Race 3 - Day 25
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 25: Cape Town to Fremantle
25 November

Part 3: Stop the ride, I want to get off.

Don't stop the ride, I want to stay on, probably because I am in fact about to get off. Reverse psychology innit? We're about 60 miles out of Freo and CV21, miraculously, is still in first position. As you can tell, this is largely due to my prolific contribution on deck at the moment (not). In fact I have just spent four hours on deck and in that period we've gained approximately 4NM on GREAT Britain which is a relief. Any watch who can claim an increase in the 'lead' on our nearest rival can sleep easy. In truth we're all a bit too wired to sleep now it's only six hours or so to the finish line. Six hours out of 624 hours, of which I spent around 60 helming, and over 5,000 nautical miles sailed on leg 3 and another 11,000+ on legs 1 and 2. Quite a few, on reflection.

This is my final blog from the ocean, on this race at least. Oops – slipped it in there didn't I? I am not over sailing. But for the foreseeable months I'm not going to miss several aspects of Clipper racing. Boat life just ain't normal. Sharing a bunk with a 63 year old man who spends a lot of his time pretending to be a pirate is strange. Note we 'hot' bunk which means he gets out and I get in, or vice versa. There has never been an overlap except by mistake in the dark. Seeing an entire watch of grown adults start clucking when the victualler asks for some eggs from 'Gertie' (a cave locker in the galley) is odd. Teaching my new Swiss friend Cockney rhyming slang while mopping slopped-over butterscotch angel delight off the galley floor, several cave lockers and the entire front of my midlayers is sub-optimal, but does smell better than the brine out of tuna tins which erupts when opening them on any degree of heel. Dropping a slice of peanut buttered bread (half a jar, totes normal) upside down on the floor and mopping it up and eating it, weird. And using baby nappies to absorb the oil in the engine bilges before scooping the separated water out is frankly a mystery. It works though.

But I didn't sign up for normal, I signed up to get out of my comfort zone, to see bits of the world I've never seen before and have maybe never ever before been sailed over by a boat. To learn about Gough Island and the Kerguelen Islands via emails from friends. And to learn to sail. You'd be forgiven for thinking I've written very little about sailing and that perhaps I don't know that much about sailing and should have done a dinghy course before setting sail to Australia. And you'd be correct. I can however rig a spinnaker for a letterbox drop, blow a tackline if asked three times in panic, attach a second spinnaker halyard to the top of the mast correctly one in every two attempts, helm without gybing more than three times an hour and tie a bowline at least once out of every three unwatched attempts. There have been a lot more inadvertent learnings including learning to sit for hours and look at enormous waves without talking. Not that many hours, but several. Reflection in coherent streams of thought has never really been my thing, but I can now go on for minutes rather than seconds which is exciting. I'm still awaiting the big idea to break through but it can't be far away now.

I've also learnt a lot about birds, and that the women on our boat have (nearly) all been hard as nails. Much harder than the men, who tremble at the slightest scratch or cough, snap catastrophically for days at the merest knock and throw up prolifically into bilge buckets at the hint of a wave. This isn't an entirely surprising discovery, but it's quite pleasing to affirm both my ability to repel germs by smoking cigarettes and that women are quite simply just better than men at everything except brute strength.

I'm starting to get separation anxiety from my boat family and from the curious issues and sounds of my floating home. I can now name pretty much every grinding sound, creak and wave type from my bunk. Especially when the wave contains a whale. And I also have an increasing sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) about legs 4-8. But I'm really proud that I'm about to achieve what I set out to do which is to sail half way around the world to Australia. This has been a huge adventure for me – not life changing (!) but I've had to dig deeper than ever before to get through some pretty bad days. It's also been an opportunity to raise £15,000 for Unicef and its work with children around the world. I can't see my fundraising total on the boat, but hope I've now exceeded the £13,000 mark (there is an offline chunk to add). Please don't forget to donate if you've been meaning to, or maybe add a little extra to mark completion. You can find the page on Virgin Money Giving if you search for LiziSailsToAustralia. That would be great.

I'll leave you with a final piece of advice which is that if you go sailing, you should consider tying your toothbrush to you with a piece of string. As an unnamed philosopher once said: “The rewards for those who persevere to tie bowlines far exceed the pain that must precede the victory of finding your toothbrush in the bilge.”