Water Water Everywhere
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Good
morning Ula fans. Here is the 6th mate (Howard) again, blogging from
18 deg north latitude. I would like to report it is nice and sunny today but
actually the sky is full of cloud with the odd rain squall on the horizon but,
hey, who cares when it is 30 degrees warm ! Returning to my last theme of life aboard an ocean going
yacht there is plenty of time to think while steering the yacht (which each crew
member does for an average of 4 hours per day). While steering at night I
recalled part of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, which goes something like
this: ‘Water water everywhere nor any drop to
drink, Water water everywhere and all the boards
did shrink, The very deep did rot, Oh Christ, that
ever this could be Yea, slimy things with legs did crawl
upon a slimy sea’ OK,
well I don’t want to over dramatize the situation on board our happy
vessel. We
can forget about the part about shrinking boards (even though Ula is a French
built yacht we only seem to get the odd creak when sailing above 8 knots).
Similarly, the only slimy things which might end up in the sea have been
mentioned in a couple of previous blogs and I don’t wish to add further
suffering and embarrassment to the crew member
involved. But
the part about water is worth commenting on. Technology has advanced since the
times of the ancient mariner. He would not have had to endure such misery on his
long voyage had is vessel been fitted with a reverse osmosis water maker like we
have on Ula. However, if you are under the impression that with this
device we are all able to enjoy 10 minutes under the shower every day (or even
at all), I want to put the record straight on that. Fresh water is the stuff of
life aboard a long distance sailing vessel but how much do you need? Ula has water tanks carrying 600 litres.
That may sound like a lot but if you reckon each person uses somewhere could use
6- 10 litres per day (drinking, cooking, washing up, bathroom washing) we would
not have water for our voyage. Our wise captain is using the watermaker to keep
Ula’s freshwater tanks topped up. The water maker runs for about 2 hours per day
and produces about 50-60 litres, enough to keep up with our daily needs but only
if we are sensible about using water. To give you an idea what this means for
the crew try this simple experiment back home. Take a half liter water bottle
and empty it into your wash basin. It doesn’t look much does it. Now use that
water to wash your hair and all over your body. You can use another half liter
for rinsing off but that’s all you get (don’t go off into the office after this
experiment though). Only by adopting measures like this can we be sure to keep
our water usage under control and that’s even with a
watermaker. Well
now its time for more crew awards: ‘Local Hero Award’ – goes to our skipper for organizing a
moonlit film show in the cockpit yesterday evening during a couple of hours of
light winds (the film was Local Hero!) ‘Obscure Composer’s Award’ – to Andy for displaying his
encyclopaedic knowledge of the names of composers of church music during our
night-time watch word games. ‘Bit by bit’ award – to Andrew for achieving a 3 cm reduction in his girth measurement following the virtual cessation of alcohol intake in the last week. Jackie is doing the measurements which will continue so there can be no fiddling of the results Thanks Howard
Note from the skipper. The wind is really light at the moment as several small lows have developed in the Atlantic down here disrupting the trades. We went south to avoid much of these and to try and keep the breeze. Plan has worked so far although we are about a day behind the schedule. There looks to be a forecast of returning trades tomorrow which means we should pick up speed from the 125 miles a day to 150. We now have approx 1660 miles to go so we are not counting at the moment. John |