Race 2 - Day 14
Crew Diary - Race 2 Day 14: Punta del Este to Cape Town
18 October
And it’s goodbye from me too, as we approach Cape Town. My journey started over a year ago when I saw the Clipper Race posters on the London Underground and was inspired to make an initial enquiry.
Within hours of sending that email I was invited to attend an interview and induction day in Gosport, and thus started this compelling and unique adventure. I signed up for Legs 1 and 2 so that I could depart from one home (London, UK) and arrive close to the other, in Harare, Zimbabwe. Call it taking the long way round. But of course, Clipper Race is so much more than a mode of transport. It's a whole new vocabulary and set of skills, it's a way of life, an experience that has stretched me (and my infamously short supply of patience) to the limits. Every aspect including training, procuring seemingly endless items of kit, crew allocation, team building, preparation, victualling and delivery has had its challenges; all have been enjoyable.
I've never once regretted doing the Clipper Race or wished I was somewhere else. I've loved being on the ocean, far from land, sailing in sunshine and rain, looking up at starry skies night after night. I've embraced if not mastered all the various roles on deck including helming, trimming, grinding, coiling lines, flaking sails, tailing halyards and anything I get the chance to do up on the foredeck. This morning I sat on the pulpit hanking the Yankee sails on and off in a near perfect bare-headed sail change (when we take one down and hoist another in its place): it felt liberating. At times the activity has been frenetic: evolutions, kite wraps, deep cleans; at others it’s been slow and reflective when I've simply gazed out to sea marvelling at the huge emptiness and noting the changing texture and colour of the waters around us. They can be inky dark with flashes of brighter almost chemically luminous blue, or iron grey and forbidding with scudding white caps, or black and granular like molten chocolate; sometimes the wake is frothy and full of phosphorescence - like a bridal veil studded with Swarovski crystals.
More prosaically, I've also thrown myself into all the below deck activities and found it relatively easy to share a confined space with 20 other people for weeks on end (it helps to come from a large family!). I will miss my fellow crew members enormously for their camaraderie and friendship, and their tolerance and resilience. I've been able to laugh and cry and be truly myself and here I must apologise for the occasions when I have opened mouth without engaging brain.
I want to thank the rest of Port Watch particularly – both the Leg 1 and Leg 2 variations – for their support and banter and extremely poor taste in jokes. I know I am going to miss being in the Clipper Race bubble and am anticipating withdrawal symptoms which I will alleviate by avidly following the race tracker for the rest of the race. I am looking forward to following Sanya Serenity Coast's progress, to sharing in its success vicariously and being there at the end in Liverpool to welcome everyone home.