Crew Blog

Bucket overboard!

01 February 2008

Bit of a tragedy since the last update. Our lives revolve around racing, sleeping and mother duties. One of the delights of mother is in passing the slop bucket up on deck, filled with food debris from the day, and an alert deck hand then disposes the slops over the side. Said alert person ties the bucket on ‘just in case’ and normally the job is a good ‘un. This time the gentleman to be unnamed tied the bucket on, realized that the rope wasn’t long enough to reach the water, untied, got distracted, and suddenly our training kicked in as we all cried ‘bucket overboard!’ The forlorn look on all our faces was worse than the sad ‘inflatable parrot overboard’ incident in our last leg, but the race is on. No going back. If any of the boats behind us come across a lonely well used black bucket bobbing along, we will gladly accept it in Qingdao…

Otherwise our upwind racing continues. Even us leggers are becoming old hands at Yankee changes. We now merely shudder when Marcus orders a Yankee 1 change, as opposed to our initial outbursts of tears. Living on board is tougher than our recent downwind sailing, with a bit more sickness this leg and even less sleep (unimaginable). But, the miles are ticking down towards Qingdao!

Joseph O’Sullivan

PS big shout out to Christian’s friend who found in Singapore the original Broadway recording of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. I don’t know how our lives could be better.

PPS big shout out to those tankers that seem to be swerving by us left and right at night here on the South China Sea. The bright search lights used to check us out afterwards that kill our night vision might be the only thing that do make our lives better.