Race 1 - Day 1
Crew Diary - Race 1, Day 1
02 September
A-tak, a-tak, a-tak!
Race start off Southend was a fantastic experience with lots of energy and excitement throughout our crew. Thanks to the supporters who had made their way down to the end of the pier to wave us off, as well as everyone in London the day before! A big shoutout to my family and friends that came down on the day, it meant a lot to see so many familiar faces before we exited St. Katharine Docks!
Frankie and I were on ‘Mother watch’ from 6am as we prepared to leave Southend cooking some fresh bread to go alongside scrambled eggs – the breakfast of champions (I hope!).
Thankfully I was able to head up on deck for the starting gun and see the rest of the crew work really hard to get our Spinnaker up and push us into an early lead, before heading back down below to start on the next meal. Cooking for 22 people on one stove is hard work, let alone at 45 degrees!
As we started to head upwind, conditions became choppier which makes life below deck significantly harder. Even basic tasks like chopping up food or pouring water into a pan requires good balance and concentration! Susan and Janine helped us out throughout the day, particularly when I was feeling a bit worse for wear later in the day. I wasn’t alone as there are quite a few of the crew that have started to experience a bit of seasickness.
I was told the benefits of the 24 hour mother watch was that you had some free time to yourself outside of your cooking duties, but I didn’t find much of an opportunity to leave the stove apart from a quick stint up on deck to help out with some of our sail evolutions, before heading off to a bunk for some sleep.
Sleep was light as we tacked around the coast of the UK throughout the night, meaning we rolled about in our bunks and re-adjusted our angles to make sure we don’t fall out! It has been a similar theme today as we try to keep the other Clipper Race fleet behind us but it’s been nice up on deck to continue to embed all of our training with all of the sail evolutions we’ve been doing. I much prefer sweating a sail or grinding in the Yankee sheet to being below deck.
We can see Zhuhai and Visit Sanya, China in the distance and continue to race hard and react to their tactics where necessary. Although we are still bedding in as a team there are already signs of strong team spirit, work ethic and comradery that I think will help keep us a happy and fast crew throughout the race!
On the subject of beds, I miss my double bed at home and I’m off to find a bunk for a few hours sleep before the next watch!