It's Anyone's Race
Hi everyone. I have received a few more updates from Arthur over the last few days and it sounds like the fleet has now made its way through the Doldrums, or the perhaps the dull-drums? This legendary stretch of ocean seemed mostly uneventful… as long as you don’t count the surprise swimming session, evening lightning shows, and Arthur's very impressive southern-style cooking (which I do take full credit for).
I was very happy to finally recognize someone in a recent Clipper instagram post. (Arthur is relaxing on deck with a cup of tea during a calm moment. He is in the grey hat and grey shirt on the left).
Apparently the lighter conditions turned Arthur's galley duty into a much more pleasant experience than the wild, tilted, soaking days before. The boat finally sat level enough to cook properly and the crew decided to move the clocks forward to be able to eat their meals later in the evening to escape some of the heat of the sun (apparently time is merely a suggestion when you are out on the open sea).
The crew even got the permission from the skipper for a quick swim in the middle of the Solomon Sea!!! Yes. Actual ocean swimming. Can you imagine? Arthur says he was able to capture jumping into the sea on his GoPro and I can't wait to see how he and the crew experienced it. Honestly, all I would have been able to think about would have been all the sea creatures swimming underneath.
Arthur has summed it all up in his latest message. Prepare for a lot of sail terms:
The Doldrums are behind us and we are finally racing again!
I’m not sure if Kate wrote about my galley duty, but her input on how to make iced tea on hot days and dinner with mac ‘n cheese couldn’t go wrong!
The last 48h have been interesting, when we finished motoring we had some good wind. It must have been the morning after we hoisted our headsails again, that I was laying in my bunk and for the first time in a while got squeezed against the side of the boat when we got the gusts from a squall and the rain that came through the small windows in the cockpit felt refreshing on my face.
Next watch the wind was pretty much dead, but with the windseeker we progressed slowly through the lewe behind the islands New Britain and New Ireland. We are not allowed any closer than 3NM (nautical miles) from any land, but we did start seeing the glooming contours of land and at times it even changes in the smell of the air. We’re mostly steering based on instructions from the nav station below; apparent wind angle or course over ground. Our plotter at the helm doesn’t work and was replaced by another instrument from the nav station, so we see the required information at both helms. Every island we see there for is now simply called "New Island".
Last night many boats, including ours, struggled to keep even the light windseeker sail filled. We fixed the mainsail in a position to keep the boom from swinging and the early watch did a couple of gybes to get out of the windhole.
Many of the round the world folks on board had taken advantage of the conditions to take showers at the aft of the boat with salt water and a 2l fresh water allowance per day and did some laundry. I’ve been looking forward to do the same and thought today would be a good day after finishing my morning watch. Well , we’ll see I guess.
After breakfast my watch went up and to my surprise the staysail had joined the sail plan again, it looked like we were finally making our way out!
We immediately prepared to drop the big light windseeker for the heavier Yankee 1 for real sailing. That was a first smooth evolution and under 15 knots of wind we could easily move around to do our work. The wind increased and the boat quickly got overpowered, so we put one reef in the mainsail. When not much later Oli read we would get gusts of over 30 knots, so we knew we had to get Yankee 1 down again. What followed was a fearless couple of hours fighting sails on the foredeck. Y1 down, in the bag, Y2 up from the sail locker, hanked on, to find out there was a hole in it. The repair on deck was simply too wet with the breaking waves, so we brought up Y3 and hoisted it.
After a 6h watch of nonstop changes, we ended with Mainsail Reef 2, staysail and Yankee 3. Both Yankee 1 and 2 were still laying on deck. The next watch gets to do the sail repair and drop Y1 back in the sail locker. I finally got my shower, but with salt water, not exactly as I had planned.
For all the wet work, Crocs are the preferred footwear onboard. They dry quickly and don’t smell. One disadvantage is that shoe gets stuck under sails or when you slip into the guardrails they don’t always come back onboard. Today Ibra was the third person to lose one of his crocs. We’re discussing how we can make new pairs from orphaned crocs and therefore have decided to make a "Crocpot".
At the 2pm briefing we got an update about the boats that had made it out before us. We have about 400NM to make up some losses, so it looks like the Scoring Gate will be a favourable route for us.
The other exciting milestone will be the equator crossing, where I will be part of the ceremony to become a "shellback" and no longer have to live as a "polywog".
I’ll be writing more about that in my next update!
All in all, it sounds like the doldrums delivered a mix of calm moments, hard (wet) work, and I am sure will forever be an unforgettable experience for Arthur and the rest of the GOSH crew.
Now hopefully they will resume proper racing conditions and things should get exciting again very quickly. I know I am glued to the race tracker, ever hopeful that they will be able to make up any lost time before the end of the race.
Thank you all for your support and well wishes.
