My Clipper Log

Time flames like a paragon stove and what burns are the minutes I live ~ Irving Layton, The Selected Poems Day 1: The Importance of Attachments The first day of training was so reassuring. Felt just like home….rains on the first day of school. Dull dreary weather and the first look at your new school mates and class teacher. And just like school, I was exhausted by the end of the day. Of course it was a lot longer at 12 hours, from 8am to 8pm and crammed with information. I finally got to exercise the muscles in my head – Paul, our skipper, made sure of that. We learnt all kinds of knots, bowlines, clove hitches, figure of eights..he would be speaking with us while his fingers were busy tying knots..muscle memory he calls it! For the most part it was about safety. What can possibly go wrong with the boat, how to prevent it and what to do if there is an emergency, like a MOB. No not the one around celebrities, a Man Over Board. Which we practised with a dum...

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore ~ L Frank Baum I must warn you readers before I go any further that this is my first real trip to the UK, so I'm likely to sound like a gawky tourist.  My travels started in Goa yesterday 21st at 11am with the flight to Bombay being delayed by 30 minutes. Not so bad since it gave us a few extra minutes to drop by and wish Aniket a happy 21st.  Thankfully the trip to Mum's place and dinner with the sisters was a quiet affair, highlighted with a video call to Shayann  so we could cut a cake for him, long distance. The sisters dropped me to the airport at 4am 22nd. The flight was uneventful but for my being surrounded by holiness - I had the middle seat in an area stuffed with swamis traveling to bless the British NRIs. So far so good. The UK Border (yup that's what they call their Immigration counter) proved a tough cookie though. Took me the better part of an hour to cross over. So I was ravenous by...

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”  ~ Andre Gide   That's most of the stuff I'm packing. Yes meagre even by my standards. And the one bag, yes one bag, I'm taking weighs less than 20kgs. The largest item is my sleeping bag. If one of you sometime, somewhere decide to take this up, here's my packing list 1. quick dry towel (apna Indian pancha) 2. 4 dri fit t-shirts (2 with long sleeves) 3. 2 dri fit pants 4. 1 dri fit shorts (I feel cold very quickly so the England may have do with just a quick look see at my gorgeous long legs) 5. 2 regular everyday wear pants 6. 3 cotton t shirts 7. 2 polo t shirts 8. 1 fleece jacket 9. 1 raincoat (that the friend I borrowed it from, promises can protect me from cold upto 10 degrees) 10. 1 pair of deck shoes 11. 2 pairs of woollen socks  12. 2 pairs of cotton socks 13. sleeping bag 14. a head torch (to light up every time I have a brain wave - seriously it ...

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”    ~ Dr. Seuss , I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! Which holds so true for me. The more I read the more I discover and desire to do. With the increased interest in sailing and all things nautical, I've been reading all I can about sail trips and sailors. Here I've listed a few that stood out for me. In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick Just at the time that the whaling industry was in its last throes, a whaler attempts to hunt and kill the largest whale ever spotted. Only to become the hunted, with the whale turning on the whaling fleet and wrecking havoc on them all. The survivors turn to cannibalism in a last ditch attempt at survival. A story that reminds us to be mindful of nature’s willfulness at all times A Voyage for Mad Men by Peter Nichols Recounts the first Golden Globe Race, a solo circumnavigation in a sail boa...

There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions. ~  Charles Proteus Steinmetz   June 1 st and the countdown to my training has begun. As I pack my bags, I wonder how it will be like? Wonder what Gosport is like? I’ve never been to the UK. How will the Clipper folk actually be? They seem like an assorted, global mix of interesting people. What will it be like to live on a boat for a few days at a stretch? I’ve been dying to do that. Will I be able to stay on board and not trip and fall? Only because I’m used to being barefoot on Mhadei but will need to have boat shoes on now. What about the possibility of being sea sick? How will I go through that? It’s always a possibility. Both Dilip Donde and Abhilash Tomy were sea sick at some point. I’ll have these answers once I get there and get started. But I thought it might be a good idea to respond to some questions sent my way When did the Clipper Round the World R...