Race 4 - Day 13
Crew Diary - Race 4 Day 13: Fremantle to Sydney
15 December
Last night I read from the Clipper Race training manual as a preacher might read from the bible, with my fellow Starboard Watch members seated in front of me like a congregation of salty, unwashed, sunburnt brethren. That's Johnny, Tomo, Phil, Peter D, Jon W, Ineke (rhymes with spinnaker!), Jess, Jackie and Alex. I was reading to improve my knowledge of sail trimming, a subject of which I had little knowledge two weeks ago but which is being ground into my little grey cells on a daily basis. The pertinent advice in the manual from Sir Robin is to “trim,trim,trim and trim some more”, it seems to be working for us as having completed over 2000 nautical miles of our voyage and not seen a single other vessel for most of those, we now have sight of several on the AIS system, including HotelPlanner.com, Liverpool 2018, GREAT Britain and occasional glimpses of Garmin. It's remarkable to me that after so many miles in isolation we are now beginning to converge as we bear down on Sydney.
Regarding our arrival into Sydney we are all optimistic of getting there in time for a beer on Friday night, but I for one remain cautious, we've discussed our ETA many times and it always seems to be being extended as mother nature has a cruel habit of stealing the wind from our sails just when we need it most.
It is said that time flies like an arrow, whereas fruit flies like a banana. I can confirm that time doesn't fly as straight as an arrow at all, it seems to wax and wane, stretching and compressing. There was a night last week where my watch from midnight to 4am seemed to last an eternity. We were almost as far south as we are permitted to sail, at around 44 degrees, there was a clear sky and the temperature had dropped considerably, we were relatively inactive compared to other nights and several of us sat in the cockpit shivering, so much for being in the Australian summer.
On the subject of flies, we have about 10 pet ones on the deck now, actually it might be 9 as I'm sure I sat on one earlier. It's a sure sign of our proximity to land, in fact as I write this I believe we are about 15 miles from the coast, those flies have a pretty good range on them. Port Watch (Damien, Tom W, Mark, Dave, Peter S, Ted, Andy (my bunkmate), Kat and Hannah) are on deck and it sounds like they are having fun with our Code 3 spinnaker. They better take care of it as the other two are in a very poor state, the Code 2 tried very hard to destroy itself a couple of days ago, ending up flailing out behind the boat held only by its halyard like a giant moth caught on a spider’s thread spinning in its death throws. It took the combined efforts of pretty much everyone on board to recover, something that was only achieved after Damien was winched to the top of the mast. The whole thing must have taken more than an hour.
Going back to Sir Robin's top tips, some of us have come up with our own. Mine is to not wear white underpants on board a Clipper 70. Alex has quite a profound tip which she will quote at will when asked “are we there yet?”, her reply is that if we can't see land we're not there yet.
JC and Mark excelled in the Nasdaq bistro tonight with a very tasty lentil stew, I added peanuts and hot sauce to put an Indonesian spin on mine, top honours of the day though for food creativity go to Phil who tried to recreate a Terry's Chocolate Orange by drowning fresh orange segments in a bath of Nutella, job done!
Another sure sign of our proximity to the great Aussie mainland is the increase in temperature, it's getting quite sticky down below, making it harder to sleep already, heaven only knows how I'll cope in a few weeks as we head north to Airlie. To get there though, we'll need fair winds. And we have a novel way of summoning them. Tomo wears a sacred lump of jade around his neck which he caresses from time to time in an effort to appease the wind gods. Sometimes it even works. There might actually be some magic in it as we're all convinced Tomo is part Hobbit, hailing as he does from Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. Unfortunately, there are rumours that in order to acquire the mystical jade stone he had to carry out sexual favours for a wizard with a long white beard but I promised him I wouldn't mention that. Anyway, he's lucky being part Hobbit as having hairy feet helps him get good grip on the deck, a bit like wearing velcro slippers.
It sounds like Port Watch are having another kitemare above me so I better go, trying to type at 45 degrees is hard enough without also being pitched up and down.
Love to all friends and family, both back at home in the UK and my rellies in NZ. If this blog manages to leave the boat before the end of the 14th then I wish my sister Leanne a Happy Birthday. If it doesn't manage to get published in time, then happy belated birthday as usual!