Baleen
Panatlantic
Sun 30 Dec 2007 13:05
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Dear Bloggees (the people for whom one
blogs),
i trust this finds you merrily fattening yourselves
up for the coming months, full to the brim with fine food and ales and bristling
with the thrill of the season.
It's 1pm here, and James and i have just come out
of our most satisfying 24 hours in some time, having had our best night of
mileage yet. We are still at the mercy of these dastardly southerly winds,
though we have been the object of some serious flirting from the easterlies this
morning:
"Hey boys, mmmhmmm, you look all muscular there
boys, wow!"
"Yeeeeeess! Why thank you madam, and how does today
find you, as breezy and full of life as ever i trust?
"Why don't you come over to the South West with me
and i'll show you!"
This kind of outrageous flirtation naturally gets
our tongues wagging and we start to dream of 70 mile days.
But No! Every time she flicks us a saucy glance
that darned southerly pops back again and chastises her:
"Stop that Miss Easterly, that is quite enough of
that, get back to your room and put some decent clothes on! Right boys, you're
coming away up north with me!"
And so the battle with the winds continues! But
given time, Miss Easterly shall prevail, and we will be whisked away to the
south west as fast as our arms can take us! We had one good morning of
easterlies on Boxing Day, and have spent the following 4 days unable to row
where we need to at the rate we need to.
There are probably a few reasons for our increase
in speed over the past 24 hours: We cleaned the hull again; we appear to have
picked up a current where we had none for the previous few days; and the
southerlies have calmed a little meaning that we can steer more to the south
than before. But also this: we are rowing harder.
"What!!" i hear you cry! It's true, we have started
to row harder. Yesterday Rachel sent us an email suggesting as politely as
possible that the reason we had stopped catching everyone, indeed the reason
people were now pulling away from us days after we caught them, may not be soley
due to the inclement weather conditions that we have (we have) been
experiencing. It might just be that the other boats are rowing harder than
us!
"Pish! Perish the thought!"
But then i thought about it for a while. Neither of
us have been suffering from muscle pains, not that we did much during our
training or during the million metres world record, but one would still expect
to be a little tired. We both head out to our shift and row our bit then pop
back in here as if nothing had happened. Now we are here to get across, that is
the most monumental challenge in itself, one that has been completed by under
160 boats in history, but we don't like seeing people do better than us and if
we can do something about it then we should. So after a bit of introspection we
decided that maybe, just maybe, she was right: maybe we aren't rowing very hard!
So! We changed our ways from yesterday afternoon. Once again i began to get
that post-exertion buzz that one gets after a good session, and indeed i came in
from each of my 6 night shifts with quite a sweat on. We roared through the
night and will continue to do so until Antigua. Now if only those bloody trade
winds would kick in!
Yesterday, as James mentioned, we saw a whale. I
wasn't able to get a good look at its face but it appeared to me to be a right
whale. Right whales, like many others including humpback and blue whales
feed by taking in great mouthfulls of water and then squeezing all the water out
again so that it passes through a number of baleen plates: essentially giant
sieves made of hair. All the water returns to the sea from whence it came, minus
all of the millions of plankton, krill and fish etc that was gaily floating
around in there but a few seconds before. Prior to coming out here i had
planned on supplementing our otherwise highly boring diet by using my moustache
as a makeshift baleen plate. I predicted that we would be able
to add 3000kcal per day to our meals through the plankton, krill and
baby turtles that i sieved out of the water. If i let my moustache grow to a
sufficient length to cover my bottom lip, all i needed to do was to imbibe a
huge mouthful of water, curl my lip in on itself and squeeze all the water out
again. My calculation was, however, fundamentally flawed! I forgot to take in to
account the fact that our bodies would react to 24hour/day exertion by directing
all available resources to the muscles and vital organs, and neglect less
important appendages such as ones hair, nails and teeth. I have twice cracked
one of my incisors already, not badly luckily, but still!; our nails have only
required cutting once in nearly 4 weeks, when normally they would require a
weekly trim, and our beards have stopped growing at the rate at which they
started out in life. I have once before grown my beard for 4 weeks and was able
to chew my moustache after 3, which i still cannot do here, meaning that we have
to go without krill and baby turtles for the duration.
Our nutritional programme was devised by the
most excellent Jeni Pearce, of considerable repute in the rowing world.
Without her advice we would not have broken the million metre world record
by nearly so much, if at all, and we turned again to her for this trip. We are
very happy with our nutrition out here, the only things we feel we are missing
are the things lost by our couriers/customs. We would have replaced them in La
Gomera but for the fact that we were told that everything was going to arrive
the day before our departure, after much wrangling and shouting in spanglish at
useless customs officials. By the time our embarkation date came and the package
still hadn't arrived we were too rushed to stock up on the crisps and haribo
that were missing, but apart from them we are essentially happy with what we're
eating. Today, Saturday, is one of 2 pork scratching days we have a week,
therefore is James' favourite day of all!
Right, well it's nearly time for me to get back on
the oars and beast myself, so i'd better take on a few calories before i do
that. Until New Year's Eve, when i shall next join you, have a lovely
weekend.
Niall
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