I woke up at 04.45 feeling grumpy, I had been dreaming that somehow it was not really necessary to be doing watches, and that it was just some peculiarity of John’s that was forcing me to wake up after four hours sleep for my next watch. During the night John, Caroline and I have been standing two hour watches each, which give us four hours off at a time, so I really had not much to grumble about. 

I should explain that my name is Ben Collett and I had been invited by John and Caroline to join them for the leg from Vigo to the Azores.  Normally I am responsible for building the yachts at Discovery rather than crossing oceans on them, but now I was struggling into my mid layer, waterproofs and leather wellies ready to relieve Caroline and take my turn on deck.  I have yet to get my head round the concept of standing watch in the saloon, but John has completely mastered sailing inside, there have been moments when I, resplendent in full offshore kit, have bumped into an off-watch John wearing a paisley dressing gown and slippers!  Tonight though John was fast asleep, I had left him on my last watch with a star filled sky and I returned to find the night was now as black as the Berghaus hat that I pulled onto my head as I stepped into the cockpit.  Caroline gave me a briefing, “it’s very dark, cold, raining and the wind has been up to 27 knots but the wind has died back now” and then she was gone, pleased for the chance to get into a warm bed.

I plonked myself down at the helm, sheltered under the bimini and checked the plotter, nothing on AIS.  I turned on the radar, again nothing.  When you first sit at the helm in its elevated position, you feel a bit like Montgomery, perched in the turret of a tank before some famous battle.  In fact you feel very secure, as one would expect all the sail control as are all to hand and the visibility is normally great.  Tonight you could see nothing, the night was as black as a black thing in a bad mood.  The breeze was down under 20 knots, just aft of the beam and the rain had stopped, so I rolled back the bimini over my head and turned my torch on to the sails, both of which were well reefed.  The ST60’s show we are doing a little over seven knots - time for more genoa, and a few seconds later, the full sail is unfurled. We have an outboard lead rigged on the genoa and I had to stir myself from the helm to go back to the traveller winch to wind it on. And now the genoa is set properly and as the wind gusted, the boat stirred, the pedal has gone to the metal, and Discovery Magic accelerates with the ease of a Bentley, generating effortless power.  Suddenly the afterburners were on, for as I looked backwards to our wakes, rising like rooster tails behind us, they became filled with light as the plankton phosphoresced in response to our passing. Boat speed was now into double figures, climbing as far as 13 knots plus, and slowing as the gusts passed. 

I started to grin, as we hurtled into the dark.  The boat loved it, and I loved it too.  For two hours I had a manic grin as we went fast forward across the ocean, nine miles in the first hour and ten in the second.  The breeze would drop to 16 knots and rise again to 24 and each time it gusted our cat was unleashed.  This was what it’s about.  I was enjoying the speed and the power, but I was also enjoying the effortless way the power was delivered, I wasn’t tweaking bits of string, trying to wrestle every last iota of speed as I would on a race boat.  I was on my own, in the pitch dark at double digit speeds, in an Atlantic swell, secure in the knowledge that the boat would look after me. 

All too soon it was time to wake John, who emerged wearing a pair of smart stone trousers (which I swear still had a ironed crease down the front) and muttering as he looked at the speed that he now knew what it was like to sail an Open 60.  I am afraid I could not see the similarities.  I refrained from commenting on how difficult it was to wake him from where he was snuggled under the duvet, or reminding him that we had sat down to supper the night before to a dish of pork marinated in a white wine and mushroom sauce that Caroline had knocked up that afternoon, followed by bread and butter pudding.  John had sat at the saloon table, spread out his napkin that had been secured in a silver napkin ring, and realising that the wine bottle Caroline had passed him was on the low side, he had started to worry whether there was another Sauvignon already chilled in the fridge.  Luckily the crisis was averted when another chilled bottle was produced, although John did comment that he felt that there was not as much gooseberry tones as in the first bottle. All in all I felt that we were not having the same experience at all as an Open 60, quite apart from the fact that I have yet to see an Open 60 with an occasional lamp and a fish sculpture – let alone ones that are not bolted down.  Anyway John asked me how much sail we had out, and raised a quizzical eyebrow when I admitted to a full genoa.  I briefly lied under interrogation about my top speed and turned in to bed.  As my head hit the pillow I could just here the sounds of the genoa being reefed in again, and the cat purred along at a steadier 8 knots.

We have had consistently easy runs of 200 miles a day, whilst we have chatted, read, looked for dolphins, admired the stars, eaten splendid meals, sent emails and put the worlds to rights, but someday soon a Discovery 50 is going to log 220 or 230 mile days without breaking into a sweat at all.