All set for Uruguay

Day 1: Come back experts. It’s an order!

Starting this level with mixed feelings about how it’s going to pan out. And to top it we had Sir Robin come to each of our boats to say “Come back experts. It’s an order!”

The first couple of hours went in figuring our race kit and getting our mug shots taken for the Clipper website. It was a bit much then to be handed kit  in XL and S sizes, neither of which fit me. Consoled myself with the fact that nobody’s perfect.

We’re a team of 14 on Team Roy this week, including the Skipper. And we have brand new, numbered life jackets. Funny thing is, there isn’t one numbered 13. Sailors are superstitious. Me? I’m number 7. And it’s proved me lucky so far. Anchor watch tonight was 2200 to 2300, so I could get a good night’s sleep.

I started out on this level thinking we would be in complete race mode for the week. But I guess I had Mhadei on my mind when I thought the race to France and back would take us the entire week. Uh uh, race starts Friday morning and is done when we return to anchor Saturday evening in the Gosport marina. But we do have to stay out at sea all week. So tonight we’re anchored just off Stokes Bay on a fabulous summer evening.

So much of the English language is influenced by sailorspeak! Do you know that matching wavelengths is when you’re towing another boat and want to ensure equal load on both boats by ensuring both are on wave crests or toughs at the same time. This is one by figuring the right wavelength.

Day 2: Practise makes perfect

Another beautiful day out today. Bright sunshine through out with just a little nip in the sea air. The wavelengths came in useful when practising how to exchange stuff with a partner boat. On the race we may need that can of fuel, or medication, we may need to transfer an injured person to the boat with the doctor or we may need to be towed to conserve fuel or because we have some boat damage perhaps. So the Pink Lady, the Liverpool boat, painted a bright, nail polish pink and us (still waited for a sponsor), teamed up to practise.

To practise sending items, we first tried sending across arrow line, and kept score for both teams. The Pink Lady won. Then she sent over a packet of pink wafer biscuits – kiddie food; so of course we sent over a banana, appropriately marked.

The fun bit was doing an MOB off a dinghy, with me as the rescue swimmer. It was quite an adventure dangling off a boat on a halyard, being lowered into a dinghy to rescue a dummy. A bit uncoordinated it still drove home the fact that regardless of how well, or not, we know each other, we trust the team to look after each of us, as we do for all team members.

My luck continues to hold, with me drawing anchor watch for 2200 again and the Skipper pushing breakfast to 0800 tomorrow.

Cheers!

Day 3: At anchor

This time around the hairy scary gyan started today. It was all about medical emergencies at sea, dealing with an injured person, calling for a medivac – an evacuation by helicopter in mid sea for a medical emergency. Usually such evacs are done from the boat’s port side; and, the thing to keep in mind is the static created by the chopper which gets discharged when the kit the chopper passes down touches the boat or the water.

Two possible reasons for evacuating a boat could be fire or water ingress sinking the boat. We reviewed fire hazards and how to deal with them, including the fire hose. The hose has the option to use water for the sea or from the bilges- so in case the boat is on fire and has water flooding in, we could potentially save ourselves by using the bilge water to hose down the fire. Hah!

The plan is to have the crew manage the race for 12 hours with zero Skipper intervention, so we spent quality time figuring tides and high water timings and navigation charts. The motivation is to get back in good time for dinner on Saturday. Just looking at tables and charts we figured we could get in by 2pm; but, the fancy navigation computer aides say 2000. So maybe a late dinner.

Speaking of which, Roy made dinner tonight. A simple penne pasta with pesto, beef, greens and cashews. We scraped every bit off the pan.

Day 4: Wind, rain and a bit of a tumble

And boy what a day! We started out nice and easy, putting up the main and head sails, then practised tacking with them. And then is was time for Bob to go overboard….again. And the idea was to practise an MOB while under sail. So in case somebody goes overboard the boat is heaved to, or turned into the wind and the head sails are immediately brought down by johnwayning or letting go of, their halyards. While doing this exercise we realised the hank covers were preventing the sails from flaking and coming down properly. So Roy suggested putting in the thinnest spinnaker sheets through the top two hanks of each head sail and connecting them through snatch blocks to the winches; to be used in case the sails were difficult to smoke, especially on our race tomorrow. Having set that up we put up the sails one more time and smoked them.

This time however, the winds were up to 30 knots and the sheets got all entangled. So a crew mate rushed ahead to fix it. Bad idea! The sails were down so the sheets started flapping desperately in the wind. His tether got wrapped around the sheet and we all watched and shouted in unison for him to watch out. At the same time since it was a port tack, the port side did not have the tricing line up. Those sheets almost got a couple of us by the neck and gave me a rope burn on my arm but we all ducked into the snake pit to avoid getting ‘emotional’ (Roy’s way of describing any exciting, difficult, emotional event). But all our attention was on the one guy at the bow. Who lived to tell the tale.

Then it was back to more sailing. The weather improved gradually from a damp, dark day to a sunny but cold evening.

Dinner was a yummy beef pasta. This Skipper has all the meals planned so that we get all our meat, veggies and carbs. There’s even a recipe for every dish, printed and laminated within easy reach in the kitchen.

It’s an early day tomorrow and we’re all looking forward to the race to France and back.

Day 5: ETAs are set in custard
The morning weather forecast was of increasing winds and a gale in the vicinity. Everything was dark and gloomy and I needed several layers of clothes to stay warm. We hauled anchor at 0700 and headed straight for race start. Breakfast was made and had on the way while we practised Le Mons starts with each of us taking up a role and tethering up in that order on the jack stays to ensure smooth execution. On meeting up with all the other boats we did a practise race start.

Meanwhile the weather continued to worsen and we had huge grey green waves washing over the bow as we tacked at 45o . With 12 boats in a few square miles of each other we had a few hairy moments as we tacked around waiting for the start. Till the last minute we hoped though that the race course would be changed given the weather.

With the gale coming closer, we dropped the Le Mons start and raced off at a line start, with a sharp blow of the whistle. The race course was unchanged and set to be west from the south side of the Isle of Wight to Portland, south to the Baie de Seine in France and back northwards to Gosport. We expected to take about 30 hours to complete this based on the team sail plan.

The English Channel, a second time round for me, continued to be unruly, rumbumctious, temperamental, wild. The winds rose to 50 knots and the waves to over 2 metres. I was terrified and fascinated and thought I was having an out of body experience! This was me, me!?  Sailing in a tiny 70 foot boat, trying to stay on it at an odd angle, loaded with clothes and wet weather gear, tethered by an inch thick cloth rope with metal tethers. Crazy!

We bashed on for several hours. As sail watches were in force, Port watch got to go off and sleep for 6 hours. Our bunks had to be adjusted to the boat’s tilt and a sail cloth raised along the side to prevent one from falling off when the boat changed tack. So I was either sleeping wedged between the bunk and the bulkhead or holding on for dear life to stop from falling off the other side. After that restful break, it was time to go back on deck and battle the elements. We had made good time across to Portland, bounding along at twelve to fourteen knots, with the tide in our favour.

As we got closer to Portland however, the tide changed and it became a battle to move anywhere. We continued to be battered by the storm and a few crew mates were sea sick. I was amazed with their resilience when they threw up into bin bags and then continued with their team roles, sheeting, grinding and even cooking. Since the smell of food in bad weather gets me feeling nauseous, I was particularly struck by the crew mates ability to swing right back into action.

On deck, we hunkered down in the snake pit, each in our own cocoon of foulies, trying to figure just why we were where we were. The Skipper had had a gruelling day at the helm and one of the RTWers on board gave him a break for a while. Roy took that chance to recce the boat and suss out the other Skippers plans. The Starboard watch later told us later of the rather fruity conversation. Shortly thereafter we started up the engines. The boat became slightly steady and the waves less willing to dunk us with salty spray.  After several turns around the area he decided it best to return to the Solent.

And it was time to change watch again. Soggy wet and dog tired, most of us simply took off our foulies and clambered clumsily into our bunks, only to be woken up immediately. Or so we felt when we woke up at 0400 for our deck watch. We had reached Yarmouth by then and the sea felt calmer and the wind, friendlier.  We dropped anchor around 0800 just off Osborne House.

By then the next watch was up and we all had breakfast together. Roy got us all together and explained why he took the call to retire from the race – Terrible weather likely to prove even more challenging in the Channel, possibility of damage to the boat – an unnecessary risk with race start in 20 days and danger of tiring himself out with continuous helming, as he would not want to risk us amateurs helming in inclement weather. Eventually we learnt that the rest of the boats retired too. In comparison we seemed to have had a rather uneventful race. One of the boats tore a sail, 2 ran out of fuel and had to tow each other to conserve it, yet another had a guy injure his leg and one that quarantined a person with diarrhoea so the rest of the 20 odd crew had to use a single head (loo) to avoid infection.

Day 6: Spinnakers

We haven’t slept since 0400. Breakfast followed by Roy’s brief on yesterday and then trial runs on the spinnaker net before we hoisted the actual one. And a couple more man over board drills. Followed by lunch and finally, the actual spinnaker hoist. That took us to 1800 – we then started for Gosport.

The spinnaker is a gigantonormous sail and it’s as tricky to bring it down as it is to put it up. We learnt how to do a letter box drop and then spent quality time tying it up with pieces of pink wool before stuffing it back into its bag. There’s a trick to that too. The head, clew and tack need to be right on top like a giant octopus reclining on a bean bag with three tentacles in repose on the side.

2100 and we were showered and at the Castle Tavern. As were all the other crews. About a 120 people congregated at the pub in warm camaraderie. The party went on till 0400 with Team Roy retiring to our boat for some music and quiet chat in our boat lounge.

And so begins the next phase as I begin my mental prep for a trans-Atlantic crossing from Punta del Este to Cape Town, in October this year.