Race 3 - Day 14
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 14: Cape Town to Fremantle
14 November
Day 14 and we have just passed 66 degrees east so are finally half way. Edward is tremendously excited which is hardly unusual.
Even the birds have got bored and deserted us, tired of flying so slowly. There are a few sinister looking Frigates around (presumably wondering whether we're going to turn into their dinner soon), but otherwise our feathered friends have all returned to Africa. This morning the water is so flat and the wind has dropped so much it's basically like boating on the Serpentine. (Editor: this belies how blasé we have become when the wind is now blowing at over 30 knots and the swell is reaching perhaps 20 feet). So, nothing to see here so I've decided to blog on the deck and risk frostbite of the fingers.
Like the Serpentine, it's pretty cold and fairly damp in the middle of the southern Indian and occasionally northern Southern Ocean. Those with them have donned their large yellow 'drysuits'. We have been impressed with their dryness and protection offered from the daily travails of boat life. Never mind the fact they take 20 minutes to put on or take off (woe betide you if you get caught out needing to use the heads in a hurry). Forcing one’s head through the rubber neck seal has been likened to giving birth and cries of "It's a girl" can be heard every four hours as the new watch readies itself (usually in reference to Seumas, or similar). I haven’t mentioned our sartorial adventures on board, but for those who are interested I've just taken a moment to count and have 18 items of clothing on. I suspect this is fairly average across the fleet but would be interested to know if we're under dressing.
We've been keenly aware of being tethered on since the little bow dance episode. In fact, I found myself so firmly tethered on in the snake pit the other day that I misjudged my personal extension capabilities and instead of having the leverage to sling a large pressure cooker full of meaty, tomato-y pasta water over the side, slid comically backwards onto the floor bringing the whole lot over myself. My watch was mighty amused, but I had the last laugh. My yellow dry suit coped admirably with the dunking and all I needed to do was pop up to the bow for a 'wave-down'.
There has been some consternation that these rainy day kindergarten-like suits are encouraging strange behaviour on deck. Mirjam and I seem to have taken testing the 'dry' bit quite seriously and where she has a significant coffee stain from top to bottom of her front, I have suspicious black, grey and chocolate eclair shaped marks all over mine.
We conclude that as somewhat petite members of the crew, our suits are just a bit too big for us so they bunch up in odd ways collecting drinks, food and general deck debris. Then again, when given the opportunity to commando crawl anywhere on the boat, we take it. Who wouldn't? Ah yes! Stuart, who somersaults around and over things instead.
Mirjam grew up on a farm in Switzerland herding cows and weeding carrots which puts her in an excellent position to be a watch leader on CV21. At the end of our support watches, we wake up the next watch so they can eat and get ready to brave the 80-foot waves and Antarctic winds on deck (Ed: this is taking poetic license too far), an effort of at least 20 minutes (nb "it's a boy" etc). Mirjam is no nonsense and commands her watch with a drive only the Swiss can muster. She doesn't much care for waking people up, especially if they've requested a 'cosy' kind of approach.
Some people, for instance, like a bit of a cuddle to wake them up. As a female with a reasonable amount of hair, the novelty of working out what body part a bald head is ("it's an egg!") in the dark of a bunk never wears off. Bob also needs a bit of gentle manhandling to stir him. No matter how long it takes to wake him up, or how evidently slurry his deep sleep speech is, he always claims to have been awake 'for hours', listening to the boat and watching our speeds closely. This is patently untrue on 99% of occasions but we are good at humouring the just woken. As the Clipper Race motto goes, 'Courage is Contagious'. Well I'm not so sure about that, and suspect few of our supporters would be bonkers enough to do any ocean racing. Only Skippy perhaps but she'd have done it anyway.
What we can say is contagious is colds and conjunctivitis. Most of this seems to emanate from our errant MOB who blames water ingestion for their ailments, including 7 days of constipation. Personally, I think this is stretching it a bit and no matter how many times we shout "ease" all that seems to happen is that we let the Yankee out. At breakfast this morning we came up with a better motto for Clipper. "Different day, same t-shirt". What do you think?
We had a second birthday on board yesterday and another tomorrow. A cafe latte flavoured cake was baked and covered with icing which promptly slid off the top into the tupperware box, such was the ghastly heel we're on.
We had to re-do it with a '62' cut out of sponge and an edge of almonds. With a 15-minute 90-degree rotation on the galley work top, it managed to remain presentable until Jean-Michel woke up and we conveyed in broken French that it was all in honour of his anniversaire. What J-M doesn’t understand in Engleesh, he's more than made up for in supplies from Maison du Chocolate. Which is lucky. In honour of our two birthday boys - it's the egg's tomorrow (Paul B) - we're having ostrich steaks tonight. Boom. Duck. (Ed: ok that's enough).