Crew Blog

Fetch the spoon - the boom’s fallen in the brew!

27 June 2008

It’s all part of it.  Becalmed on water like glass in the wide Sargasso Sea.  Peering through fog on the Grand Banks, looking for icebergs.  Dolphins dancing through sparkling phosphorescence.  The interrupted sleep, sea-sickness, blocked toilets and long, uneventful night watches.  But these last few days and nights in the North Atlantic have looked and felt like the poster campaign, the image that comes to mind when you hear the words ‘ocean racing’.

The best view is looking backwards along the boat, towards the helm.  The great, grey ocean looms up behind the helm like a mountain, laced with white foam from our wake.  Whenever I have seen this view before, on film, I have wondered how it is that the boat is not overwhelmed by these towering swells.  Now I have seen it for myself, I understand that we glide and slide over them, going with, and not against them.

So long as our helm knows what they are doing, and can keep control of the boat.  In case they can’t, and the boom goes in the water, there is a deckie-learner like me, sitting for 3 hours at a time with no other job than to bang the vang if I hear the cry ‘Broaching!’ It’s an important job, guarding against damage to persons and spinnakers, and of course I take it very seriously indeed.

So why is it then, that what keeps coming to mind is Peter Kay’s emergency biscuit-dunking routine, in slow motion?  ‘M-u-m!  Fetch a spoon!  Me biscuit’s fallen in me brew!’

Luckily, I have not been put to the test, with either the vang or a spoon.  The team is working like clockwork, the weather tells us we are nearing the British Isles, and by this time tomorrow, the race may well have been won. 

Isabelle