Hello Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam Supporters!
If you are reading this, it means I am still able to write coherently after six days since my last shower and 15 hours since I last slept, kind of. 15 hours may not sound like a long time to be awake, I’m sure you figure you do it all the time, sometimes you even go a whole 18, but I’m betting you’ve never spent 15 hours like this!
5:30am wake-upcall! Not unusual for some of you, but I only went to bed at 2am! :’-D I got a little over three hours sleep since our last shift on deck where we spent an hour hanging our skipper from the top of the mast (this was fully consensual, no skippers were hurt during this exercise). So a little over three hours since the last time I laid my head down, I’m back at it again! We’re sweating ropes – literally and figuratively! – grinding turbo gears, trimming and tailing, easing and sneaking. We’ve got the spinnaker out billowing in the wind, with a backup yankee and staysail tethered on deck and ‘in the chamber’ in case we need to bring the spinnaker down. We keep breaking speed records for our race so far, 19 knots, 21 knots, 24 knots, then 29 knots! Waves are crashing over the side of the boat like in a Japanese painting, the crew is drenched (a good bit of below deck is too), but the yacht is absolutely flying! And even though the crew look overworked and overtired and the day isn’t half over, for some strange reason everyone is smiling…
Six hours later at 12:00 noon I’m back below deck, not to sleep but to start what turns into an 8-hour ‘Mother Watch’ where my crew mate and I spend hours cleaning the kitchen, preparing snacks and coffee for working crew, and chopping and roasting dinner. I even try my hand at baking bread rolls! I’ve never baked bread before, and the rolls look like it (I’ve baked oatmeal cookies, the bread rolls have the same lumpy shape and consistency) but surprisingly they are a hit!! I receive a lot of compliments on them, even on the three I burned when I forgot them in the oven. Dinner over with and compliments received with grace but not much humility, I wash dishes and clean the counter tops and finally retire at 8pm. I don’t sleep much - the boat pitches and tosses like we were in a washing machine, and somehow both my pillow and my mattress work their way out from under me. But in situations like these you learn that you really can sleep through anything! And it probably works in my favour, I’ve got to get up again at 4:30am, we’re making pancakes for the crew for breakfast, the crew are pretty happy :D
I’ll keep you posted,
Meta Hanlon