Crew Blog

Smiling faces

04 March 2008

After a long night of sail changing we are tired but happy.  The wind has been building and we have gusts of 30 knots filling the kite, pushing us in the right direction towards Hawaii. With the wind behind us life on board is more comfortable and new crew member, Paul, has discovered the joys of sleeping in the saloon without being violently thrown to the floor. Another halyard broke this morning, however we now take these ‘moments of sheer panic’ in our stride for there is still a long way to go. Today is a huge contrast to the circles we were doing in the Pacific yesterday with no wind, testing us all on a psychological level, especially Jack who was pacing around like a frustrated puppy and yelling colourful language.

As a ‘round the worlder’, I have noticed a pattern developing with each leg of the race; after the first couple of days of excitement, routine sets in and you start to get tired very quickly. We push the boat harder; something breaks and we get more tired. Guaranteed by the tenth day sense of humour failure is at its peak, a few toys may be thrown from the pram. Some of us start getting cabin fever, I start waking up in a panic thinking I’ve slept through a shift… Others like Bruce are having weird dreams of signing legal contracts on sail cloth, while Billy dreams she is riding on a bus uncontrollably down icy roads.

I have just found out we are sitting on the 4 knots of current (the tactical reason we chose this route across the Pacific) so all going well… its catch up time.

Jacki Walker