Thursday 21st November: The dream is over
Daw
Sat 23 Nov 2019 19:17
Having largely finished my kitchen duties I met the boys for lunch on Tuesday.. It had been raining and Peter shared that he had fallen off his bike. He played it down but when he got up to leave the table, it was clear that all was not well, he was lumping and felt feint. His condition got progressively worse and he had to attend the local clinic on Wednesday evening for an MRI.
During the course of Wednesday Dan, the fourth member of our crew had arrived as had all of the crew's wives (well, all of those with wives!)
There are about 200 boats in the ARC and the organisers have a lively social programme which involves sundowners most evenings and on Wednesday they had planned a big fancy dress party "Once upon a time" was the theme and we had decided at one of our crew dinners in the UK that we'd go as the 7 dwarves. Dopey was notable by his absence. He called when we were at dinner and told us that they were keeping him in overnight and the prognosis was not good, of course Peter's wife Val went to the hospital to be with him and the 5 remaining dwarves dragged themselves to the party. As it slowly dawned on each one of us that it seemed increasingly unlikely that our skipper and therefore our boat would be going nowhere, one by one we quickly realised that a celebration party for crews about to depart on an ocean voyage was not the place for a crew about to embark on an easyjet flight back to the UK. We didn't hang about at the party for long but retired to a quiet bar where we could drown our sorrows.
Our fears were confirmed the following lunchtime when Peter was released and shared the devastating news for both he and all of us that despite planning for 3 years to take his bot across, his ARC was over.
The 3 of us considered our options, limited though we knew they would be 2 days out from departure. There are options though, the simple one being to join one of the charter boats, commercial set ups that charge anything up to £6,000 to cross. The other option is that you can go up and down the pontoons, share your story and maybe get lucky...There are loads of sailors out here doing that. We have been watching Pietro with interest over the last week as he engages skippers and crews in conversation. Pietro is wearing a sandwich board declaring his willingness to cross, and declaiming that he is Yachtmaster offshore qualified.. He seems like a personable chap, unlikely to cut a crew into small pieces ( but you never know!).
The other 2 guys ( more experienced and more qualified sailors than I) decided that they would start to look into the options to get across by touting themselves around the yachts and trying to find a ride. I, not so qualified as them and not prepared to pay the hefty sums of a charter resign myself to going home. I cannot tell you the abject disappointment I felt that my dream was over and that I would have to return to the UK. My personal circumstances have been complicated this year and I have found myself living alone for the first time in 20+ years... I try to be positive and of course this is helped by having something to look forward to.. My ARC adventure has gone a long way to fulfilling this brief since the end of December last year when I decided I was going to do the ARC and to help me with this commitment I booked a non-changeable one-way flight back from the Caribbean for this coming December!
I don't have the words to tell you the feeling of abject loss that enveloped me when I realised that I wasn't going...The emotional investment involved in an endeavour such as this, the time spent getting to know the skipper, the crew, the boat was all wasted. On top of that I was returning to the UK at a time of year that I didn't really want to be there and when I knew that I would not have been able to spend Christmas with my loved ones.It fey unbearable. I went up to the bow of Xplorer, lay down in the afternoon sun and fell into a welcome sleep
OK so a quick update. It has been a bizzare week, to say the least. I have come to expect sailing to not always go to plan, but this is next level. I arrived back in Gran Canaria last Saturday evening full of enthusiasm for the adventure ahead. Peter, Richard and I assembled on Xplorer and we all had a plan for getting the boat ready over the next week . My responsibility was for victualling the boat (provisioning for the non-sailors amongst you) I have spent far more time than you can imagine working with Peter's experience of the last ARC in 2016 and his experience of where we can actually store stuff on the boat. I have written a menu plan for 21 days and allowed for contingencies (such as freezer/fridge/gas failure) and additional emergency rations. I then converted that into an ingredient list and a detailed plan atwhich points we need to have stuff delivered to the boat, as well as establishing how much water we need to store on the boat for consumption during our trip, sev3rql shopping lists and purchasing particular items in the UK and shipping them out to Las Palmas. and I had a robust plan which involved several supermarket trips throughout the week. On top of my individual responsibilities, we as a crew had to finalise the inevitable boat jobs and ready Xplorer for her ocean voyage. I spent Sunday afternoon, Monday and Tuesday cooking and freezing 10 meals for 4 people. A task I relished and thoroughly enjoyed.
Having largely finished my kitchen duties I met the boys for lunch on Tuesday.. It had been raining and Peter shared that he had fallen of his bike. He played it down but when he got up to leave the table, it was clear that all was not well, he was lumping and felt feint. His condition got progressively worse and he had to attend the local clinic on Wednesday evening for an MRI.
During the course of Wednesday Dan, the fourth member of our crew had arrived as had all of the crew's wives (well, all of those with wives!)
There are about 200 boats in the ARC and the organisers have a lively social programme which involves sundowners most evenings and on Wednesday they had planned a big fancy dress party "Once upon a time" was the theme and we had decided at one of our crew dinners in the UK that we'd go as the 7 dwarves. Dopey was notable by his absence. He called when we were at dinner and told us that they were keeping him in overnight and the prognosis was not good, of course Peters wife Val went to the hospital and the 5 remaining dwarves dragged themselves to the party. As it slowly dawned on each one of us that it seemed increasingly unlikely that our skipper and therefore our boat would be going nowhere, one by one we quickly realised that a celebration party for crews about to depart on an ocean voyage was not the place for a crew about to embark on an easyjet flight back to the UK.We didn't hang about at the party for long but retired to a quiet bar where we could drown our sorrows.
Our fears were confirmed the following lunchtime when Peter was released and shared the devastating news for both he and all of us that despite planning for 3 years to take his bot across, his ARC was over.
The 3 of us considered our options, limited though we knew they would be 2 days out from departure. There are options though, the simple one being to join one of the charter boats, commercial set ups that charge anytging up to £6,000 to cross. The other option is that you can go up and down the pontoons, share your story and maybe get lucky...There are loads of sailors out here doing that. We have been watching Pietro with interest over the last week as he engages skippers and crews in conversation. Pietro is wearing a sandwich board declaring his willingness to cross, and declaiming that he is Yachtmaster offshore qualified.. He seems like a personable chap, unlikely to cut a crew into small pieces ( but you never know!).
The other 2 guys decided that they would start to look into the options to get across by touting themselves around the yachts and trying to find a ride. I, not so qualified as them and not prepared to pay the hefty sums of a charter resign myself to going home. I cannot tell you the abject disappointment I felt that my dream was over and that I would have to return to the UK. My personal circumstances have been complicated this year and I have found myself living alone for the first time in 20+ years... I try to be positive and of course this is helped by having something to look forward to.. My ARC adventure has gone a long way to fulfilling this brief since the end of December last year when I decided I was going to do the ARC and to help me with this commitment I booked a non-changeable one way flight back from the Caribbean for this coming December!
I don't have the words to tell you the feeling of abject loss that enveloped me when I realised that I wasn't going.. I went up to the bow of Xplorer, lay down in the afternoon sun and fell into a sleep I hoped I wouldn't wake up from.
D (not quite) on the C