Race 2 - Day 28
Crew Diary - Race 2, Day 28
12 October
Race for the finish and a good nights sleep
After over 5,000 miles it’s all coming down to a sprint finish …
Currently, two boats have finished, Qingdao and Visit Sanya, China and Ha long Bay, Viet Nam is nearly there also. But from the fourth onwards it’s all going to come down to who can keep the concentration going and avoid the all too frequent wind holes we keep finding ourselves in.
We can currently see Seattle and have been able to for nearly 24 hours, playing a cat and mouse game where we both alternate moving forwards or bobbing around pretty much on the spot. Occasionally, we get up to 10 knots and then shortly after we’re back down to 1 or 2 knots. It’s been very frustrating at times.
In one 24 hour period we used every sail apart from our storm sails and although we didn’t reef at all in that period I hear the other watch had to put one in early this morning in a rather urgent manner as the railings were entirely submerged. I managed to sleep through it all, rugged up in my ocean sleeping bag for the first time this leg as the temperature has dropped a lot in the last couple of days. It’s no longer like a Turkish sauna in the Galley area.
As we get closer and closer to the finish there has been talk for many days of Uruguayan steaks and cold beers. I’ve been asking everyone what they want the most, a cold beer, something in particular to eat, a shower or a comfy or more importantly a flatbed. Many have said a shower followed by the bed. Oh to have a full nights sleep in a comfy bed that isn’t changing angles constantly and forcing you to sleep on a wall or a piece of cloth that you pray will hold you and stop you falling from your bunk.
Our watch system means that one evening you do 8pm-12am on watch, 12am-4am off watch and then 4am to 8am on watch, this is then the opposite for the following day. The only thing is you never get that whole four hours sleep. At 8pm as you come off watch you’ll be eating your dinner then have to get ready for bed etc, you’re lucky if you make it before 830pm, although I have managed to amaze a couple of crew members with how quickly I can get into bed and even fall asleep when coming off watch, my record was less than two minutes.
Then you’ll be woken up at least 30mins before you need to be back on watch for the 12am or 4am shift and around one hour before the 8am watch, as you need to have breakfast etc. As someone who prefers the extra sleep and to get ready quickly, I have been known to moan at my watch leader Stef that it’s ‘too early!’ when he’s woken me up well before I need to be woken up to get ready in time. I know Rach is like me and can get ready quickly and so prefers to sleep those extra few minutes, but as the other watch leader, she is the first woken unfortunately as she has to wake the others.
As we have been hoisting and dropping various spinnakers over the last few days sometimes in a very urgent manner we’ve often had to help each out and have been ‘squirrelling’ (helping pull the kite down into the below deck area) and ‘woolling’ (rolling the sides of the kite together so that it can be relaunched and re-open at the best time) for each other. Which has meant people have been loosing easily an hour of their off-watch time. But we’ve both been very grateful for the help and there have been offers of cakes to be baked and even Haribo to be shared as a thank you. It has made us feel much more like one team as the two watch system does inadvertently divide us into two.
Well the hope is that we’ll be arriving into Punta within the next 24 hours which is very much wind hole dependent and hopefully in fifth or sixth place which you couldn’t have imagined we would have the chance to finish so close to the podium for the first most of this race very long race. But, I guess that’s what ocean racing is all about … racing to the very end over an extended period of times and large distances.
All going well tomorrow I can say I have achieved one of my ‘40 things to do before I’m 40’ by sailing across one of the world’s great oceans. Number one on my rather large list is to go to every country in the world which I have put on hold to complete a circumnavigation with the Clipper Race. Although Uruguay is one of my 2 ‘new’ countries on the race and will get me up to 121 countries, only 77 to go depending on what you call a country!
Love to all my family in New Zealand and the UK and my friends all over the world, especially my gorgeous niece Lexi Lu and adventurous nephew Tobes. Oh and hi mum and dad and my big sis Nikki and co.
Until next time…
Susie
Intrepid Kiwi Traveller
PS to WTC Logistics Nathan was also part of the equator ceremony and is now a Shellback with the rest of the crew. I’ll tell you next time I see you what he confessed! And thanks for the rugby updates, gutted that the NZ vs Italy game was cancelled but it shouldn’t change the outcome too much at least for us. I’m very pleased that we have been sent an itinerary from Clipper Race saying the quarter-finals will be played at the Punta del Este yacht club albeit very early in the morning but as an avid AB’s supporter I’ll definitely be there!