There are so many things that happened this week, so I will briefly mention a few. Qingdao has been in the leading position since it set sail. Except for a brief period of being left behind, it has been in the first place. This makes everyone very excited. We have now passed through the waters of San Francisco and are heading towards Los Angeles, we should be able to enter the Mexican waters soon in the next few days. (I woke up this morning and was told that we had entered Mexico). The wet and cold weather will finally come to an end, and there is a high probability that we will start to enjoy warm sea time.
Everything feels like a dream, maybe one second, you are still training in the icy English Channel, and then the next second you are racing with ten other boats in the even colder Pacific Ocean, and then maybe this moment we were still working on the deck in the strong wind and waves, but the next second it was the sunshine after the calm sea. After sailing against the wind for about three days after setting off, we are now sailing downwind, so we can at least have a good sleep.
When Andrew and I were working on the deck in the morning, the two of us looked at the Chinese flag on the main sail above our heads and the American flag hanging on the shroud. We thought we should take a photo of this scene. After all, it was a British company’s ship. It is still rare to see a ship flying the Chinese flag sailing in U.S. territorial waters.
The night before yesterday, I was changing sails on the foredeck in a wind of more than 40 knots. I felt so sore that I doubted my life. The overwhelming waves rolled up and hit me with rainwater. The dark night and white waves felt like they were going to suck me into the bottomless depths. In the ocean, there are countless fluorescent marine creatures in the rolling waves, glowing with green light. However, when I was working on the front deck against the waves for the second time yesterday, my adrenaline hormones showed up, and I just felt excited and stimulated.
After seeing the water vapor of whales from a distance for several days in a row, I finally saw a huge whale yesterday. It was less than 5 meters away from the port side of our boat. There was a huge sound of jets and water vapor, and the huge gray body went from floating to sinking, this was the luckiest thing that happened to me on duty. It is said that after entering Mexico, you will see more marine life and migrating whales. This is really an exciting thing for me. Watch Leader Zack has been talking about Jelly Fish and I have heard him shout for it several times, but I didn’t see any of them.
For the first two or three days since Race Start, we could still see other racing teams within our sight, well in the past few days, our sight was basically only with the vast sea. This morning in the morning light, we saw a boat very far away from us, a cargo ship appeared in the distance, and no other boats were seen passing by.
In fact, there is no concept of time in sailing. Every day, we split time between deck, sleep, cook, and watch according to a fixed schedule. The time points of the day and date begin to blur. At sunset yesterday, Gio sat cross-legged on the deck like a Buddha and held his head against the sun in the distance. At sunset, I asked him what he was thinking about, and he said it might be the universe.
In the past two days, everyone has recovered from seasickness. From the first day to the third and four days since departure, everyone felt that they were in a state of seasickness. Every day when they woke up and went on the deck, everyone asked each other was: are you feeling okay? The other person’s expression was basically that he/she was still vomiting before he/she finished vomiting and kept vomiting for two days. In these two days, he returned to his normal state. He should eat and drink.
Mr. Tian has recovered from seasickness in the past two days. I have been looking at him the past two days and thinking, why did you go through this? The two of them cooked a pot of mushroom and white porridge and put it in a thermos. Won't eat this.
Watch Leader Zack asked me every day if I had finished writing my blog, and today, he was leaning at the door of the head with a beef stick, staring at me, "Have you seen my Coke?" I said that I had finished drinking it on the shore. He said, "You really don't know how to enjoy life, Xiao Shi." I plan to refill a box of Coke for him first thing when we arrive in Panama.