So talking about the race takes a lot less time than writing about it and given that I am a little short of time at the moment, here’s something you can listen to instead. (Although I will write about it eventually)
I was on BBC Radio Berkshire yesterday talking about how it all went and what it was like. You can hear it here. Just be sure to fast forward to about 2:10:45 otherwise you’ll be listening to hours of chat about the traffic in Berkshire.
3 comments November 20th, 2009
I just watched ‘The schoolboy who sailed around the world’ - I had recorded it and had forgotten that I had. I turned it on. Somewhat relucantly. Not sure why.
And just like that I was taken back. It’s amazing how you can watch programmes about things your entire life and think you know what they’re about and then you actually do the thing you’re watching on TV and you realise that even though a picture (a moving picture) can capture a thousand words, a thousand words is still not enough.
You need to have been there, to have seen it, to have smelt and felt and heard and tasted it. And I only did the first little bit of that boy’s journey. But as he sailed into the Canaries and battled with squalls through the Doldrums, it was like reliving my experience all over again.
Watching him race through the southern Atlantic made me feel even more jealous of the crews who arrived in Cape Town this week. Watching him wipe out in the Southern Ocean made me think that perhaps being on land was ok! Yet part of me still wants to experience that.
It’s so hard to describe just what an impact the ocean has on you. It’s big. It’s blue. It’s surreal. It’s like a mirror that reflects your moods and indeed, creates your moods. And once you’ve sailed on it, really sailed on it, you can never ever see the sea in the same way again.
The only way I can describe it is that it’s like becoming a parent . Until you’ve been one, you can only imagine what it’s like, but you’ll never really ‘get it’ until you do it yourself.
3 comments November 18th, 2009
I have been utterly remiss in updating this blog. I have started posts several times and they lie unfinished and unloved. This is partly due to a lack of time. Or as Angels&Urchins reminds me, this is real life. Since returning home three weeks ago, I have been inundated with new business requests - which is fabulous given the number of bills I still have to pay - but it doesn’t leave much time for blogging.
But that’s not strictly true, because I’ve still managed to find a bit of time to update my other blog.
No, my real problem is that I just don’t know how to write about the experience. There is so much to say that I don’t know where to start. It’s like catching up with old school friends who you haven’t seen in years. You have so much to talk about, but without them knowing what your day to day life is like, you’re not sure how to dive into the nitty gritty.
I want to do it justice. I want to be able to paint a picture of what it was like from start to finish. But I feel that if I’m going to put that much effort into telling the story, I should be turning it into a book. But then I’m not sure there’s enough for a book.
I also wonder whether people are that interested in the finer detail. Lots of what we did was exactly the same, day after day. We rotated on a watch system. We slept. We worked hard. We ate some pretty vile food. We fixed things. We sweated a lot. We laughed. We danced. We stared at the horizon. We missed home.
When people ask me how it was, I say: “It was amazing. Really fab. So glad I did it.” And all of those things are absolutely true. It in no way covers everything that I saw and did and felt. But unless that person sits with me and we polish off a bottle of wine and get into the finer detail, I just don’t seem to get beyond this level. And even when we do natter over a bottle of wine with plenty of time to cover it all, I don’t give a blow by blow account of what happened in chronological order. Memories just pop up as we talk and I’m reminded of a specific incident, which I can share.
Yesterday I was chatting with a client and she wanted to know all about it. But she didn’t actually want to know about how we managed to get 10 knots of boat speed instead of 8 knots. Or how we fixed the bow webbing on the front of the boat. Or which way we went around the Canaries. Or how we missed the scoring gate. Or what it felt like to cross the equator. Or how you hoist a spinnaker or change a headsail or put in a reef.
She wanted to know how I’d managed to get to the point of going in the first place, what it felt like being away from home, whether I’d do it again and if so, what I’d do. She commented on what an amazing thing it was to have done. And yet, as I’ve said previously, it doesn’t feel that amazing. It now just feels utterly normal. Why wouldn’t you sail across an ocean?
So please tell me, what would you want to know about it? (and that’s being very presumptious assuming you want to know anything at all about it) Perhaps you can prompt me into sharing specific experiences and incidents. Because right now I have a surfeit of blog material and am not sure where to start.
6 comments November 17th, 2009
It’s approaching midnight. I should be in bed. Asleep. But I’m not. I’ve spent much of the evening trying desperately to catch up on a mountain of work, not helped by having my entire IT system die today with a literal fizzle and smell of smoke.
And after I’d had enough of trying to summon my working brain back from the brink of beyond, it was time to catch up on some X-factor viewing (it’s my one vice. Ok, that and wine). Having finally switched off the TV, I should get into bed and snuggle my husband who’s been asleep for a long time (another person I need to give some time to). But instead I log onto www.clipperroundtheworld.com to see what’s happening with the boats.
Qingdao is slowly climbing up the fleet and is currently in 6th place. I look at the wind predictions and plot their course and imagine exactly what’s happening on board.
I picture the watch about to go on duty, being woken with a gentle shake of the shoulder. I imagine them fumbling into their oilies, grabbing head torches, having a pee in a loo which they have to pump 30 times before stumbling sleepily up the companionway onto the deck, mumbling a ‘Morning’ to the on watch.
They’ll then wake themselves fast with the wind in their face, while they try to take in the facts being given to them. Our COG is 95. We’ve got to keep at least 10 knots of boat speed. We’ve got Agatha up but we’re ready to go to Judith should the wind pick up. Watch the preventer. It’s chafing. The spinnaker halyard is on the starboard winch and it needs exercising within the next 30 minutes.
Having handed over, the old watch will bumble off below, eager to crawl into their beds, knowing that only a few hours sleep and a bowlful of porridge with honey separates them from their next watch. Meanwhile the new watch quietly go about doing a deck check, settling into the rythym of helming and making a much needed cup of salty tea.
This is life on board a racing boat. I miss it with every fibre of my being. Life at home is situation normal. And while flushing loos and hot showers and an infinite supply of clean knickers is a lovely thing, waking up to see the milky way has a wonder of its own. I am deeply jealous of those on board.
Is it wrong of me to want to go back?
10 comments November 2nd, 2009
