We had an uncomfortable night. The wind got up, there was a very large swell 'up our chuff' but Tai was built by the Navy to sail round the world so we were in very safe hands. I'm begining to fall under the Tai Mo Shan spell and start to imagine her as person, a very inteligent one for that matter. What's more we've decided she is a method actor. Her character in the film, Fernando or Bill's Boat as she is known on the call sheets, is the live aboard yacht of Swede, Bill (played by Stellan Skarsgaard). A wandering soul, he goes where the wind blows him and writes books of his travels. He is in Turkey and he receives an invitation to a wedding in Greece. So Tai has this week been working on the back story trying. Maybe all this tooing and froing was her waiting till she got into character before she could let us arrive.
You may laugh, but a funny thing happened early this morning just as the sun was coming up. Dave in his meticulous way was checking over the boat and for some reason was hanging over the transom. 'Her name plate is hangng off, give me some line to secure it' he shouted.
'That's it! She is telling us she's ready, she's shedding her identity to take on a new one!' The art depatment had been worrying about taking off the name plate was it bad luck? Would the owner object? Tai did it for them.
The Greek God's have met their match : Hollywood.
As we tied up alongside in the harbour where the ferries normally go the port police came alongside,
'You can't stop here!'
'We were told to'
'Are you with the film?'
'Yes with the film'
'OK, welcome, can we help you'
(Later this week while hiding round the corner during filming we saw a fast police launch speeding towards us. Instinctively Dave and I looked at each other wondering what we had done wrong. They pulled alongside. 'We have your lunch. Who was the vegetarian option?')
At that moment we were descended upon my the film marine team and within 15 minutes we were refulled, watered and the mainsail was off to Athens to be repaired returning tommorrow by 9pm.
We had made it and we wouldn't need to open the sea cocks. | 