Crew Blog

So this is ocean racing?

07 June 2008

I’ve now been underway aboard westernaustralia2011.com for 49 hours, 54 minutes and 13 seconds—not that I’m counting. As a media guest aboard the boat, and a representative of America’s oldest and most prestigious boating magazine YACHTING, I was really expecting something quite different. Where is the varnished teak, the starched table linens, the crystal and china bearing the ship’s insignia?  I mean, I’m not TOTALLY naïve, I knew quarters might be a little tighter than usual, perhaps my stateroom would be a little less beamy and light, no chilled champagne, no fresh cut peonies in a silver vase but FOR CHRIST’S SWEET SAKE nineteen people on a sixty-eight foot boat?

And the worst of it is: eighteen of those people are quite cheerful about it. They roll out of their bunks (well, actually, there’s not enough room to do anything but throw a leg over the side) at ungodly hours in ungodly weather and cheerfully slip into three layers of clothing--at least one of which is still damp from the last watch!—and laugh and joke as though this is something they WANT to be doing. I’d be tempted to say this must reflect some kind of mental imbalance peculiar to Aussies but a good portion of the crew is British, so maybe it’s the whole “stiff-upper-lip-thing” taken to psychotic new levels?

I don’t know but they’re obviously all crazy. And I wish they weren’t putting me ashore in Halifax.

Mary South