Race 2 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Race 2, Day 16
01 October
Nets, Seabirds, Ablutions.
Hello, neehow, bonjour, from the mid Atlantic, as you all can see we are edging closer to the Brazilian coast and now well into the ocean sprint, which started on our watch last night just after 2.00am. The days seem to blend into each other and life on board hums along, now having been on this tack coming up to four days, mainly upwind or just of the breeze on a fine reach so getting around below and above decks is a real workout of every muscle that you have, and some you don’t realise you have. I promised in my blog that I wouldn’t talk about going to the heads on a 45 degree angle, we will leave that for when we all meet up again over a few beers and relive the horror stories, it really has provided some comical moments, to say the least. But ... there is one story and it does involve going to the heads but its exclusively the domain of the males on board which is to relieve ourselves over the stern to save ourselves of the extreme workout that is required to go below. Pip on this occasion was contemplating life over the stern and noticed something trailing behind, before you all jump to conclusions, it was fishing net that we had picked up on the rudders and quite a bit of it as well, they managed to hook the net up with the aid of the boat hook and secure it up to the boat, but it was still tangled around our starboard rudder which has now been in the water for the last four days whilst on port tack, not an ideal scenario, along with a stray spinnaker sheet that had managed to find its way out the back sometime during the night, we had all been working hard to make the boat go fast and to find these two things was frustrating, to say the least. With the combined efforts of Jody, Martin, Janine, Jo and myself, with a cameo from the Skipper, (he couldn’t sleep until we had rectified the problem, such as the competitive nature of Chris) we managed to free the net from the rudder, still unsure if there is any left on rudders but that is a job for Punta del Este. The last few days we have been escorted by various seabirds, holding station above our sails, with a lone frigate the real highlight keeping the half dozen gannets in order and depositing their guano onto our nice new white sails, also onto yours truly whilst standing behind the helm chatting to Keith, who I swear ducked at the correct moment to allow me to take one for the team!!
From all of us on board Qingdao, thank you for your support, and a special shout out to my beautiful wife Karen, and my three boys Ricky, Partner Taylor, and grandson Carter, Luke and Darcy.
Until next blog, be kind to yourselves xx.