Race 3 - Day 24
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 24: Cape Town to Fremantle
24 November
Part 2: The B-Team
On our penultimate day, we've just come off watch on deck to discover Unicef is leading the pack. “In your boat race (face)”, shouts Mirjam. Fingers crossed we can maintain the momentum.
The skipper has been to the heads. “Do you know how sad I am?”, he asks on his return. “Very!”, we all chorus.
“I took my iPad with me, but it's not what you think”, he says (cue sniggers from the lads) turning it round to show us the screen. “It's so I can see the boat speed at all times. We're going faster at the moment, 6 knots, good!”, he says. “That's probably because you've just pumped a couple of kilos over the side” says Stuart, “quick, everyone to the heads, lighten the load”. Stuart follows and we're now going at 8 knots. "Good, good," says Bob rubbing his hands together. Rush on the heads aside, we're at risk of starving soon. Australia has strict quarantine rules so we had to throw three tonnes of non-hermetically sealed savoury treats over the side yesterday. We are dedicated.
Being top of the leader board for the first time this leg is the cherry on the cake to an exquisite night. The stubborn heavy cloud of the past weeks replaced by a cloudless, star-filled sky. A sliver of moon lit a pathway of sparkling silver water between it and the boat (Editor: alright poetic license, calm down!) making trimming on the bow a pleasure. We've been under one or another spinnaker now for a couple of days. It's reminiscent of much of Leg 1 but without the crew numbers – we are just 14 – making trimming a more solitary if very beautiful experience. A couple of dolphins joined us for company, glowing in the twinkly green phosphorescence.
While the A-Team is continuing to enjoy the delights of Mirjam's Cockney rhyming slang: “Oi, get that look off your boat”, and, “I'll smash your 'amstead 'eath (Hamstead Heath = teeth) in if you don't trim better”.. I think our B-Team of supporters back home is worthy of a dedicated blog. Through its regular notes from a small island and a few other places like Berlin, Paris and Tenerife, Team B has been the voice of reason and calm which has kept this crew member going. The summery weather of our Liverpool departure has apparently been replaced with chillier climes and thoughts of Christmas. I imagine the decorations on Regents Street and rue having missed bonfire night this year – one of my favourites. A few of this shore-based B team which is striking for its consistency and commitment, deserve specific mention.
Writing from the GSGS (Good Ship Garden Shed) in Melksham, Wiltshire, where “all 'atches are battened down and the electric heater has been turned on against the Antarctic cold”, my father has entertained us with his poems. He's written a final ode to our Liverpool departure which will be revealed at our farewell meal in Fremantle. My mother meanwhile has started teaching the piano to an 83 year old, and has recently returned from her fifteenth foreign trip in a month. Then there's Auntie Maureen, of making bread in sympathy on a chair at 45 degrees, who sends accounts of her Tanzanian adventures, elephants making mincemeat of a fallen baobab tree (trees! Imagine!). Cousin Hannah battled with herself in emailing me because “the purist in me thinks you ought to be released from the horrors of email”. I think so too, and have sent some awfully short responses to some of you. Sorry! Not of course as short as my niece's classic single email all trip one word wonder: “Hello”. My other niece has apparently named a bald headed baby gro toting doll after me which is good news. The likeness these days is probably striking so I can see where she's coming from. In one email from my sistership she describes a holiday destination (everybody except poor Rach is on holiday, it's just not fair): “It's a very trashy, tacky kind of lifestyle they live now”. I know what she means, I think, licking peanut butter off the floor of CV21. “Everything goes here, and it all seems totally normal”, she adds. Hmmm, I nod knowlingly. More of this in my final blog. Yes, there is still more to come while I can.
Three pregnant friends are, happily, speeding through their trimesters. “Luckily you won't see me in this whale state as I will have given birth by the time you finish,” one notes (we have seen enough whales) and another writes of her scan: “lush to see little fingers and toes”. It's also been a pleasure on legs 2 and 3 to hear about my god-daughter Bells bonding with her new little brother Dylan, of Charlie's and Jimmy's progress as they started school in Dalston and Bristol respectively and to share some of this leg's horror stories with leg one-ers Helen, Sylvie and Annelise who know how it is. An amazing number of people tell me about food and drink. Honestly, I ask you! We're surviving on bloody lentils and desalinated seawater.
I must mention in a touch more detail (!) two emails from a dear friend, recently returned from a posting to Africa.
I quote: “Lounging yesterday in my drawing room (nb. he does not have a drawing room) I was disturbed by the most almighty squeal and a flash of our Ethiopian street dog rushing through the house, surrounded by falling crockery, the bang of pans. She had been earnestly licking the food scraps from the dishwasher before somehow getting her collar stuck on the slideable platerack, trying to free herself by running off, failing and dragging the entire thing with her. Pursued by dancing and crashing pots and pans she howled with outrage and even once freed, hid herself in a corner for the rest of the evening. I should like you to meet her.”
Quite the introduction. A few weeks later, an update:
“London meanwhile remains a legal minefield. Last week the dog managed to find, in Burgess Park in Camberwell/Peckham/Bermondsey and other such rather urban areas, a rather startled fox. She proceeded to chase the fox over some distance with me unable to stop her, thus causing me to Offend under section 6 of the Hunting Act 2004 aka The Pursuit of Foxes with Hounds. I took sick leave and refused to answer the door until the manhunt for me died down; and when, yesterday, we did skulk back to the park the dog found, inexplicably, a brussel sprout, which she immediately ran off with, refusing to give it back. Quite an extraordinary turn of events all round. I mean how does a sprout get in a park?”
It must be Christmas soon. This B team member signs off all his emails with: “Right, I must go and have a glass of wine”. The chance would be a fine thing although I'm finishing this off on my next deck watch sitting in blazing “currant bun (sun)” with the “dustbin lids (kids)” so it ain't all bad. And we've just had Andy, GREAT Britain's skipper on the blower which was nice. Big thoughts guys.
Conducting the B team is my new and very, very patient husband (“poor Johnny”, even the darn A team have started calling him that now, like the rest of you). I shall forgive the fact that frankly I think you're taking the mickey by getting to Oz in just a day and a half, a journey that will have taken me three months and a week. With hindsight it would have been cheaper and more dignified to fly (I wouldn't lick peanut off the floor or fish a toothbrush out of the toilet of a plane) but I wouldn't change this journey for the world. However, I'm not sure I'd have had the energy to dig deep enough to do it without Johnny's and my families' and friends' terrific and slightly incredulous support. So thanks. See you in Freo. Hopefully at the top of the podium. Stranger things have happened at sea eh?
Two blog corrections. I've been reliably informed that the black birds I mentioned in a former post were not Frigates, birds of the Tropics in which we are certainly not, but Black-footed Albatrosses. And I meant Rosie Lee (rhyming slang for cup of tea) not Betty Lee who was my grandfather's secretary. Sorry for any confusion caused in the writing of these blogs.