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.
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?
November 2nd, 2009
It’s official. I’m back. Actually I got back on Monday but have been dealing with groundrush ever since. Stepping off a plane and into the arms of one long suffering husband and two small boys very happy to have their mummy back, I can honestly say that it was lovely to get home (the welcome home poster complete with pictures of flying fish was the icing on the cake). Since then it’s been straight back to situation normal. Day 1 at home saw me:
- cook three meals
- do four loads of laundry
- pack the dishwasher twice
- pick up three bags full of fallen walnuts
- winterise the swimming pool
- fix a broken toilet (with the help of a DIY guide on the internet)
- play about 15 games of snakes and ladders
- play a hotly contested game of football
- go to the park and push swings for ages
- play hide and seek
- delete over 1000 emails
- sift through mail to find most pressing bills
- handle a new business request
- book in some builders
- and chat to some family and friends
But despite really needing a week off to sort out my life AND a week just being with the boys, I feel as though I’ve got plenty of energy to tackle it all. The household chores that used to depress me (and no doubt will again soon) for now feel like a breeze in contrast to scrubbing out bilges and being on watch every night.
The boys have managed without me better than I could have expected and my husband hasn’t turned into a raging alcoholic. So all is well. When I asked my children what they liked best about me being home, they said: “Getting real kisses and cuddles” (rather than the kisses I blew them from the sea). The perfect homecoming present.
And when I asked them if I should ever go sailing again - expecting a loud NO from them - I got instead the considered response of: “Yes, as long as you take us. Maybe we could all sail around the world together!” I’m very pleased that the spirit of adventure has been well and truly seeded in their young minds.
So where to start on the mad sailing adventure? Firstly, thanks to everyone who commented on my blog while I was away. I sent short snippets home via email to my husband who passed them onto Rachel, the lovely lady helping me with admin in my absence and she posted them. But I had no way of checking comments.
I don’t have time now to write a full account of everything that went on - and I’m on a time ration as the boys are currently glued to the telly that will be going off shortly. But I will write follow up posts about how it all went.
Suffice to say that it was brilliant. Not the scary, challenging sailing as advertised on the brochure, but that was largely due to us having incredibly fair weather all the way. It was extraordinarily hot and all the little things that we take for granted in life were a lot more difficult. Like going to the loo, having a shower, washing clothes, washing dishes, cooking, climbing into bed, getting changed, standing upright…I could go on. But all that work and the extreme heat (i.e. excessive sweating) has seen me lose a stone in weight. Hooray! And it has made the household chores seem truly easy peasy.
There were many moments during the trip where I wondered why I was doing it, but there were even more moments where I was in tears at the sheer magnificence of it all. I cannot (in my current sleep deprived state) hope to describe the wonder of the night sky, the sheer awesomeness of an orange setting sun melting into the sea or the grace of enormous whales as they crash out of the ocean and back into it.
The crew on board were fantastic. Many a night was spent solving the world’s problems, discussing deep and personal things that seldom get an airing, laughing hard and being silly.
I kept waiting for the bolt of insight lightening that was going to give me the direction or profound understanding that I thought I might have, being so far removed from my normal life. But it never arrived. As we approached Sugar Loaf Mountain in Rio, I realised that the lesson learned from the whole experience was simple: that life is there to be lived. I know that life with all it’s day to day humdrum and work craziness will go on. But I have resolved to quite simply have more fun. And if that’s as basic as cranking the radio up louder while folding the laundry, so be it.
I’ll be back with more details of the trip once the dust has settled.
Tags: home, life, rio
October 28th, 2009
Almost there!
We have now been travelling down the length of Brazil for what seems like forever. And although the miles to rio are diminishing, it just never seems to get any closer. As I type this, we have 314 miles to go.
If the wind we have at the moment holds, we should get there by Wednesday. Rather depressingly, the first boat has already finished and the next four are very close. We have Hull and Humber hot on our heels and we CANNOT afford to have them pass us. So it’s all systems go on board.
Well except for when I decide that really I have less than two days to go until my sailing adventure ends, so I just crank up the tunes and dance my way across the Atlantic, much as I’ve done for most of it.
Today, one of our watch was being mother so the two blokes - Richard and Chris - and I, were on deck with a good 20 knots of breeze blowing us downwind, spinnaker flying nicely. We had ‘Born to be Wild’ playing full blast, and while Richard helmed, Chris and I played air guitar on the backstays. We decided that we’d start a rock band called ‘Helms Angels’.
It made us go faster we decided.
I’ve also made up a jingle for Family Fun Time, my least favourite time of day, when we all have to do chores but mostly we can’t because they’re too complicated like servicing winches so we all pretend to be busy. We’ve figured that if you walk around with a screwdriver looking determined, the skipper won’t realise that actually you’re just doing laps of the boat. So I’ve taken to singing my jingle at 4.30pm every day. Oh how it is loved. It goes like this:
It’s Family Fun Time
It’s Family Fun Time
With lots of lovely chores to do.
It’s Family Fun Time
It’s Family Fun Time
Let’s all shout Whoop-de-doo
WHOOP-DE-DOO! (this last bit is said with a fair amount of sarcasm)
We saw quite a few whales today (at last) including a mommy whale and her calf pretty close by. We’ve also started seeing fishing vessels which means we must be getting close to land.
We’re all getting pretty excited about getting into Rio. The prospect of proper showers, clean clothes (which I will be buying), a real bed, cold drinks and food that isn’t out of a tin is pretty heady.
But I can’t quite believe that it’s nearly over. After all the months and months of hard work, fund-raising, training and preparations, it’s about to become a memory. It has been awesome. There have been some shitty bits. There’ve been moments I’ve been in tears. I’ve been dirtier and sweatier than I’ve ever been in my life. And the skin on my hands will never be the same again.
But what amazing memories. Seeing so many shooting stars, seeing the night sky properly for the first time in ages, witnessing incredible sunrises and sunsets, sailing across the equator, playing chicken with the doldrum squalls, sailing on a sea like a mirror with whales blowing alongside us, having an impromptu disco to the setting sun, learning how to steer a 68 foot 30 tonne boat down big surf in plenty of breeze, overcoming my inability to sew, getting to grips with power tools and discovering the best way to clean out bilges, having long, personal chats with people who a few weeks ago I didn’t know, laughing a lot, feeling free and mostly 100% alive.
I have sailed across an ocean. That’s a big tick in a box I never imagined would even get onto my life’s list of things to do.
A HUGE thank you to Chris who helped me make this possible and to Josh and Jamie for putting up with an absentee mother, to my friends and family who’ve been supporting me and cheering me on and to my understanding clients and the ladies looking after them in my absence.
All I can say that if you get a chance to do something crazy once in a while, do it!
October 21st, 2009
Today was the first day that we’ve had consistent breeze for about a week. So we’ve been trucking along at about 8 knots. We’re still not out of the doldrums yet but things are looking better. I was on watch this morning from 8 - 2 pm. It was incredibly hot and I managed to get
sun-burnt on the back of my arm where I missed putting sun block. But at least there was a breeze to cool us down. We had my ipod on playing and it was lovely just to be moving at pace with the wind in our hair, bopping to tunes.
This afternoon I mended a sail bag (actual real sewing and everything) and then sat on deck chatting to people. It was nice to actually just chill out. Normally when we’re on deck we’re either on watch which means constant trimming or we’re doing chores.
SO everyone feeling a bit happier now that we’re moving again.
October 14th, 2009
Newer Posts
Older Posts
