Oscars blog
Global Yacht Racing's EH01
Global Yacht Racing - sponsors: Caspian Services
Tue 10 Dec 2013 18:23
We have had an interesting start to the ARC 2013 with a squall system coming straight into our path to allow us to remember what the folks at home are experiencing. We had the continuous drizzle with the odd bout of heavy showers for 4 days on the run. To say the least our foulies were drenched. One night we heard the dreaded words you don't want to hear from an experienced skipper such as Andy, "I've never had rain like this before". It was pouring it down to the point of struggling to be able to get a breath in, though this was going on we kept our hopes high. Even if Andy and I did resort to rocking backward and forward mumbling 'are we there yet?' repeatedly before shouting 'Alan, Alan' which always ended with a chorus of laughter.
Though this did pass over eventually to herald a new stage of the trip. The first morning of sun we caught a wahooooo fish plus were able to dry out both our bodies and foulies for the first time in years it felt like. Gareth wrestled the fish before handing it over to the professional fileter from Russia by the name of Sergei. He amazingly fileted it to which Gareth then steps back in to sashimi it up for us with a bowl of soya as well. Incredible food.
8 days go by with amazing sunrise after amazing sunset. We then hit our second spell of no wind which results in us dropping the main and head sail because of continuous spinning around (thanks to me) and the car falling out of the main track. Another moment on the trip where you hear the words from the skipper again ' I've never had to do this before' not looking good and we spend the next day of the trip sailing back and forth down a strip of water in the Atlantic getting a total of 5 miles towards our destination in a 5 hour bracket. Me and Andy had resort back to the original plan of rocking back and forth before a mega yacht on the horizon takes our notice coming across our bow we hold our course. As he starts to come across us a mile or so ahead we notice he is slowing down until stopping right in front of us. As we have been at sea for 2 weeks already we start assuming the obvious which is that it is a yacht full hooters girl and is going to offer us unlimited Gin and Tonics all round. Then reality hits and we see they just pulled up for a swim. Then as we tack round and have a special visitor in the shape of a 40 ft. pilot whale which comes following behind the boat. More major excitement before he gets bored of us and leaves for the stink pot.
We are now only 550 miles away trucking along at a rate of knots. I did hold the speed record for the journey before obviously Gareth had to take my score of 15.7 kts to 0.1 higher. Typical. Though I shall not complain because the sun is shining with a nice 28 degree heat and we have a 4-5 metre swell following plus 20-25 kts of wind behind us. At last.
This is Oscar the Trainee (the one from Manchester)
P.S. looking forward to a few quiet nights in when we get to St. Lucia.