Race 1 - Day 31
Skipper Report
20 September
We are moving again - following our noses towards sizzling steak, delicious wine, mojitos...the list is very long and heavily discussed, but it starts to make me salivate and I'm worried for the life of my precious keyboard after its adventures to date flying around the Nav Station. Excitement is building here on Visit Seattle! We are discussing how to spend our first evening - dinner then drinks? No, no, no, drinks then dinner - or skip dinner? Or skip both for a shower - this option tends to be immediately shut down "we aren't THAT dirty"...hmmm, we will let you guys be the judge of that. We may well be living in a slightly skewed reality - thinking that after five weeks at sea, and one sea water bucket shower, that we smell like roses. Perhaps rose scented talcum powder, Sudocrem, baby wipes...ah, but that's a story for another day, A painful story that explains why the relaxing on deck has turned into an awkward crouching on deck, hopping from dry spot to dry spot. I'll let you work it out.
During our wind hole life, we kept ourselves busy. The tattoo parlour remained open - and our skills began to improve. There are some pretty fine-looking tats going on round here - just you wait! We will be raising money for Unicef in port if anyone wants a seriously amateur looking henna tattoo. I would recommend asking Dale Elliot to do it - he is excited to put that year at Art College to good use.
We have had card games, quizzes, and a lot of the song YMCA, which seems for some reason to be a favourite on board, particularly when Marek Omilian is in charge of the music, and results in the entire crew pausing whatever they are doing for approximately 3 minutes to do the actions. The most recent challenge from watch to watch is how many words, five letters long or more, can you make from the letters of ‘Visit Seattle’. The Mariners found 80 - or so they say - still awaiting the Seahawks results. We would like to challenge you lot, particularly Ralph and the awesome Visit Seattle team back in the US. Let us know how many you come up with. And just FYI, this cannot involve Google or any other search engine whatsoever. Yes, yes, it's funny to think we live in the dark ages here - life before Google. I'm sure it won't be long before our precious escape from this world is invaded by web browsing.
Other than that, we would like you all to wish us some seriously strong winds from behind, or moderate ones from in front, so that our wonderful Yankee and Main become far more efficient than any spinnaker that the rest of the fleet are using. Thank you!! Either way, we are most definitely on our way.
Sailing with style - Nik