‘My bags are packed and I’m ready to go….’ Actually they’re not and I’m nowhere near ready to head off on training part B on Sunday afternoon. Between now and then I have to:
- pack in a huge amount of client work (like a month’s worth)
- prep freelancers to man the decks while I’m away
- drive around to village halls, nurseries and doctors rooms handing out posters for my nearly new fund raising sale (which takes place the weekend after I get back)
- buy a range of things needed for my nearly new sale and distribute lables and posters to other sellers
- book an ad in the local paper for the sale
- sort, iron and label all the stuff I have to sell for the sale
- buy enough groceries to keep the family in food for a week while I’m gone
- buy all the bits and pieces I need for another week at sea (including many, many seasick tablets)
- finish typing up the telephone directory sized list of instructions for my sister in law who is looking after the boys while I’m away
- practice tying bowlines
- spend time with the boys including squeezing in a football lesson over the weekend
Why is it that whenever I go on these training courses I arrive absolutely shattered, rather than well rested and ready to face a week of gruelling physical activity?
What’s more, during training, you don’t get to eat a massive amount of fresh fruit or vegetables, which when combined with having to just about poo in public, doesn’t help one’s er… regularity. So this week I should really have been doubling my five-a-day quota. But I’ve had no time to buy food, so it’s been a case of ready-steady-cook in our house using random tinned and frozen ingredients to see what culinary delights I could create. I’ve been giving the boys any fresh veg we’ve had left but I feel that scurvy might already be setting in for me.
Must go make some breakfast and start ticking off some on these things before I run out of time entirely. I’ll report back again after training week is over. Here’s hoping my fingers (still not fully recovered from last time) survive, that I get my sea legs and don’t feel quite as sick and that I’ve mastered a bowline under pressure by the time I return. Wish me luck!
Tags: nearly new sale, sailing, scurvy, sea sick, Training
April 23rd, 2009
So I’ve been back home for a week now and I’ve had some time to reflect on my first week of training and the after effects of it. Here are some of my insights:
- extreme tiredness takes a while to get over. All of last week I felt as though I had narcolepsy, nodding off at inopportune moments. Had someone said to me: “Are you tired?”, I would honestly have been able to say no because I didn’t feel tired. Yet when I least expected it, my eyes would just suddenly close and I’d need a brief power nap to keep going.
- a week of no make up coupled with a bit of sunshine, blasts of sea air and splashes of rain = the best facial ever. Honestly, my skin has never felt as smooth or looked as clear. No need to pay a fortune to a spa, just head out to sea. Sure there’s less barfing at a spa but hey, maybe the purging helps as part of the cleansing regime.
- the week after a being at sea is not good for the figure. Your body gets used to eating bag after bag of gingernuts and chocolate raisins. Trying to convince your tummy that it no longer needs the calories isn’t easy. Then there’s a week’s worth of not drinking wine to make up. All in all, it’s probably best to take a picture of yourself when you step off the boat toned and trim because it won’t last.
- despite having a completely surreal experience, when you get home you get sucked straight back into the laundry pile and you’ll wonder whether it ever happened at all.
So now that I’ve finally stopped swaying when I shut my eyes, I have just five more days before I head off for Part B of the training. I’ve armed myself with knee pads and some better deck shoes. I’ll be packing less stuff and will certainly take more socks this time. And I need to practice those sodding bowlines because despite having mastered the art of tying them before I left home, under pressure I was pants.
Anyway, I’m off to enjoy a rare sunny day, the last day of school holidays before trying to fit a month’s worth of work into four days.
Tags: bowlines, chocolate raisins, facial, gingernuts, narcolepsy, sailing
April 20th, 2009
Well I’m back. Back with a terrific connect-the-dots pattern of bruises. Back with bingo-wings that have been halved in size. Back with more colour in my face than I’ve had in years. But most importantly of all, back in one piece.
If you’ve just stumbled onto this blog and have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ve just returned from my first week of sailing training in preparation for the Clipper Round the World race. There’s so much to say so go get a cup of tea because it might take a while to read it:
Day 1:
I arrived at the pontoon in Gosport at the designated time and immediately questioned my ability to haul up heavy sails as I tried to lug my ultra heavy bag with all my kit to the boat. I was exhausted before I’d even started. Arriving on board, I was told that the ladies were sleeping up front for ‘extra privacy’. Note to all other ladies who might be undertaking this training: Sod privacy, it’s stability that you’re after. You’ll find out more below.
My bunk space
After meeting the rest of the crew, we demonstrated our inability to work as a team by failing a simple group exercise that was intended to break the ice, which was good, given these same people would be holding each others hair back by the end of the week.
The first evening was spent showing us around the boat, explaining how the watch system worked and terrifying us into the myriad of things that could go wrong on board - from fires, to spreading bacteria, to man overboard situations and flooding. We all went to bed, pumped with adrenalin/fear and failed to sleep. Well there were one or two who managed to conquer their fear and slept very well but their snoring ensured that the rest of us didn’t.
Day 2:
It started with a reality check of what it’s like to live in such a tiny space. As we were still strangers to each other, I attempted to get out of my pjs and change my underwear inside my sleeping bag, all the while having condensation dripping off the roof onto me while I banged my head and elbows repeatedly. At last I was dressed, almost pulling muscles in the process, and decided that modesty wasn’t that important after all.
We then practiced loading and unloading winches so that we didn’t have our hands ripped off when the sails were full and the lines fully loaded. And we found out what the bazillion different ropes on a boat are for. By the time lunch rolled around, we were still moored up, hadn’t done any sailing and all of our brains were oozing quietly out of our ears.
Then we got to put it into practice as we headed out into the Solent and learnt how to tack and gybe. As a dinghy sailor, I kinda thought I had these two basic moves sussed. But it’s less simple when you’re dealing with three vast sails. Just as we gained a bit of confidence with our tacking, we had a man overboard practice. Luckily, they relied on the services of Baldrick the Buoy to act as our man overboard because a real person would certainly have died of hypothermia by the time we finally managed to pick him back up and out of the water.
We eventually headed back to the marina and got our first chance to moor the boat which involves jumping off the side of the boat onto a pontoon from quite a height without falling into the water between the two, which would have a rather sticky ending if it happened. I was terrified to be quite honest. You have a skipper wanting you to jump so that mooring lines can be taken ashore and you have a gaping chasm of cold water between you and the pontoon and a substantial drop to negotiate. However, after several attempts and jellified legs later, it became less scary.
By the end of the day, I was tired and missing my boys. It was officially the longest time I’d ever spent apart from them. But at least I slept better after all the hard work.
One of the many on board training sessions
Day 3:
Every morning starts at 6am (a positive lie-in in comparison to my normal life), with the boat rigged, breakfast made and eaten and all of us dressed and on deck by 8am. Two hours might sound like a lot of time to do all of this but it’s not. For a start, this is what you wear: a base layer like thermal trousers and top, a mid-layer both top and bottom, salopettes (the sailing equivalent of maternity dungarees), a water proof outerjacket and a life jacket which is ridiculously difficult to put on and includes a crotch strap and harness line which just add to the complications. Then there are your accessories. Don’t think Fendi bag here. Think sunglasses, woolly hat, gloves, lip balm, socks and boots.
Just after you’ve put all of this lot on, you’ll realise that you need to go to the loo (officially called the heads on a boat). So you take it all off again and squeeze yourself into the tiny toilet. By this point your bladder will be on the verge of exploding but you still can’t actually wee as you need to zip up the door. Except the zips don’t really zip. It can take you about 5 minutes to just do up one of them. Once you finally get to relieve your contorted bladder, you then get to pump it all out. For anyone with bingo wings in need of toning up, I can highly recommend pumping out the heads. And then you get to get dressed all over again. Let’s not even talk about needing to poo. Even the most casual of poo-ers will find it slightly intimidating to poo with an audience of 11.
Me dressed in all my gear
After a morning of cleaning the boat, we headed back out into the Solent and practiced putting in and taking out reefs in the mainsail, doing headsail changes, and mastering the lowering and raising of the anchor. All of these things sound so easy when writing them down. They’re not. Every one of them requires a huge amount of muscle, from lifting heavy sails from down below to up on deck, to climbing up the mast to fix the mainsail halyard that’s got snagged. It’s all hard work. You’re trying to combine sheer physical exertion with intense brain activity as you struggle to remember what to do when.
By the time we got back to the marina, my muscles were jelly and I could barely lift a fork to shovel my dinner into my mouth. But the day didn’t end there. At 9pm there was yet another lecture, this time on flares and more discussion about emergency situations. Trying to concentrate when you can barely keep your eyes open is a challenge, but at least it meant that despite the cramped sleeping quarters, I didn’t notice or care.
Day 4 & 5 - also known as the longest day of my life
So after a morning of quite a bit of faffing (there’s a lot of faffing involved in sailing I’ve come to realise) we headed out into the Solent for more headsail change practice, lots more learning and plenty more opportunity to work tired muscles. After a quick stop in Hamble, we began our journey out to sea, the proper sea, for our first over night sail and the start of a 3-hourly watch system. My team was on first watch from 6pm - 9pm. It was a calm night, no wind, a beautiful clear moonlit sky. It was cold but peaceful as we learnt how to identify lights at night and what they might mean to us (i.e. were we likely to get run over by a cargo ship). At 9pm, we handed over watch to the other team and went down below. Once again, I couldn’t sleep. Just as I thought I might sleep, there was a distinct change. We were obviously exiting the Solent and hitting the high seas as the waves increased. As the three hours wore on, me still very much awake, the bouncing and rocking worsened.
By 12am I was relieved to get back on watch and headed out, only to find that our clear, calm moonlit evening had been replaced with thick sea fog, coupled with rain, strong winds and high seas. This weather situation worsened over the course of the next three hours. At night you have to clip yourself onto the boat with harnesses so that you don’t fall overboard. Working with these harnesses on is incredibly difficult as they snag on everything. And on boats, there are plenty of things to snag on.
Three of us spent 40 minutes sitting up on the foredeck in driving rain as the boat crashed over wave after wave, as we tried in vain to get the yankee 1 (the biggest headsail) back into its sail bag and below deck. We failed. It was impossible. Eventually the first mate told us to come back and rest. Try riding a rollercoaster for 40 minutes solid while working physically hard the whole time all in rain and ice cold wind and you might get a picture of what it was like.
By 3am I was absolutely exhausted but going below to my private yet ultra bouncy bunk at the very front of the boat didn’t hold much appeal. Down I went anyway. I managed to get thrown from one side of the boat to the other twice on the short walk to my bunk, the first time connecting my hip with the cooker, the second time connecting my back with a bunk.
I managed to get into my bunk and held on tight. Every time the boat crashed down the back side of a wave, the dropping motion would send me flying into the ceiling above me. Every time the boat heeled over, I’d end up with my face squished into the wet lockers holding my kit or the lee cloth holding me (just) in my bunk. The noise of the rigging crashing onto the deck directly above my head was the final element to ensure that I didn’t sleep, despite being utterly exhausted. It was the longest three hours of my life.
At 6am it was time for me to get up and start my ‘motherwatch’. This is the watch in which you prepare all the meals for the crew throughout the day. Now here’s the thing. Lying flat on your bunk isn’t brilliant but it’s ok. Being up on deck is bouncy but ok. Standing upright down below trying to cook is hell on earth. I got as far as putting some sausages in the cooker when my brain convinced my body that it was being poisoned and sea sickness hit.
You’re not allowed to be sick inside the boat. All vom must go outside. However, you’re not allowed on deck without a life jacket on. Putting life jackets on takes some time as I’ve explained. So I managed to charge up the companionway and retch into the cockpit where everyone was sitting. Luckily for them, I never actualy expel anything when I vomit. I crawled out and alternately retching and gasping big lungfuls of air.
I wasn’t alone. At one point five people were all vomiting over the sides or around our feet. I can honestly say that I will never be able to look at mushrooms again in the same way.
As I hadn’t had a chance to get any of my wet weather gear on before going up, I sat getting very wet and very cold and was eventually ordered below to get some kit on. It took the skipper and one crew member to help me into my clothes (remember, the boat doesn’t exactly stay still and heels over at 45 degrees). Yet every minute you stay down below, the worse you feel.
I finally got back on deck, clothed, and spent the next three hours helming and gazing out to sea in an attempt to settle my stomach. This routine was broken only by one toilet visit that I had to make, in which I attempted to sit on the loo but due to the angle of the boat, get flying out of the loo with my trousers and knickers around my ankles. My joint motherwatch partner was just as sick as I was and he was lying right next to the loo. It was comedy. Me flying out with knickers around my ankles apologising to Paul and attempting to pee all over again. It’s amazing how little you care about modesty at times like these.
Me - slightly green - after my awful night and seasickness
Christina, Eleanor (on the helm) and me (black hat) riding out the sea sickness by telling ridiculous jokes
By 9am it was the end of our watch again and time to go back down below. Not a prospect I was relishing. I found a bunk in the middle of the boat (which is less bouncy), cleared it of anything I could make wet and collapsed fully clothed in all my kit. I fell asleep instantly and woke two hours later, soaked to the bone, freezing cold but finally feeling a smidge more human.
We - thank god - spent the rest of the day heading into Dartmouth and got to moor up over night, have a shower and a meal we could all keep down. Hoorah.
Day 6:
After an exquisite night’s sleep (amazing how comfortable a tiny bunk can feel after a full 24 hours without sleep), we headed back out to sea. There was quite a bit of wave swell, but no wind, so we took the opportunity to learn how to hoist spinnakers. We also spent a huge amount of time learning racing and sailing rules as well as having a heart to heart, giving each other feedback about what we were doing well and where we could improve. Gold stars all round for vomiting and the telling of bad jokes to make the time pass!
It was during this time that I was told I’d be well suited to a foredeck role. Out of all the roles on the boat I thought I’d not be suited to, this was it. But I decided to give it a go, and between the amazingly hilarious Chris (aka Captain Turbo) and I, we managed to master a headsail change getting it down to two minutes 25 seconds. (A headsail change involves taking one sail down and getting a new one up - a process that involves hanking and unhanking clips from a stay at the front of the boat and which absolutely knackers your fingers and will leave you out of breath).
We finally motored into Cowes on the Isle of Wight at about 10pm, but as that was were my husband and children were, I was very excited about getting off the boat. I made my way over to West Cowes and got to see my husband and my babies who were fast asleep and looking like little angels. They didn’t get to see me though as I had to get up at 5am to get back to the boat before we set off at 6.15am. But it was wonderful to give them a kiss and cuddle - a little battery recharging moment.
Day 7:
Another windless day, so we spent the morning attempting to have Clipper Olympics with the other training boats, changing headsails, putting in reefs, doing man overboard drills and hoisting spinnakers as fast as we could.
The yachts we spent a week living on
We got back to the dock late afternoon, tired, feeling as though our legs were made of jelly and definitely ’smelling the barn’ as the skipper would say. We were all fairly desparate for a shower and some downtime. But first, we had to write an exam. Just what you need when your clawlike fingers can barely hold a pen. After churning out several pages of barely legible answers which I hope made sense, we finally got to head out for a crew dinner which involved quite a lot of wine. I had hoped that the giddying effects of the wine would help balance my land sway as I continually felt (and still feel) as though I’m rocking. It didn’t. But at least I slept well.
Day 8:
We got up at 6am and cleaned the boat inside out non-stop until 11am. My fingers are still recovering from continually being wet and rubbed raw. They feel quite strange actually - as though I’ve lost all sensation in my fingertips as they callous over.
After having a quick review with the skipper, it was all over. We could head off home, to the land of dry socks, dry beds and clean knickers.
I’ve come away from the week with mixed feelings. The entire experience was surreal and so far removed from my normal life that it feels as though it didn’t actually happen. I have learnt so much and proven to myself that I am physcially capable of doing a lot more really hard work than I though I was capable of. It was a reality check. Living with a bunch of strangers and trying to get along is hard, yet it’s also hilarious and fun. I realised just how scary and disorienting the sea can be and that sea sickness sucks. But I also know that whatever happens, you do get through it and that I am capable of managing it.
As some of us said while we were onboard at 2am battling to get sail into its bag, lots of this race is going to be not very nice. But lots of it will be absolutely amazing. And when it’s all over, the bad bits become the funny stories and the good bits become private memories that you’ll treasure forever.
So that was it. The boys survived just fine without me. It was wonderful to see them again when I got back and they barely noticed that I wasn’t there by all accounts. Now it’s back to mountainous piles of laundry, an overflowing inbox and another week of holidays that I need to keep the children occupied while I resume my normal juggling act. But right about now, I feel as though I can do anything I set my mind to. And I’ve got the toned arms to prove it.
April 14th, 2009
