Race 1 - Day 33
Crew Diary - Race 1 Day 33: Liverpool to Punta del Este
22 September
The past days and nights have been a continuous groundhog day of: evolutions; criticism of evolutions; repair mistakes from evolutions; sail; eat; sleep; toilet.
Our newly christened good ship “BBC” still awaits its figurehead to match our beautifully crafted danbuoy cover. We may ask the Clipper Race maintenance team to requisition a couple of tonnes of black masking tape and empty Pepsi containers to complete the job. Once complete, this should improve our fortunes – we can at least ram and sink our nearest competitors at Punta del Este to give us the required 600 mile head start we need for Leg 2.
Other developments on board took a sinister turn with “Galley-gate” following on from “Knot-gate” where mysterious gremlins have left an untidy galley for the next Mother Watch to deal with.
Our all-American pin up boy Axl “Ken” Rose has finally twigged there is another Yank on board after 30 days at sea. This may have upset Kathi who has buried her disappointment by washing clothes on a regular cycle using all of our washing up liquid.
Yours truly was tickled pink to be awarded a key senior role of: helm change over manager. This early promotion has turned sour and ultimately will be leading to a disciplinary action for failures of the men under my command to: keep to changeover times; impersonating other crew members at the helm and ultimately wilful refusal to take the helm leaving me to battle on alone “again”. It is a lonely place leading these men...
Our watch “The Shippers” (to be pronounced in West Country accent) have been engaging in friendly rivalry with “The Bulls”, the other watch. Pleasingly, we have been victors in miles sailed but probably helped by Rupert's max speed in any direction approach. This came to a head with him on helm during which we had Skippy and Rupert wrestling the wheel to just avoid a broach followed by a near accidental gybe. The rest of the watch were checking our life insurance cover but Rupert calmly emerged with a cry of, “Did you see my VMG of 10.8 knots?”
Another helming oddity is Tim “Woody” Lewis who was spooked by somebody lighting a match in the galley below him – his intolerance of any lighting when on helm is the stuff of legends – always followed by the bellow of, “Will you turn that light out!” I expect we will need to warn the citizens of Punta del Este to have a black out when we get within 200 miles of the port if he is helming at night.
And now we dream of Punta del Este...meat; turps, dark-haired maidens. Our new team co-ordinator Alex is busy timetabling our stay whilst the “Shippers” prepare their own secret timetable...we await “Punta-gate”.
Over and out.
Mikey (HCOM)