Race 4 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Race 4, Day 16
03 December
Beginning to feel a lot like Christmas
Before getting into my ramblings, I want to say a massive thank you to the team at Campbell Lutyens for the donation to UNICEF, in addition to a host of individual donations from my colleagues. This pushed me past 80% of my £10,000 target which is now well within reach!
Not only are we making progress on the fundraising front, but it feels at last, as if the miles are falling away on this leg. As we settle into a routine, our sense of time blurs and the watches blend into each other with the last eight hundred miles in particular slipping by almost without realising. Suddenly we are left with a mere 3,200 miles to Fremantle. There’s no sarcasm there, today it genuinely felt as if the +/- two weeks left in the Southern Ocean are, if not a puddle jump, at least relatively modest. Until we decided to play “How far from London can you go in 3,200 miles?”. Guesses from the crew included Marrakesh? Damascus? Moscow? All at least a thousand miles short.
Try Timbuktu, Eritrea and Islamabad … maybe we aren’t quite as close as we thought.
Still, at least we are at last making progress and looking at a map of the world, I realise that when we passed Madagascar yesterday I am now further east than I have ever been. This led to hours of derision from Ms. “I’ve been to 65 countries AND Antarctica AND lived in Asia” Marichal; she didn’t seem convinced by my argument that if she’d grown up in East London she wouldn’t have felt the need to travel either.
Although for all intents and purposes we are out of Race 4, we follow the schedule updates religiously and there is a lot of chat about the chances of redress or additional race points. Personally, I think any of us would have traded the Clipper Race trophy for Andy being ashore and healthy and when we managed to restock on gas and fresh meat it already felt like Christmas came early in Durban (there was talk of restricting coffees and we had finished the bacon...). But sanctimonious comments like that don’t make for a great chat on night watches, so I mostly keep my opinions to myself.
Speaking of Christmas, it turns out that despite being in the middle of nowhere and it is blazing sunshine and the middle of summer, St Nick has managed to find his way to CV31. We have at least two chocolate advent calendars on board (I suspect more are being hidden) and much like Oxford St. in September, I keep on being surprised by sporadic snippets of Christmas music from unexpected corners.
Love to all at home.