Nicky Sails for Black Dog

The day after being Ship Slaves, two of us, one from each watch have to be lavvy cleaners, disguised to sound less unpleasant by the job description ‘engineers’. I luckily had to bale out the port side of the boat and not the starboard side, lucky only because the water had accumulated in the bilges on the starboard side and believe me, lying on your stomach under someone’s smelly bunk with a head torch on and a little baling tub in your hand trying to get to the water in the furthermost corner is far less fun than about any household chore I can think of including sorting mounds of laundry.

But there was a Hollywood Starlet moment of my day, from Cinderella to Kate Winslett and that magical moment when she stands on the bow with dishy Leonardo Di Caprio except I was standing on the pulpit with my back to the sunset and had to spike the kite (to bring down the spinnaker)and my only spoken part was the word ‘Hedgehog’ which is what you have to shout once the kite has been spiked….don’t ask me why.

Supper at Sunset

Spiking a kite means only one thing, the kite comes down but then it has to be packed and remember this thing is as big as a tennis court and to add to the party game we get to do it in the smelly forepeak (bunks where we sleep stroke pass out from heat exhaustion) at 45C.

We did two, one after the other and those slackers I mentioned earlier sat on deck as if they were on a cruise and read their books. Grrrrr! We were promised a swim afterward but unfortunately it might have to be a bucket of sea water off the back of the boat as unless we’re at zero knots COG then we’re not allowed. Unfortunately we’re sitting in a parking lot again but we haven’t come to a complete halt just a very good impersonation of one.

We’re inching towards the finish line with just 101 miles to go & I just can’t wait till we cross that line & pull up in port in Panama. Come on wind….

The wind has changed direction so after yesterday’s sudden squall instead of being able to go in the direction we want towards the finish line, sailing downwind with the spinnaker flying( huge kite like sail which flies at the bow),we had to do a series of tacks close haul which took us north and then east.

We even managed to do a complete doughnut or 360 degrees caught up in the North Equatorial Current. A yacht, I’ve learned, doesn’t behave itself like a car, it goes depending on a lot of factors, primarily the wind and the current but not in the direction you want it to go just because you turn the wheel.

This morning I was woken up thinking I could have been sleeping in a skip which was repeatedly slammed down on the concrete by a crane. Not that I’ve ever slept in a skip before but the noise was crash, crash, crash and I in the
meantime was thrown up, down, up, down, as if I was riding a bucking bronco at the rodeo.We had 28 knots of wind and because the waves we are sailing into are short and haven’t had the chance to fill, the bow rises up and instead of gliding over them like a surf board they lift up the boat and then slam it down.The noise is deafening especially since my bunk is the closest to the bow port side.

The boat was also heeled over at between 25 to 30 degrees so depending what tack the boat is on (wind coming at either the port side of the boat or the starboard side) you’re either sleeping rammed up against the side of the boat
half into your storage locker or you’re lying against the lee cloth which is tied with a rope to stop you being dumped out onto the floor.

Going to the heads (loo) is something you dread as not only is it a sauna behind the metallic zip up doors it’s difficult to get dressed again in such a confined space while pushing yourself back up to a more normal angle. Usually we girls just fall out of there, literally, and zip up our shorts once we’re out…there are no princesses on this boat!

Being the Ship Slave again today was very tricky as to deliver any food or drink from the galley up the companionway (stairs) to the deck at 25- 30 degrees you have to hold on with all your might with one arm (great workout
for tuckshop arms!) and hope the contents don’t spill out and scald either you or anyone near you before you can get it to the recipient. The porridge also burnt because it was at an angle on the stove.

They’ve now called the race which means they’ve shortened it so whoever gets over the new finish line first wins and after the first three boats cross it the rest of the fleet can then motor and sail to speed things up. We should be at the finish line in about 5 days time depending on the wind. We are presently off the coast of Costa Rica.

Some moments are brilliant, especially being at the helm and star gazing and watching the different phases of the moon, also the wildlife and the funny comments when we’re all sitting around, but others like trying to sleep in a stuffy & very smelly cabin area, I could do without. I sleep with a bar of soap on my pillow but a gas mask would be better. Can’t wait for that first proper shower in Panama and that first ice cold G&T!

We’d been hearing distant thunder & rating a spectacular electrical storm in the distance like a fireworks display when we came on watch at 3am. This carried on for the next 2 hours and by dawn we decided it was time to start preparing for rain, books all down the companion way (stairs down to the saloon, galley and forepeak/bunk area).Next job was to get the spinnaker down then WHAM! all hell broke lose & we were in the middle of the Perfect Storm, warm waves crashing over the beam, driving rain making it hard to keep your eyes open & blowing 35knots with heaving seas.

The sheet (rope) which had to be quickly taken off the winch to release the spinnaker so it could be spiked & dropped had 2 safety turns on it so when Sue tried to release it she couldn’t due to the pressure of the wind in the spinnaker.Now we were broaching on the starboard side, the spinnaker was in the water & we were glad we had our safety lines on as the starboard railing was in the waves & we were at an angle of 50 degrees.

The skipper was barking instructions from the helm which we could hardly hear over the sound of the waves & wind but he didn’t look at all amused. The kite ripped in two but I was under the boom madly pulling it in so didn’t realise it had till Mike said, ‘The kite is fu…d’ ‘Why, what happened to it?’ and then I started pulling in a second spinnaker plus lots of ribbon and for a micro second thought how the heck did we have two spinnakers up at the same time & why does this second one have ribbons like a childrens’ kite dangling off the end.

You can imagine the ribbing I got from Mike for that one!

By the time we came off watch at 7am we were drowned cold rats and the hot creamy porridge with honey & cinnamon and hot black tea Jeremy handed me was the best meal I’ve had on board so far. Perhaps even beating Tom’s curry.

Who would ever have imagined we’d be cold 100 miles off the coast of Honduras at the border with Nicaragua. Up until the squall hit we’d been sitting in zero knots going North! Luckily because there was also zero boat speed, we weren’t going backwards we were just going nowhere, hour after hour. In roughly a 16 hour period we had only traveled 61 miles.

The smell in the forepeak (sleeping quarters) was really bad before, now it’s really bad x one hundred. A cross between cat pee, smelly feet, unwashed bodies & now wet life jackets & dripping wet clothes.Happy days….not!

So glad I brought smelly soap with me which I have on my pillow and my little battery operated fan. I could throw everything else I own over the side, but not those two things.

Best bit of the night apart from the storm,which I found really exciting was hearing the little snorts from a large pod of dolphins exhaling air as they leaped in and out of the waves on either side of the boat.

Fantastic!

Break through day! Two weeks to the day since we set off from San Francisco, Sailor Girl here was given sole charge of the helm while the Skipper & on-watch crew took down the light-weight spinnaker which we’d been using less like a spinnaker and more like a Genoa sail on a port tack due to a change in wind direction. Who would have thought a year ago I’d be left in control of a 32 tonne yacht & I’d know what I was doing!

Just a little follow up info about that bioluminescence we had the incredible good fortune to gaze at 2 nights ago. The light is due to a variety of organisms from microscopic life to many forms of deep-sea fish. The production is attributed to biochemical reactions which, though apparently automatic in the lower forms of life are under nervous hormonal control in the higher forms.

Short blog tonight as although we are at sea I feel more like I’m in a river, river of sweat, that is, and I’ve just had a one litre wash-down in the snake pit and I’m back where I started…dripping in sweat!

Before I go sing this to the tune of the twelve days of Christmas;

12 dolphins jumping

11 turtles bobbing

10 flying fish

9 squids on deck

8 boobies on the spreaders

7 sparkling patches of luminescence

6 crew a’ trimming

5 choccies gobbled

4 sheets to pull

3 hours of sleep

2 different watches

& 1 red moon rising

And that’s what’s been happening in the sweltering Pacific!

‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’ and we’re definitely doing it tough on this 68ft  right orange canoe stuck in a wind hole going forward but only just.

The heat is grim, the smelly are getting smellier, the bossy are getting bossier, the slackers are getting slacker, the injuries are piling up so the uninjured ones do all their jobs too, the ones who are hard to live with are harder still and did I say it was hot?

Staying Cool Under the Sails

But wait, I signed up for this, I paid for all these pleasures, for this challenge, for this adventure into the unknown.

There have been and there will be more times in the future when I just want to get off, times when I wish I was back home with my family, sitting in my light airy kitchen having a family dinner with loads of salad and fresh fruit, icy cold sparkling Perrier with a huge slice of lemon and a chilled Sauvignon Blanc, just catching up with all the happenings of the day.

I received the most adorable email from my little Sophie saying how much she missed me and how I’m going to miss her school’s Mother’s Day Mass.  She’s been asked to read out her Mother’s Day poem, the last time in junior school and I won’t be there to hear it. I’m also going to miss her Talent Quest performance and her confirmation and I ask myself while I sit in a pool, no make that a flood of sweat on this boat, still off the coast of Mexico, why am I doing this and not being a real Mummy? Why did I sign up for this in the first place?

I signed up for this because I can, because no matter what I miss during the 6 weeks I’m away, I still have a lifetime of things to celebrate with not just Sophie but with all my other children and knowing that makes me feel humbled and very lucky as not everyone has that privilege.

I have taken the opportunity to be part of a team, a crew with the same goal, to finish this race and try to do well in it. I’m not just going along for the ride, I am a productive member of this crew, I have the capacity to learn, albeit with this half brain cell of mine and while I’m not the most natural sailor afloat, I can ‘man up’ as the skipper has a habit of shouting when he wants more throttle at the winch.

Those days when I admit to myself that my challenge is tougher than I thought it would be, I think of Ben and ask myself, how tough would I have been if I felt my life was worthless and living was too much effort, days on end of feeling like I was inside a deep dark hole and I just couldn’t find the strength to haul myself out? Would I have had the guts to get out of bed when I didn’t have the energy to, thrown away all the painkillers I was taking for a chronic back injury, thrown out the hidden stock of bottles of booze, which at times felt like my only friend? Thrown away the antidepressants which only made me feel worse, been proactive getting treatment for my depression & addictions, turned my life around even though it was going to get much worse before it was going to get better?

Ben did it tougher than this and I think about him often during these fleeting low moments because they will come to an end.  I also know which way my life is heading but when you have depression, like he had, it’s a whole lot tougher to see any future at all. Ben, I miss you.

But wait, I don’t want to end on a sad note, guess why the whole crew went running to starboard halfway during lunch?….to see a bird standing on top of a turtle as it lazily swam by and I thought of those chilled out dude turtles in Finding Nemo and it made me laugh.

How can I best describe the weather we’re experiencing on deck 175 miles south east of Acapulco? Hot? hotter than hot? like a Turkish bath, a sauna, a combustion engine?

There’s no escaping that sun as it beats down while we’re trimming the dazzling white spinnaker sail on a half hour rotation face turned straight up into the sun, or at the helm with the sun beating down on our heads.

I’m the only female not in a bikini top, instead I have my collared polo shirt and little blue cotton scarf round my neck, my cap on, factor 30 and if I have half an hour off I head for the shade the main sail and mast makes at the bow, leaning against the hanked on headsail trying to catch the breeze.

The barometer dropped significantly over a 4 hour period this afternoon from 1006 to 997 but the skipper believes we’re not heading into a cyclone and that it was perhaps an error in the log.

I’ll let you know if anything fruity happens overnight but we’re slowly
gaining on California…yee ha!

In every ‘adventure of a  lifetime’ there should be parameters set by someone because what I did yesterday and what I have had to do today have nothing whatsoever to do with adventure, far less of a lifetime, more what I’d call an endurance feat.

Yesterday I was the Boat Bitch or Ship Slave or whatever you wish to call the poor sod who has to wait hand and foot on 19 people who for 12 hours straight need fed 3 meals, umpteen snacks, hot drinks, cold drinks, and all the inevitable washing up that entails including chiseling stuck-fast burnt porridge off the bottom of the biggest pan you can imagine.  Then I had to bake 4 loaves of bread & 2 cakes, actually that bit was fun and that’s why I’m smiling in the attached photo but then there was the kitchen to clean and all the tea towels had to be washed. It’s little wonder at the end of a very long day you are rewarded with a full nights sleep, i.e. no night watch.

Baking on the high seas

Unfortunately my watch leader has the reputation of waking everyone up even when he knows you have been ‘mother’ as they touchingly call the slave shift.  I decided I would cellotape a handy reminder onto the shower curtain around my bunk to remind Mike, the watch leader, not to wake me as he has done in the past.

Whether it was the tone of the note or something else, he clearly took ‘Piss Off Mike’ the wrong way and woke me up twice, once with the full beam of his torch to read the note and then went away and came back & told me that I had to get up with another full beam in the face, to which I said ‘Piss off Mike’ and he went off laughing leaving me wide awake & very peeved which was obviously his intention in the first place.

Be afraid Mike, be very afraid… I’m learning how to tie a hangman’s noose knot out of Jeremy’s  Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Knots & Ropework’ but until I do, I might just offer to make you a cup of tea plus a good shake of Tabasco.

Talking of knots & ropes, I’ve found that ropes come in very handy indeed apart from all these things we have to do with them to keep the sails flying high and pointing the boat in the general direction of the finish line, which I believe we are still heading for despite the fact we seem to be about a hundred miles west of everyone else…(Uniquely Singapore, we’re still coming to get you, even though you’re 3 miles ahead…and how on earth did that happen while I was stuck in the galley?!)

But I digress, back to ropes, they came in handy at lunchtime as you can coil them around your mug of soup to stop it tilting over with every wave.  It has to be said that only on a British boat would we be having hot soup when it’s blooming boiling on deck, below deck and especially in the heads (loo) which is what I had to do today, as in clean them, which is also why today was not an adventure of a lifetime.

But back to ‘Other Things to do with Ropes on a Boat’(or sheets to give them their nautical term), they make an excellent paperweight when you’re reading on deck and the pages keep turning in the wind or if you have to get up because it’s your turn to trim the sails and you forgot your bookmark.  They’re also quite handy for stopping your flip flops taking flight & when Doctor Maggie lanced Jeremy’s elbow, they were a handy daybed.

Dr Maggie lancing Jeremy's elbow

But that’s enough for today or there will be nothing to report tomorrow as we’re still flying the spinnaker, still trimming, still grinding, still helming.  I just hope that booby bird on the mast the other night wasn’t an omen, booby bird? booby prize?

Happy Days on Ull & Umba!

Best wake up call for days, went to bed at 3am with Uniquely Singapore
3.6 miles ahead and got up at 7am to find we were just 0.6 miles behind
off our starboard bow.Crew morale is up there with the mighty spinnaker.
Singapore..you’re going down, if we can just catch up with you that is.

Had a BOOBY on our windex (wind indicator on top of the mast)for many an
hour last night. No…..one of the girls didn’t get stuck up the top of
the mast,it is a bird from these parts and it was obviously having a
rest on it’s journey to nowhere. Remarks of ‘Wind on the beak’ could be
heard from the cockpit as a few of it’s feathery mates swooped and
circled the boat trying to land on the headsail as if it had branches,
maybe in the dark it looked like a tree. Actually it wasn’t dark at all,
full moon gazing was an absolute delight between turns of trimming &
helming & grinding.

Talking of grinding, I had an early morning workout like no other with
U&U’s personal trainer supreme,Andrew Gizzard,whose individual style of
trimming; Grind, hold, grind, hold, grind, HOLD!’ at rapid 60 second
intervals keeps us all fit during the day & awake during the long 4 hour
night watches.

Tuning into Radio Ull & Umba this morning we had 2 excellent brekkie
recipies, first up, Bucks Fizz (or if you’re from the land of
Oz, (‘G’day Sydney!’), Mimosas;

Take one gallon bottle of Safeway water, add Tang orange flavoured
powder and shake vigorously till there are loads of bubbles, pour &
drink immediately before bubbles disappear.
If you’re trimming at the time, bit of multi tasking required, take mega
quick gulp between letting out the sheet & shouting ‘Grind’ & imagine
lazing in deckchair by sparkling pool. Can be done, believe me, unless
of course,PT Andrew is on trimming & you’re trying to have a gulp on the
grinder.
_____________________________________________
Next recipe a la U&U Eggs Benedict minus the eggs, muffin,spinach,ham &
hollandaise sauce;

Take one slice of bread cut crooked due to rolling wave mid-slicing,
sprinkle on top, stalish cheesy crakers crumbed.

Ingredients, 2
Prep time, 20 secs
Nutritional value, who cares
Taste sensation, beats marmite anyday
___________________________________________
Radio Umba NEWS FLASH!!!

Skipper Justin has just announced that we can have a 2 litre shower
(bucket over head)in the snake pit following lunch.This will be
most refreshing in the building heat, mind you I think Babywipes should
get an honourable mention here,as in a quick commercial break; obviously
invented for two purposes only, babies bottoms & smelly sailors after 8
days at sea.I must confess I have washed my hair once already & so have
been kicked out of the Dirty Hair Club.

Finally, Phone in Topic of the Day;

How can I use my sheet-holding-hand-grasp (picture palm down claw) back
in my real life shore based once again. Suggestions so far;

Good for pushing supermarket trollies, riding bikes, pushing
wheelbarrows and feeding pasta sheets into spagetti machines.Feel free to
phone in with any other suggestions.

And now dear listeners, that would be ‘Over & Out’ from Radio ‘Ull &
Umba coming to you live from half way between China & off-shore Mexico,
although there is a rumour going about that we too are heading for
Panama.

We’re doing a sort of wiggly course in the light airs like a courier on his bike at traffic lights in order not to come to a complete stop.We have the lightest weight kite on the port(L)side,wind coming from the west, and while we’re heading south,we have to constantly tweak the boat by coming up to the wind and then bearing away from it so the kite doesn’t collapse.By doing this the wind fluctuates from 2 knots to 6 or 7 knots and of course we are trimming & grinding the spinnaker as before.

There’s a snazzy little calculation which any sailor would appreciate, Actual wind = True wind + Induced wind, but for the rest of us picture a
wiggly worm course trailing behind the boat. We have at long last another of the boats, Uniquely Singapore on our starboard side on the horizon, their spinny shimmering in the haze. It’s easy to forget we’re actually in a race apart from reading the ‘scheds’ (schedule or race order)which comes out every 6 hours.Now it’s much more exciting.

Apart from them and a flying fish which flew on to the boat and promptly died before anyone noticed it & threw it back, not much else is happening other than I’m going to roll off this boat looking like ten ton tessie with a shocker of a chocolate addiction.I’ve had my 6 month normal consumption in a week.
Chart wise we are about level with the middle of Cuba still off the Mexican coast opposite a place called Manzanilla. We’ve done about 120 nautical miles since yesterday.

There have been no murders today unlike yesterday when there were about 4 and yet we must hunt down Uniquely Singapore as if we are serial killers or else they’ll get away from us.

It’s been quite a night. It’s presently 0.15 and I’m off watch till 02.30 when we get woken ready to be on deck again by 03.00 but the noise above my head whilst in my bunk was like a herd of elephants.  Had it been in fact an actual herd of elephants it would have made world headlines but it was just the on watch bringing down the spinnaker because it had got wrapped or in other words twisted. Now it will need to be spread out the length of the boat all the way into the bunk areaso it can be tightly wound up and tied with little bits of string everyone metre of it’s length ready for the next hoist, thus making sleep impossible.

Having been murdered last night in the snakepit by an Oxo cube I shouldn’t need any sleep because dead people are permanently asleep.  You might be wondering if I’ve gone a bit loopy out here in the middle of the ocean, but to be killed by an oxo cube in the snakepit (the central control section on a racing yacht where all the ropes and winches and jammers are) is quite an achievement.  In this murder game we’ve been playing since the start of the race, if I hadn’t been knocked off, my victim was going to be Brett in the heads (loo) with a cheese grater which would have been far more of a challenge. It’s only because it was under the cover of darkness that Sue was able to hand me an Oxo cube in the snakepit I keep telling her as she’s going around looking way too smug.

Race wise, we’re hoping to take advantage of some good north westerlies to help us catch up with the leaders, which is the reason we came so far west in the first place. It’s unlikely we’ll get a podium position because the leaders are still getting good wind close to shore and have far less distance to travel to the line but in this race anything could happen, even murder on the high seas.