Race 1 - Day 22
Crew Diary - Race 1 Day 22: Liverpool to Punta del Este
11 September
War of Attrition
Sailing down this god forsaken stretch of Southern Atlantic at a permanent angle of 45 degrees in this plastic boat is strangely reminiscent of growing up in seventies, not so Great Britain, except it's the summer of discontent as opposed to the winter...there's a tiny hint of militancy in the air with talk of several crew forgoing large amounts of cash to get off early and things breaking down with greater regularity than a British Leyland Allegro.
Despite the many millions no doubt pumped into it, if someone said Michael Edwards designed this boat I'd believe them...
I won't mention the leaks for fear of blog censorship so I'll start with the generator which thankfully Ray, the magician, was eventually able to fix with lead out of his pencil case. Next the electrics in the Nav station, followed by halyards stripping and dodgy fixings shredding every kite.
More recently, it's the water maker which only makes water on a port tack (that’s when we're leaning over to the right for you non-sailors, not good when we're on a port tack for the next 2000 nautical miles). Sensibly we've been rationed, Andy says we can drink it!)
In addition to these minor design failures there's the heads blockages, broken fresh water foot pump, the grey water pump, all the tin openers and ignition lighters, all of which were definitely made in China. I'm absolutely sure if we didn't have such an array of engineers and magician fixers on board we'd have diverted to some exotic island weeks ago and what a bummer that'd be. These people are the sailing equivalent of Maggie Thatcher....bloody heroes.
As in the seventies we make do whenever a crisis strikes, when we've run out of fresh food we've eaten tinned, well we did until the tin opener broke, out of butter we use mayonnaise, out of granola we eat toast, out of chocolate spread we eat Lidl jam, pretty soon we'll be eating granular sugar on dry bread, just like we did when I was a lad.
I sincerely hope there are no Arthur Scargill types on board siphoning loot away from his fellow members...because it's a cert that if anyone gets caught with an orange or tin of peaches they'll be clubbed to death for sure!
However, in a nod to my previous blog, I remind myself to always look on the brighter side of life, unlike some of the other boats in this race we still have a full complement of 20 relatively healthy crew, although the alarming speed with which bunk warmer old Ollie Olson is losing weight it's looking more like 19 and a half...
Over and Out
Ed