Race 6 - Day 9
Crew Diary - Race 6 Day 9: Hobart to Whitsundays
14 January

Last night took an unexpected turn. I was called on deck to assist with a sail change, namely taking out the Yankee 1, as a storm was approaching and the conditions were expected to deteriorate. Well, between cleaning the heads and getting wet doing sailing, I will always go for the second option. A team of 5 of us went to the bow, and I jumped on the bow with Nic to undo the hanks of that bad boy after a textbook drop. The sea was starting to deteriorate and the boat was slamming down increasingly big waves while the warm sea water was flooding on us, the bolts of lightning of the approaching storm illuminating the backdrop. Quite exhilarating.

A wave, however, that was quite above average and sent us flying in the air for a very, very long 10 seconds (think amusement park mountain ride sort of feeling). When it slammed down again, my head decided to give the forestay a lesson for being such a difficult work colleague and headbutted with all its strength a la Zinedine Zidane. Despite all you can hear about French persons being strong headed, we ended up with a very clear Forestay 1 - Anne-Lise 0, and I ended up being rapidly, safely and efficiently repatriated down below for a laceration above my right eye.

The downside of not being able to look at your own injury is that you have to rely on fellow crew members' facial expressions when they see it to gauge the extent of the damage. Since everybody was either avoiding eye contact after initial sighting or raising their eyebrow in both surprise and connoisseur appreciation, I started to appreciate that a plaster was maybe not the easy way out. Our medic and our first mate started foraging the medic supply for steristrip but it turned out my eyebrow was too hairy and too sweaty for them to hold on. So much for skipping a proper eyebrow threading in Hobart... After 30 minutes of attempt, and the boat now hove to (apologies to Race Viewer followers for this slight detour), I caught from the corner of my working eye the skipper trying stitches on an orange (I certainly hope my skin looks different to that of an orange - at least on my face!). Not a good omen. I was put on the low side of the galley (basically in the kitchen bench), given some analgesic and was given the opportunity to listen to the interesting debate between the Boss stitching me up and the medic assisting him.

Extracts:

"You should go from bottom to top, like that, once you feel the second layer of skin (*who knew I had more than one layer*), you can pull it back and hopefully (*hopefully!*) that should close the gap"

"Shall we redo the middle one, looks a bit displaced now after the very neat one that we just did" (they did redo 2 of them)

The dressing was done then very neatly, in a Pirate fashion on purpose, around my head and covering partially my right eye. I feel I have earned the right to "Arrrrrh" anyone on the street and the sea! I am now confined down below, getting bored to death, and starting to feel like a chicken being slowly steam cooked in a sauce of sunscreen, antiseptic and sweat, hence the length of this blog!

PS for family and friends: all good, but I won't get free cosmetic surgery this time around, dammit!