Sailing through the Doldrums

Since my last email, life has continued to be good to us. We steadily made way through the fleet, reaching 3rd place at some point. We are solidly in the lead group with Gosh ahead. The boat is doing very well and we as a team are more and more coming together. The manoeuvres that were so daunting 2 weeks ago are becoming smooth and better oiled (not yet instinctive, but getting there).

The weather remains super hot and we entered the doldrums yesterday. The way it work in our race is that there is a doldrums’ corridor of 10 degrees of latitude which corresponds to the area where usually there is not wind at all. Within this corridor, we can motor for 6 degrees of latitude or 240 miles south. To ensure no one blows their engine going too fast, we have to motor at least 60 hours for this distance or 6 knots if going this south or a bit more is going southeast or southwest. This race rule is designed to avoid yachts getting stuck for days or weeks trying to go thru the doldrums.

As a result, we use the motoring time to rest more (we just need 3 people to man the boat at any time), clean, fix, relax. It would be grand if it was not so hot and damp but at least we can spend most of your time on deck where the breeze is nice.

The sky in the doldrums is fantastic: cumulus white clouds running to the infinite starting so low as to touch the horizon and growing up in cotton white columns; contract of all this pure white against a pure blue sky all above a calm sea everywhere of a deep blue shade. Incredible sunsets and sunrises with kaleidoscope of orange, red, yellow hues exploding thru the clouds. It is a really a magical place. I will share photos when I reach Punta.

Life on board is now becoming a well oiled routine. Go to bed, sleep 3 hours, wake up, eat, go on watch duty, get off, eat, go to bed, repeat. Most of us though need some extra sleep. The mate and skipper who basically often do short naps and check stuff, but also us crew members, watch leaders or not. Sleep is often of bad quality: There is always a lot of noise in deck (for example the primary winch on which we trim the spinnaker, which basically is a non stop process, lies literally above my head when I am in my bunk, so I feel like I sleep inside a gearbox), it is damn hot inside (our base temp is now 35 up from 31 degree in my last message).

You will understand why I am longing for my shower later today. Shower is basically standing on deck with a bucket of sea water and a cup of fresh water: use sea water for washing and removing soap, then remove salt with fresh water, then dry yourself with a towel. Then put on dry clothes and enjoy a few hours of bliss!

Talking about my bunk, let me explain how this works: I share a bunk with Sven who is in the other watch. We have three large cubby holes to store our stuff on the side of the bunk. We use one each which are reasonably waterproof (still everything we put in there is in dry bags), and ignore the third one which leaks all the time and is a permanent pool.

The bunk itself is one of the highest in the boat: We are on the top bunk of port (left) side and the one most to the back of the boat. When the boat is flat, the bunk level is about 1.7m from the floor. But when the boat is heeled 45 degrees, we have to incline the bunk to keep it somehow flat (otherwise we would roll out of it) using a pulley system. That brings the bunk to about 2 m high. Then because of the hello g and the fact that these bait are shaped like a triangle with a very wide aft section, we have to climb from the opposite side of the companion way which is where we stand. All in all that about 2.2 m. So the technique is as follows.

1. Put left foot on a lower bunk.

2. Launch yourself up as to grab the opening of the middle cubby hole behind the bunk with your right hand.

3. Throw your right leg up to roll along the side of the bunk.

4. Land on your back on the mattress and quickly fasten the Lee cloth before being thrown out by the next tool of the boat (the Lee cloth is a piece of solid fabric we raise on the open side of the bunk to act as a coffin so we can’t roll out and fall all the way down.

Well, the first few days coming up and down this bunk used to be quite the ordeal. But now I do not even think about it. So yea we are getting used to this life at sea.

The past few days, we have been sailing through flying fish waters. You could see them everywhere and they kept on landing on deck. I was keen on trying to filet them, but the skipper has something against them and we were throwing them back in the sea as soon as possible. Somehow they still managed to get in the galley, the sail locker , in the sails on deck where they dry and stink…

Another few days of this and we should exit the doldrums, catch some wind to the equator. And hopefully then start our long way southwest to Uruguay.

Goodbye for the time being

Henri