Race 13 - Day 10
Crew Diary - Race 13 Day 10
09 July

I was wondering how to describe the Clipper Race sailing experience to my friends or work colleagues back at home, so they might understand what it’s like.

So here goes: Imagine being confined to your bedroom which now has 10 bunk beds, each bunk only two thirds the width of a single bed. On the other side of your bedroom door is a small room with two portaloos inside and a small kitchen. You have an outside roof terrace, which you can access through your wardrobe, where you will need to change into whatever clothes are required to take on the outside world. To make it more interesting, this whole space is either rocking from side to side or heeled over at an angle of 30 degrees. So, to get around you need to crawl on your hands and knees or move slowly using grab handles strategically located.

Your typical day starts at 5am with three hours in the freezing cold on your roof terrace. At 8am you come back to your kitchen, have breakfast and go to bed for seven hours with light streaming through the windows and building work going on in the ceiling, (the sounds of winches winding and grinders grinding).

At 3:30pm you’re awoken and sent back out into the cold terrace for another four hours. At 8pm your back in the kitchen for quick dinner and then into a different bunk, just vacated by one of your team, to get as much sleep as possible before being woken at 11pm to go on stand by.

Now, before you start thinking standby sounds a relaxing place, then consider the various duties of standby team of 2-3 people at any time. They include; making meals, making bread, washing up, making tea for those on the terrace, cleaning toilets and collecting water that has strangely collected under your kitchen floorboards!

It’s 2am now, so time to go back out onto the terrace in the murky pitch black, no beautiful stars to see tonight. At 5am you’re rewarded with a seven hour long sleep; and then whole routine starts all over again with your shift pattern moved forward by one.

You’ll follow this routine relentlessly for at least the next 21 days. In between all of this you do some sailing, on your roof terrace, of course!