06/06 LIFE AT SEA

It is as you imagine. Amazing sun, wind in your hair, sunscreen smells and good food. Tons of stars in the sky almost as many as there are fish in the sea and an amazing amount of dolphins too. All in all it amounts to that serene picture that jumps into your head when someone says 'yacht', that's exactly it! Awesome sun rises and sets.
Cool flying fish and glassy waters... My legs are finally the same colour as my arms and do not have a boot line.

Days are spent fishing, chasing patches of shade cast by our sails, divided by meals and a mandatory water fight while washing dishes. We read a whole bunch and stop for a swim 'bout every day. I learnt a new knot or two. The 'trucker's hitch' is the coolest. Others are a 'sheep something', an anchor knot and a noose! Creativity is certainly flowing but not quite as I’m used to. It's mostly put to use in keeping Div and I occupied and fashioning outdoor plumbing out of “valpre” bottles, PVC piping and cable ties! Divvie is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to all things mechanical and somewhat of a MacGyver. He'll have me servicing this engine in no time. HA HA HA!

Mostly, things are... wonderfully uneventful really. Oh, and every now and then we set the sails... As we become more familiar with our vessel and team, we are able to push it. Our top speed thus far is 18.1kts (Div nearly pitch poled us setting that record!) and we average 140nm in 24hrs. There's not much else in way of a challenge so we race each other as each gets a 3 hr shift to helm.

The spinnaker is our biggest and most impressive sail - the big poufy one you always see when boats are racing. It has this sock over it as you hoist it and when ready you let go to set the bag free. It has this hoop around the bottom, for smoother handling, making it look like a giant condom (sorry, I had to). Anyhow, so we generally just let her fly and as the wind fills the bag the hoop goes shooting to the top. The speed of this is enough to cause so much friction that it had gone and melted its own ring! Couple days later, when and the ragged dripping plastic had set, it ripped a whole clear though the bag! Our resident tailor, Divvie, is patched the whole with duck tape and what looks like dental floss. Oh the fun and games were not over yet! We blew that bag to smithereens!!! It was a spectacular sight seeing the biggest sail we have, tear in half like tissue paper and flutter down into the water.
After retrieving all the bits and diving to free the prop we discovered Divvies patch job still in tact! That's obviously not where the trouble started. We're stumped and poor Johann is R30 000 out of pocket. Figured it was going to be slow sailing from there! But we've been doing fine.
We've had good winds and are making good time.

Shift work is fine. In general, we work one; sleep; work another; have 'day time'; work one; sleep and so on. We work 3hr15 shifts which means with every 12hr rotation your shift moves up an hour. After a week or so it throws your day/night out a bit... so you sleep twice - no biggy.
What is weird though is to keep us from stuffing this all up (and the log book) we run on SA time. As we sail west, so the sun changes.
Although this morning I got to sleep late and only started shift at 9am.
It was still dark and the sun only rose at 12h15!

I am intensely aware of 'van lekker lag, kom lekker huil'. That I guess is the toughest. Although I love a heated debate and a rip roaring laugh as much as the next (all in moderation). Nicole and Div are forever playing around. They're forever insulting and wrestling and flicking each other with dish cloths... It's all fun and games now, 'til someone loses an eye! I'm staying out of it. Johann is like the 'dad' and I'm...well, you all know me!

The boat's email addy is mailto:johannspies@SkyFile.com’ (no longer active) should you feel inclined to say Hi. Bare in mind I have zero outside stimulation and we wait on email days like prisoners for pudding! And as there is strictly no pictures I’m hanging on every word.... So, what have you poor people been up to?

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