Race 13 - Day 3
Crew Diary - Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland to Den Helder, Netherlands
20 July

If you can keep your socks when all about are losing theirs then lend them to a friend who's lost their own.
If you can pull on clothing in a storm,
Then clamber up on deck to sheeting rain And meet the night with humour all the same.

If you can learn the names of all the sails and sheets and halyards, blocks and lines.
If you can face the foredeck with a smile in forty knots of wind, and breaking waves, And help your mate, who's not so sure, to feel more brave.

If you can sit in sun or freezing spray
For boring hours at a time.
If you can jump to action when the kite
Drops in the sea or splits in two,
And get the damned thing in and fixed and wooled.

If you can steer a course in blackest night Without a star or light and through the storm.
If you can surf the waves with aching arms, Keep boat on course, and fast, and safe, Rest for an hour and do it all again.

If you feel your spirit lift at sight of land After weeks of only sea and sky.
If you return to home somehow changed;
But grateful for those things that are the same.

If you can hear day-sailors loudly boast, And listen in with quiet grace, Then the seas are yours and – what's more – you'll have done a Clipper Ocean Race.

--Mike Adams