Race 3 - Day 17
Crew Diary - Race 3, Day 17
08 November

Part 2 The winch grinch story

Who is here?

Remember, we saw something striped and smelled the scent of fresh grass. We were scared and set a trap… and found crumbs and heard a little burb.

Right after that burb there was silence, and then a little giggle. That giggle made us laugh and suddenly we weren’t all that frightened anymore. Because something that giggles can’t be that scary, right?

Slowly a little green striped thing appeared with many many crumbs all over him, smiling shyly.

As soon as it saw James, it jumped up in his hair and sighed.

It seemed to like it! James stood still not wanting to scare it, and we looked around and saw a long trail of crumbs. Following it, we saw that it disappeared under the floorboards. We opened them up, and you will not believe it!

The winch grinch obviously lived very comfortably down in the bilches and moved about the boat in the underground. No wonder it was so hard to spot for us.

As we opened one bilge after the other we found gloves, socks, a sweater, headphones, paper, pens, lots and lots of cookies, some cake, tins with beans…

The little winch grinch looked at us with big eyes when we inspected everything and was very very upset when we tried to take our things back. It started to brabble and protest loudly moving its little arms, firmly holding into James hair, and that hurt as it was pulling it.

James slowly reached up his hand and took the winch grinch down and put some of the things in a cave right where he sleeps. A new home for our blind passenger.

The winch grinch smiled, obviously liking it, and gave James a hug with his little arms.

We went to the galley and made some hot chocolate and tried to talk to the small striped thing that lives on our boat. How did you get here? What is your name? Where do you come from? Are there more like you? Everybody talked at the same time.

The winch grinch looked at us mostly and only told us that it came in a box with lots of apples and that it doesn’t like apples at all! The favourite thing in the world is fresh cut grass and … cookies. Where would we get fresh grass from? We are on a boat in the middle of an ocean?

The little thing looked tired and curled up and fell asleep in a blink of an eye.

James took it to his new bed and now we felt how tired we were … back to our bunks!

We were curious to find out more about our new friend and went to sleep with a smile on our face.

This story is intended for the junior supporters.