Race 4 - Day 19
Crew Diary - Race 4, Day 19
06 December

Georgia On My Mind

Look at the picture below. Nothing screams “check your privilege” like the fat miserable face of the man (me) who’s been told he’s now running slightly late to yet another dream destination as part of the round the world game he’s been unbelievably fortunate to be a part of. And it is a game. An eleven month game, punctuated with parties in 15 ports around the world.

The unparalleled joy of sailing in the Clipper Round The World Yacht Race is the feeling of being the master of your own destiny, crossing oceans and taking in an abundance of wildlife on your way to some far flung exotic destination. The stresses of everyday life are stripped away and there is little else to focus on except racing. Competitiveness takes hold and you put everything into the task at hand. The flip side is, that if your whole world is temporarily this quirky little bubble of travelling would-be-sailors then when things go wrong the boat can quickly feel like a floating plastic prison. Such is the situation I found myself in.

I knew there would be hardships on board. The challenges are one of the appeals of course. I had set my mind to having to struggle out of my bunk, putting on the same wet clothes day after day, sailing until my body ached and then having a precious few hours off until repeating the whole thing again and again. What I somewhat foolishly hadn’t set my mind to, was the chance that we’d have to turn around mid-race in order to carry out a medevac.

I’m contractually obliged to now say how I’m just glad that my crew mate Andy is OK. And of course, I am. We did the right thing and he got the help that he needed. I miss him dearly, as does the entire crew, and I hope he does manage to find some more time off to join us on a later leg. He knows it makes sense!

The feeling of successfully getting our friend to safety still doesn’t detract from the sorrow of being out of the race proper; instead we sail now just to get to Fremantle in time for the next Race Start. I’ve always looked at the stopovers with equal anticipation to the actual sailing. The downtime in the destination port is the reward for the hardships that have been endured. This stopover has even more importance for me, for it’ll be the first time I’ll see my girlfriend Georgia in 15 weeks. She’ll travel halfway around the world just to see me, even after I rather selfishly announced I was off for a year on a jolly. The reality of her carefully laid plans now lying in ruins are utterly heartbreaking and something I struggled to deal with at first.

I’ve tried to remain optimistic, having a word with myself to snap out of the torpor I initially wallowed in. For a long while I kept banging on about how we’d be arriving on the 14th December in time for the Prize Giving ceremony and, more importantly, Kiwi Keith’s birthday / completion of his round the world journey (having sailed five legs on the 17/18 race). 250 mile averages were what we needed to make this happen – I was confident the weather would play ball as surely we were well overdue a lucky break. My ETA was met with some derision. The other Keith (a former Commodore in the Royal Navy) offered to personally shave off my beard on the foredeck should we dock the 14th. Another crew mate, Rob, upped the ante somewhat and offered a back, sack and crack should my arrival prediction come true. Sadly it appears that I will remain, for the time being at least, somewhat hirsute, for 250 mile averages now need to be closer to 300 for my dream to come true. I keep revising the arrival date, consoling myself that a long weekend in Freo with my missus isn’t such a bad thing. I guess what will be will be.

Life goes on of course. The crew remains as supportive and upbeat as ever. We are well into December now and Christmas albums are being played in the galley. Band Aid have been giving the yuletide weather forecast for years, but only now can I categorically concur, having visited twice in the last month, that there will certainly not be snow in Africa this Christmas. I hope to be able to give you an on the ground Australian weather update in the not too distant future.