Race 6 - Day 9
Crew Diary - Race 6 Day 9: Hobart to Whitsundays
14 January

Edward Gildea
Edward Gildea
Team Unicef
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"We have stopped going dark and have seen the light! Thanks for your patience and welcome back to the tales of the blue boat in a big sea!”- Cameron McCracken

My understanding of Mindfulness is pretty much limited to the hilarious Ladybird book on the topic a couple of Christmasses ago, but I think this passage to Airlie Beach has been something of an exercise in it.

We have just passed Brisbane, which is about two thirds of the race distance but we are already inside the arrival window; our Ocean Sprint was more of an ocean perambulation as the winds faded, veered, backed or disappeared, and any optimistic calculations about when we might arrive are dismissed by crewmates as totally delusional.

But while the fickle winds are testing our patience and stirring up our frustrations, we cannot escape the fact that it is beautiful out here. We have had a a series of calm, balmy nights with the warm night air cooling our skin and the gentle swish, if we are lucky, of water rushing at our stern. Last night the matte black, featureless skies were replaced by the most wonderful display of stars. I had a series of stars to steer by and then, when my time at the helm was over, hung onto the push-pit, leaned back and gazed upwards at tens of thousands of stars, the milky way, passing satellites and a sequence of falling meteorites or space debris. Glorious!

This morning we went on deck to a sky dotted with perfect Magritte picture book clouds of bubbling cumulus, set against a blue sky immaculately graded from light grey blue on the horizon to the deep royal blue of our upper atmosphere directly above us. What a change from the apocalyptic, Tintoretto cloud formations of the Southern Ocean!

So my exercises in Mindfulness are to fix in my memory the beauties and immense privilege of what we are experiencing, setting aside my impatience to arrive in Airlie Beach, to fly home and, amongst other exciting prospects, meet my new grandson for the first time! To fix the feeling of sitting at the pulpit, watching the bowsprit surge over the waves; turning back to see the graceful curve of the boat creaming the surf to either side, the sweeping combinations of the sails powering the boat, and crewmates in the cockpit, looking so remote by a trick of perspective. It makes the pulpit the perfect spot for moments of solitude and reflection when it is not the location of high drama and drenching waves.

We have placed ourselves at the mercy of the winds and waves. You will have read the dramatic accounts of the sudden squall of brutal winds that flattened the fleet three nights ago, which had been preceded by hours of patient, upwind sailing in the most delicate and temperamental of breezes. Minutes later we were back to fading, teasing winds that made progress against the strong current impossible. A testing series of sail changes from Code 1 spinnaker, to Code 2, to Windseeker, Yankee 1 and Windseeker, all in the attempt to remain stationary!

We will all return to a life of timetables, diary commitments and routine soon enough. For now we are enjoying a very privileged test of our patience, in the most beautiful of settings.