Race 7 - Day 23
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 23: Whitsundays to Sanya
22 February
When it hits the Fan.
So we were on deck yesterday at watch handover just sitting waiting to begin when we struck up a conversation about some of the funny things that happened on board CV23 during our last 25 days at sea...most of them you all already know...some you don't (but that's for the best) and this particular story we thought we should share with you. It shows how we have developed a real team spirit when things go...well a little bit crap.
It was about 10 days into this race when we discovered that I did not do a very good job on restocking cleaning supplies in Airlie Beach. Mary was cleaning the heads and couldn't find any more brown paper bags. These bags are called “The Poo Bags” they are placed in a little bin in the heads and we are to put our used toilet paper in them to make the process of throwing them overboard easier. They get emptied each watch - just stick on some gloves, lift the bag, roll it closed and throw – trying not to hit any one or any thing on your way, which is more difficult than you may think (Yes we have had on deck explosions before!). Anyways these bag have become an integral part of making life on board more pleasant. We were horrified by this shock discovery. I had bought 1000 in Fremantle and didn't even consider we may need more. I spent the rest of the day searching with Graham and some other willing volunteers to find some more...there had to be more. No luck, we were totally out. I had to now break the news to Conall – I avoided it all day, I thought he may not be a happy camper. Thank god someone else broke the news first; he took it well and said we just needed to find a solution. This is where the team really turned into engineers.
It was drawn up on the whiteboard for the lunchtime meeting “Poo Bag Solution” during the discussion we decided to have a competition whereby crew members were encouraged to design a bag and present it at the 1900 handover. We had so much fun trying to design bags to hold toilet roll! Our top three contenders were: April, whose bag design was considered slightly small but only used one sheet of paper and two staples; Lou was up next with two sheets but a whopping six staples and finally the Skipper entry who used two sheets of very high quality printer paper and four staples. The panel of crew jumped to action and voted before realising the whole process was pointless because we didn't actually have a lot of paper either...so to determine the real winner we decided to have the Poo Bag Elliot Brown Ocean Sprint from the Bow to the Stern (winds were light as is tradition for our ocean sprints!). It was a tight race the whole way until Lou's bag lost its soggy bottom and zoomed over the line as the official race committee declared she takes First Place – three points for Lou.
Okay so it wasn't the end of the world that we didn't have any bags left but it was nice to see the creativity of the team and the positive attitude of turning something not so good in to something that turned out to be actually quite a fun day. As an update on the poo bag situation we are now using small plastic bags and storing them in the Laz, it's not ideal but hey that's life at sea, you make the most of what you got and secretly I am praying we don't run out of those too.
A big happy birthday to my Daddy – I hope your card arrived on time! Love you so much. Give Granny Ann and Granda Finton, Mammy, Danielle and Connor big hugs from me. Cant wait for Sunday morning bootsales again!
Roseann xxx