Race 2 - Day 4
Crew Diary - Race 2 Day 4
27 September

We have left Puerto Sherry behind and have just passed the Canary Islands heading towards perhaps our first Scoring Gate above Cape Verde. Never thought I would write a sentence quite like that. But here we are, coasting over the swell, flying a delicate Spinnaker in a physics-defying feat.

Imagine a woman waving a white hankie out her window, but that hankie is roughly the size of a small building. And then attach that building-sized hankie to the front of your boat and you must keep it billowing out in front without collapsing it. Because if it collapses too much, all hell breaks loose. Nerve-wracking is one way to describe it.

The heat is rising, and the sky is a brilliant blue, reflecting in the ocean. We are often visited by dolphins. This morning at dawn I rode on the bow with a huge pod flicking through the waves. There were even babies swimming alongside.

Life is very good here on the high seas, even when it is hard. This is our fifth day with roughly 25 to go and life is settling on the boat. The green monster didn’t visit quite so many of us this time thankfully and we are beginning to find our rhythm once again. Night watches are about star gazing and stories shared. Meals are the time for laughter and a chance to see our opposite watch crew if only for a moment. We rotate through four and six-hour watches sleeping roughly for two and four hour stints each time, each drifting through the liminal spaces between dreaming and awake, waiting for the call to start our watch. We had some more of the old pounding waves at 45 degrees for the first couple of days which is challenging on many levels, and I have more bruises to add to my tally but overall, we are finding our stride and enjoying life on our not so wee ocean-going vessel.

This truly is a race of a lifetime. Where else would one get to pounce on sails of white, wrangling them to the deck, tying them down, and then jumping up to raise another into the wind, all the while cresting and surfing meters of swell? The feeling is like no other. Hard to put into words, but it fills the heart and soul and makes room for more and more and more.