What a crazy week! Straight from work to the boat and then straight out sailing the next morning - busy busy.
The delivery was a lot more relaxed than training, as we were in watches the whole time and not doing lots of drills just for the sake of it. Having said that, we sailed so quickly in the first St few days we would've been about 2 days early so we spent a lot of time pootling around Dublin bay and the Isle of Man running a couple of drills and working on our lines and improving our seamanship (I am now a queen of whipping (lines)!)
Some highlights:
- Dolphins playing on the bow and Roy trying to train them with a banana in his pj's
- Having Sunday pancakes with nutella (thanks David L!)
- Getting more confident in my knowledge and instincts, especially at night
Some low points:
- Getting seasick for two days and feeling so miserable I was thinking about quitting the whole thing and not sailing to Uruguay. Luckily when the seasickness faded my spirits lifted, which was definitely helped by some of my crewmates saying they'd had similar feelings themselves
- Trying to cook fish and chips in the terrible Clipper ovens - there just isn't enough room (or heat) for 19 portions!
Final prep in Liverpool has been pretty full on but a great experience. I think it'll pay off too - our seamanship is definitely up there, with our bilges being complemented as the best in the fleet by the maintenance guys, and our new Kemp Method for milking lines (patent pending ;-)) has given way more effective results than any of the other boats. Our dedication as a team is really high as well - we started the deep clean before 8am after partying late on arrival when the other boats didn't start for quite a while after us, and we've started earlier every day all week. The team is really gelling too which is great, and we had an awesome mass crew dinner last night with 40 of us and our friends and family.
A calm-ish day today and tomorrow with family before setting sail on Sunday - watch this space, as my next update will be from the boat!!
No comments:
Post a Comment