Crew Blog

It’s not Aloha yet!

18 March 2008

Having roared downwind for 4,000 miles, progress has been very slow since the race ended. We’ve been beating into the wind under reduced sail. For a while it was cold and at night we could be found huddled on the windward rail with our backs to the wind, like penguins in Antarctica. Now the sun is out, the shorts are on and this morning we turned the engine on. We are catching up on boat maintenance and enjoying Oscar’s knot-tying classes. We’ve even put out a fishing line. Unfortunately the only thing we’ve caught is a gull which got tangled up in the line.  No one knows any gull recipes that will feed 12 and so it’s pasta again tonight. 

Down below it’s now very sweaty. I have discovered the benefits of wet wipes. As Marcus helpfully pointed out, you can make one wet wipe go a long way - as long as you start with your face. And udder cream continues to be applied in all the darkest corners on the boat.

There are frequent cries of, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ The SeaPro navigation system shows that we are indeed very close to Hawaii but not long ago it was showing that we were in Iraq; so we are hoping that our landfall is indeed Hawaii and not Basra. We think we should now arrive in Hawaii tomorrow, which is just as well since cake supplies on board are now at critical levels. We have to clear immigration and surrender our “foreign trash” for inspection. I assume that this refers to our garbage and not to female members of the crew.

NM