Race 7 - Day 23
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 23: Whitsundays to Sanya
22 February

Yesterday was my day for chef duty, which meant that after I spent most of the day slaving away in the galley (it says here), I got the night watches off and managed quite a good night’s sleep.. Despite waking up regularly to the sounds of spinnakers and people walking past my bunk, I had multiple epic dreams involving crews from the previous legs, BBC’s Question Time and Bill Lyons on the panel (I don’t even know) – but all this meant I woke up for the morning watch (8am-2pm) in a funny mood and somewhat detached from reality, which will probably reflect itself in this blog. Apparently I’m still on a boat?

It also means that I probably won’t sleep much on this afternoon’s off watch (2pm-8pm), and so I volunteered to write the day’s blog. After this I will retire to my bunk and choose something from my home entertainment system a.k.a iPad mini – that is, unless my assistance is required on deck for some sail repair on a couple of small holes in the Yankee 1. As well as all six seasons of Justified (I have the biggest crush on Timothy Olyphant), I have some of my guilty pleasure films to watch (not necessarily my favourite films, just ones I enjoy rewatching) including Mad Max: Fury Road, Avengers Assemble, In Bruges, The Hunt for Red October, Attack the Block and another one I can’t remember right now.

I also have some excellent games too to pass the time on the off watch: Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Planescape Torment, XCOM: Enemy Within, and previously – until I updated to iOS 11 and they no longer worked – Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun Dragonfall. As you can see, I do enjoy a good CRPG. I doubt I’ll complete all of these before the return to Gosport (off watches are spent mostly sleeping), but if anyone has some good suggestions for similar iPad games then let me know.

Anyway, this is all a digression really because I was going to write about coincidences and conspiracies. For example, the last chef duty I did that was at an uncomfortable angle was in Leg 3. Since then my chef days have coincided with wind holes and gentle downwind sailing, making cooking a breeze. On the other hand, Nell Wyatt – whose chef days have come immediately before mine – has been cooking consistently at a sharp angle for the same time. We’ve now been able to foretell when we land in wind holes and when we’ll get some upwind sailing simply by which of us is on chef duty.

I’m pretty sure I had other coincidences to talk about but for some reason they’ve all gone out of my mind. So this blog ended up rather different to how I envisaged it. Actually I just saw Mia heading up to the foredeck with sail patches and sewing kit, so I will go and see if I can help...