Race 7 - Day 6
Crew Diary - Kevin in the eyes of another
29 February

Hey there fellow Zhuhaians, I am Iona, a legger from WTC Logistics! Like the others we are on temporary loan to Kevin for this race.

Life on board a different boat is definitely different but it still holds the same familiarity. However, the one thing that makes this transition become so successful is the crew. They are so inviting, loving and welcoming to us as they have acted like we have already sailed halfway round the world together.

Many might be worried that the lack of crew would affect the performance of Kevin but fear not, for Kevin is mighty and small problems like the lack of crew won't keep him down – right?

Despite one watch with six crew and my watch with five, including myself, the race is going swimmingly. Who says you need a full crew to do evolutions quickly and efficiently or a headsail changes in under 10mins. Well, they are wrong! We managed to do that, changing from Yankee 2 to Yankee 1 from the start which was dropping, unhanking to moving sails and hoisting the new one and finishing off with a nice bit of trim in …… drum roll please... 9 mins and 43 seconds. We were very impressed with ourselves.

Anyway, boast over and back to the stuff you wanna know. We have created good relationships with each other, a while ago I decided I wanted to learn Japanese (yeah I know weird right). Well, I will let you know it's hard as there three alphabets to learn, with one holding over 10,000 characters. Yes you did read that right, 10,000). Dave has decided to join in so our poor watch has to put up with compass courses in Japanese as well as other phrases like ‘ringo kudasai’ (translation being apple please) or ‘genki desu ka’ (how are you?). The others are starting to pick up a few words as well, so it's not a loss.

Night watches are colder the further up north we have gone and to keep us occupied Trevor and myself are making a backup media prize, which is a rewriting of the song Sound of Silence. The title is the Sound of Windholes. It's a work in progress and we have done the first verses and it's coming along quite nicely, even if I do say so myself. This is it so far:

Hello windhole my old friend,

You’ve entrapped us here again,

For the winds are slowly creeping,

While we are sat weeping,

And the feeling that is planted in our brains still remains,

In the sounds of windholes,

Breathless winds form around,

Flogging of kites that is the sound,

Time to sign off and start making lunch which is frittatas! Morale is high and the hunter instincts are active with two of our prey just in front of us (Punta del Este and Visit Sanya, China).

Stay tuned for more….. Sayounara!!