Leg 6 Race 8 Day 3, Thurs April 22nd
Posted by Della Parsons on Monday, April 26, 2010
Leg 6 Race 8 Day 3, Thurs April 22nd
Today is my final day of 3 mother watches on the trot. I'm looking forward to being able to work with a co-mother at last and be able to give a bit more time to the engineer role. The problem with eagerly anticipating something is that you're frequently let down. This morning was no exception. Cara arrive bright and an hour early for her watch. She was one of the crew who had been ill but had also shown great signs of recovery later. She looked fine this morning, she sounded fine this morning and then she threw up beautifully all over the ladies heads. I think some of it may have landed in the loo, but most went all over the surrounding area, walls and floor. With an impending sense of both doom and deja-vu, I send Cara back to bed and set about clearing up another pool of sick and looking forward to another day of solo galley effort.
However the rest of the crew rallied round today, sensing that enough was enough and Maggie stepped in to run lunch with me and later Mike rolled his sleeves up and helped out with supper. A few others got stuck into to emptying the bilges so doing the remaining bit of cleaning was a doddle! We are still making good progress with our course, we've kept good wind strength and also good boat speed and are confident we should be doing ok. However the scheds show that the other boats who have hugged the coast more, seem to also have retained decent wind and haven't had the lighter winds that the forecast had predicted. Justin remains confident that soon they'll get stuck and we'll pretty quickly zip our way up the fleet and the race standings. We know we've covered good miles so we are inclined to believe him and confidence remains high.
I've had enough of the galley by the day’s end. It's been a frustrating afternoon as the boat has been rolling from side to side, which means you stand no chance of wedging anything in. Every time you put something down or try to do the next thing, something else will topple over or spill, so you wipe it up and start all over again. It's like a form of torture! To top it all, the meal tonight is Kitchiri – a rice and lentil dish – not the kind of thing I would normally cook – so I was following a recipe to the letter. The only problem was that the rice had been on for 3 times longer than the recipe said and was still as hard as old boots! Luckily Justin plus 3 other would-be generator engineers were poring over the generator (now in bits) for the fourth time in 2 days trying to figure out why it was overheating – and so seemed blissfully unaware that supper was now half an hour late! I felt terrible as I was now holding the off watch-up – they couldn't go to bed until they'd eaten and would be getting up again in 3 hours time! Albert finally called time on the rice and declared it ok to serve – so it was duly dished up! Most people declared it delicious but I think they were just mostly pleased that they could finally go to bed!
Today is my final day of 3 mother watches on the trot. I'm looking forward to being able to work with a co-mother at last and be able to give a bit more time to the engineer role. The problem with eagerly anticipating something is that you're frequently let down. This morning was no exception. Cara arrive bright and an hour early for her watch. She was one of the crew who had been ill but had also shown great signs of recovery later. She looked fine this morning, she sounded fine this morning and then she threw up beautifully all over the ladies heads. I think some of it may have landed in the loo, but most went all over the surrounding area, walls and floor. With an impending sense of both doom and deja-vu, I send Cara back to bed and set about clearing up another pool of sick and looking forward to another day of solo galley effort.
However the rest of the crew rallied round today, sensing that enough was enough and Maggie stepped in to run lunch with me and later Mike rolled his sleeves up and helped out with supper. A few others got stuck into to emptying the bilges so doing the remaining bit of cleaning was a doddle! We are still making good progress with our course, we've kept good wind strength and also good boat speed and are confident we should be doing ok. However the scheds show that the other boats who have hugged the coast more, seem to also have retained decent wind and haven't had the lighter winds that the forecast had predicted. Justin remains confident that soon they'll get stuck and we'll pretty quickly zip our way up the fleet and the race standings. We know we've covered good miles so we are inclined to believe him and confidence remains high.
I've had enough of the galley by the day’s end. It's been a frustrating afternoon as the boat has been rolling from side to side, which means you stand no chance of wedging anything in. Every time you put something down or try to do the next thing, something else will topple over or spill, so you wipe it up and start all over again. It's like a form of torture! To top it all, the meal tonight is Kitchiri – a rice and lentil dish – not the kind of thing I would normally cook – so I was following a recipe to the letter. The only problem was that the rice had been on for 3 times longer than the recipe said and was still as hard as old boots! Luckily Justin plus 3 other would-be generator engineers were poring over the generator (now in bits) for the fourth time in 2 days trying to figure out why it was overheating – and so seemed blissfully unaware that supper was now half an hour late! I felt terrible as I was now holding the off watch-up – they couldn't go to bed until they'd eaten and would be getting up again in 3 hours time! Albert finally called time on the rice and declared it ok to serve – so it was duly dished up! Most people declared it delicious but I think they were just mostly pleased that they could finally go to bed!
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