curious than angry, "from the top? You remember we had to moor the barges outside. Toby and his boys, uh, Slow tell you about the power? Yeah well, Toby and the gang were inside the tunnel tidying up intending to go out No2 and their work barge was being pulled around to the front. It was only going to be a minor hassle to get their gear over those barges into theirs but as they had a wait on their hands, what the heck, they pulled 413 into A, just to test the systems you understand and pulled 412 into the dock and clamped her just for the practice. Their barge was alongside loading when the transport lot turned up with the yacht 'tainer. It was too big for No2 so Toby and company ran it through the main dock into A and secured it. They wouldn't take my thanks, said they enjoyed themselves; and now I throw 413 in their faces. Teeth!"