Race 2 - Day 3
Crew Diary - Race 2 Day 3
18 September

It was 0310hrs, 10 minutes into the watch, I was sat just aft of the mast looking up between the mainsail and the windseeker sail, following the 90ft of white tape illuminated by the moon’s light behind, towards the stratocumulus clouds in the sky, the scattered stars and almost complete silence except for the groan of the boom gently moving to the motion of the boat. Where is the wind, where is the race speed, I’m told this is not unusual, a wind hole, we’re doing 2 knots and it could be for the entire three hours of our watch.

It had given me a certain sense of pleasure earlier in the evening to look out of the companionway, the same silence except for muted voices coming from the sail locker where the Code 1 spinnaker had just been taken down, packed and the wind seeker had been hoisted. The moon at that time, seemed to be being squeezed out of a cloud and I quite liked the calm. But on our watch, I thought we should get moving, but it didn’t happen.

Now, I’m sitting in the rest area, enough to squash eight people around the galley writing this.

My name is Alec, I’m 61, an intensive care nurse, a fair bit of military experience and 30 odd years in the NHS.

I’ve never sailed, in fact I’m an avid cyclist, a Ventoux three times in a day cyclist, so I don’t particularly like the wind, never wondered where it came from, my only interest in the weather was to check if it was below zero (no cycling) and if there was a window, when it was dry with little wind.

How things change. A single magazine picture, the desire for a new adventure, that search for an adrenaline buzz and here we are.

Seattle, a plague ship, not my description, but the sleep time is marked by stereophonic coughing and the hacking expectoration of a viral infected sputem, everybody was going to get it and there have been a few exceptions. I had no voice during the presentation evening, and a couple of the crew were laid low the entire Portimão visit. There were a lot of repairs and maintenance in Portimão, so I didn’t wander too far from the port, for the family, I’m still on the boat.

Everything is new for me, I had no insight into the world of sailing, there seems to be millions of yachts out there, a new language, a massive overload of information. Each level of training has built upon the last one and it just keeps going on, should I have taken the “blue pill”? No, I’m not going down the rabbit hole, I’m going to attempt to assimilate all the information available and come out of this with such a massive insight and experience.