A Monkey’s Fist Iceberg

First thing I did last night when we arrived in Falmouth was laundry. It’s worrying when the highlight of the day is clean clothes and a hot shower – sometimes in life its the small luxuries that make the difference. We have a limited water supply, and generally want to prioritise it for cooking and drinking, which means we’ve mostly been having salt water showers. So we’re clean, but after a while everything starts feeling that tiny bit sticky with all the salt. So laundry day is a big deal for us.

The morning was a buzz of chores, cleaning the kites, rinsing wetsuits, more laundry and doing a general tidy. With those out the way we went onto explore Falmouth, including the Maritime Museum. The highlight for me was an installation by Dan Arnold as part of the Titanic exhibit. It consisted of a 2,240 white monkey’s fists, one knot for each person onboard, arranged in the shape of an iceberg suspended above a replica of Life Boat 13. All of the knots had been made by volunteers, with 65 glitter ones representing those rescued by the life boat below. It was simple in it’s construction, but the love and passion that went into making them came across as a true tribute. (I unfortunately forgot to take a picture, but you can see some on the Artist’s website)

Monkeys Fist – (a knot forming a sphere, often encompassing a small rock which is then used as a weight when throwing ropes between ships).