Race 3 - Day 12
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 12: Cape Town to Fremantle
12 November

Thomas Stanley
Thomas Stanley
Team Sanya Serenity Coast
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Dear friends, supporters and Race Viewer addicts,

Since getting on the boat at the beginning of prep week on the 31st of July 2017, I have sailed about 13500 nautical miles in 66 days at sea with 32 different crew members. Any time not spent sailing (or pretending to sail while actually sleeping on deck) has been spent eating or in bed. This means despite meaning to contribute to the blogs since we left Liverpool, I have never been awake long enough to write one! I was thinking of writing a bit about the experiences of the first 3 legs to keep in reserve for when we were too busy to write a crew blog about the events of the day but our local media enforcer Dmitry Papulin got wind of it and persuasively accelerated the process. Something about boats being dangerous places and it being easier to type it out with all 10 fingers I believe. I'll let him off because he is still new to the job after our last one met with an unfortunate accident... (Editorial note from Dmitry: you might have noticed that every recent blog entry has been mentioning how I corner and force people to write this blog. Despite these statements I can assure our supporters that none of the contributed crew members incurred any physical or psychological traumas in the process of me convincing them to write.)

As you know we sail 24 hours a day with the crew divided into two watches that swap over at regular intervals so half the crew are sailing and half are off watch at any one time. We have 4 hours on / 4 off at night (1800-0600) and 6 hours on / 6 hours off during the day (0600-1800). Meals are at 0600, 1200 and 1800 and you eat in the off watch time either before you go on deck or after you come down. Given it takes about half an hour to get dressed and undressed in the cold and 15 minutes to eat you get about 4.5 hours of sleep in the 6 hour off watch and about 2.5-3 hours of sleep in the 4 hour off watches. This works out as about 8 hours of sleep a day but at very unconventional times.

All this leads to being heavily institutionalised and losing all track of time as on half the days, the last meal you have before going to bed is breakfast and the rest of them the first meal you have when you wake up is dinner. When you sleep 3 times a day, even tomorrow is 3 sleeps away and yesterday feels like last week. As lunch and dinner can be similar, this can lead to some confusion over whether you are getting up in the morning or afternoon and if it is likely to get warmer/colder/lighter/darker during the next watch. I prefer to see it as you never have to go more than about 7 hours without a nap but that is uncharacteristically positive for most people.

After about a week, Stockholm Syndrome kicks in and you get used to it. Then invariably we have sailed far enough to need to change the clocks and we get 5.5 hour watches instead of 6 hour ones and it all goes a bit wrong because half of us were asleep when that was decided!

This all leads to a very odd perspective of travelling round the world. Because there is no jet lag and you can get up at any time, you can step straight off the boat when you arrive and enjoy the surrounding area without worrying any more about sleep deprivation than you usually do. Also because we are so used to living and working on the good ship CV27, she feels like home even when we are staying on land in port. It doesn't feel as if we have sailed halfway across the world yet, more that Liverpool disappeared off the horizon and after weeks of seeing nothing but sea, Punta del Este approached us. Since the boat is still the focus of attention it is more like the cities come to visit us one after another. Sailing up the South African coastline with the sun rising over Table Mountain ahead of us has got to be the best way to arrive anywhere, and leaving Table Bay after the race start on Leg 3 seeing the other 11 Clipper 70s behind us was the best way to leave it as well!

Tomorrow is 100 days until our predicted arrival in Sanya which is particularly good to know as after what seems like an eternity sailing into the wind in the very cold Southern Ocean, we know that there is plenty of warmth on the way over the coming months. At that point we will be about halfway through the circumnavigation leaving the tropics behind and preparing to head on up towards the cold North Pacific.

I am now getting concerned enquires from people who haven't yet written a blog that they may be expected to waffle on for at least as long as I have. To be honest it isn't that hard, the best bit about our team is the people and they haven't featured at all in this one! To all the crew from Legs 1 & 2 who have left hopefully we are reminding you of all the good bits in the crew blogs to let you down slowly and for all of you who are joining us later on, including the crew we have acquired from Greenings, we are trying to get there as quickly as possible to pick you up! We have a great team here, especially Dmitry who is a lovely person and really very efficient at delegating.

While the rest of our watch is asleep and I am finishing this off, we have had a whale sighting quite close to our port side and the crew up top is preparing for evasive action if necessary, if you are reading this everything is fine! On that note, the wildlife quota for the blog has been filled as well so I'm back off to bed.

To be continued... (in maybe 3 months or something – don't hold your breath)

Tom