Ever since I signed up to this race, I knew that arriving into London would be pretty epic.
So many times I’d imagined sailing through Tower Bridge, but the experience proved to be far better than anything I could conjure up in my head.
Tower Bridge. Again. Why not?
Through Tower Bridge the first time
Lined up for the final time
With ‘Alley
Social Spirit overall winners!
High Five
Parking
Onto the Champagne with Chief Cheese love and Whale spotter, Lucy
Celebrating 8th place
Off we go!
Off we go to the stage
Stealing the cream from Steve’s iced cake equivalent. Nom.
I love a good flag. Particularly this one.
Group hug
So happy
Approaching St Kats
Nearly there
2nd place!
Wave wave wave
Enjoying Cider on the boat (this was before the champagne came out)
Through the docks
BamBam, Shaw & Hartwell. Finally, Emily & Steve got to meet after many an indirect FaceTime conversation
Nearly parked
The reason why I should never be in a Clipper poster
Seattle love on the supporter boats
Reunited
Action shot through Tower Bridge
Bedford reunited!
The party even had free photos
Team huddle
At the Stormhoek Social Spirit Party – very swish
In my usual style, I was asleep during the pre-amble of arriving into London, but today was my final mother duty, so at around 7.30am, I was woken up to prepare brunch: a gourmet selection of cheese, cheese, meat, more cheese, fresh bread and crackers. Yum. As we prepared the meat & cheese feast, spectator boats appeared filled to bursting with supporters. On the boats it was easy to spot Visit Seattle supporters – just look for the green! Possibly the one advantage of our crazy leprechaun school uniform. And so the waving began.
At every arrival and every departure, we’d been practicing our finest waves. Now was the final time, the final time to feel famous on our little green boat parading up and down the Thames. The bank was lined with crowds as we approached Tower Bridge. Through Tower Bridge we then went waving, people stationed all over the bridge too. We continued waving as we returned through Tower Bridge (a pretty awesome experience) and then readied ourselves for the entry to St Katherine’s docks.
Generally, it was pretty difficult to make out who was on the bank; we just waved manically to make sure we covered all bases. Then I spotted a group of people, one of whom from a distance looked remarkably like my tall, pale, lanky, brother (love you Ry :D). Hang on…that was my brother! There were my friends and family all together holding a big brown sign with my name on it, jumping up at down. Queue my excitement going up a couple of gears. We then entered the lock to Taylor Swift, spotting more friends in the crowd as we motored in. A year after our team song was chosen from our Level 4 training, this was the final time we’d get to “Shake it off” on CV23 *sniff*. Better make it a good dance then.
After mooring up, we had a few hours to wait before we could get off the boat as the rest of the crews had to arrive in before prize giving would begin. These few hours were mostly spent trying to wave at friends and family crowded on the bank combined with Champagne and…cigars?! Yes, only on Visit Seattle would Champagne and cigars appear. Clipper also wisely placated us by providing Pizza too, otherwise there was no way we were going to stay on those boats. Now it was time to find family in the crowd and finally, I could pick out my boyfriend Steve. After over 3 months of being apart, he was the person I missed the most. Yes, that was him, but I couldn’t talk to him, the distance between the boat and bank being just that bit too far. Luckily for me, it was only just over an hour or so before we processed up on stage. Before going up, we Leg 8 crew were joined by crew from previous legs, a huge number of the Visit Seattle family reunited to dance up to the stage together to our team song before our 8th position was celebrated. This was when we discovered that not only had we scored 8th place (pretty big improvement from the 11th place for the majority of the race) but that we’d also won the overall Stormhoek Social Spirit Award! This was the real achievement, what we’d really wanted to win. So much joy, so much excitement.
After our final famous moments on stage, we were released to meet our loved ones. That was pretty emotional. It was wonderful to discover how many people had made the effort to come out and see the finish, the only challenge being having the time to catch up with them all. Once we’d all caught up, people made their moves, myself, Steve, Kyrsten and Amy being left to enjoy the Stormhoek party laid on for Visit Seattle & supporters. It was then onto the final crew party for Emily and I for one last dance, our last time being “Ocean Racers” surrounded by fellow Clipper-people before we returned to the real world. Dancing, more Stormhoek wine, dancing…end.
The Clipper Race finish: the best day of my life…so far!
The final race from Den Helder to Southend went by in a blur.
Gone were the jokes about 5 more days: this race was going to be just 36 hours long, the shortest of the entire Clipper Race. To ensure we rested before the crazy day that would be London-arrival, the race start was planned for Thursday afternoon so that we’d finish at around 4pm on Friday; plenty of time for a sleep. The forecast was for some serious upwind sailing, so out it was with the Stugeron again. Preparing for race start this time, however, was a doddle as Emily and I had been sleeping on the boat during the stopover. No manic taxi rides carting our stuff around, we just woke up, hunted breakfast (croissants, of course) and then at 12pm we were off through the locks. Time to do that Parade of Sail malarky. As we had plenty of people on deck and the stugeron was kicking in, I took the parade of sail as an opportunity for a nap. This means I missed the military boats guiding us, missed the final views of Den Helder and probably other stuff too. Reflecting on these blogs, I seem to have slept through quite a bit of the exciting stuff on this race actually…
Parading from Den Helder with us in the front celebrating our win
Any way, after parading up and down for a while/napping, our race start from Den Helder was as per that in Derry: first across the line. Alas, there were no cannons this time, but once we’d crossed the line, we jostled with other boats for position, even having to ask for “water” at one point to ensure that we weren’t grounded.
All go at the start of the final race
Before the race began, we all agreed that we’d adopt a serious racing attitude and make sure that we were on the high side whenever possible. At its most extreme, this resulted in people “sleeping on the rail”, aka sleeping on deck rather than in their bunk, legs over the edge on the high side. A less extreme approach was to sleep in your bunk if it was on the high side (score!), but lie in your kit rather than getting tucked up so that you could move if needed. This seemed to be a pretty sensible approach apart from the tacking: on the Friday of this race alone there was significantly more tacking than the rest of my race put together! Every 5 minutes it seemed we were tacking, making our dedicated rail-sitting somewhat challenging. It went something like this:
Helm: “Ready to tack.”
Everyone tries to gracefully get themselves off/ falls off from the high side into the cockpit with varying levels of success.
Each person goes to a station, one person on each of the staysail winches, yankee winches, running back stays and 4 people on the grinders as we have the majority of the crew on deck. Queue much crew-tessellation as we all try to do a job.
Boat tacks. Go team.
Tack complete, everyone scrambles up to the new high side and tries to wedge themselves in for another 5 minutes before the next tack.
Tack tack tack. So much tacking.
In combination with the tacking, a key feature of this race was that we were playing with the big boys: LMAX and Derry. These were the two premier boats, battling it out for first position in the overall race. Somehow, we managed to sandwich ourselves between them, Derry actually covering our moves at one point with LMAX chasing us behind. This didn’t feel real: surely we were actually at the back somewhere and this was some sort of portal that was letting us watch the 2 top crews battle it out. Surely?!
The proximity to Derry and LMAX made the atmosphere on board tense, everyone constantly looking out for where they were and asking how we could adjust our tactics to make up more speed. As this race was so short, the distances between boats were tiny: Derry just meters ahead. Relief was felt when LMAX managed to break their Yankee sail somehow, opening up a more authoritative gap between us and them. Derry, on the otherhand, were so close we could taste first position. So. Close.
To keep our mind off the tense situation, most of us were on deck on the high side (whichever that chose to be during those 5 minutes) watching either British coastline or Derry. With the sun beginning to set, Vernon rightly pointed out in no other situation would you be happy to watch boats for hours at a time. On the race, it was all you needed for entertainment. Well, perhaps a few more things entertained us than just that…
Other entertaining things seen on this race were:
The colour of the water: a pale green/turquoise, the first time I had seen it that colour during the entire race. Contrasted against an almost violet sky, it was really quite unusual. I’ll miss the endless skies and seas.
Gas rigs lit up like mini-blackpool towers in the distance
The many, many wind turbines aligned in perfect rows
Tripod Martians from War of the Worlds guarding Kent, more commonly known as WW2 outposts.
By now late at night, we finished the race at Southend in 2nd place, a mere 29 SECONDS behind Derry. 29 seconds! We had been a boatlength behind them for a while but were unable to catch up. I was pretty chuffed though: second place meant that I would now have a complete set of tiny flags to celebrate my race. 1st, 2nd, 3rd plus Social Spirit: BAM!
Hanging out on the high side for race finishApproaching the finish line. LOOK HOW CLOSE WE ARE!Yes, THAT CLOSE!
With such close racing between ourselves and Derry, both crews exchanged 3 cheers after crossing the finish line. This and the preceding race were so different to the other races in that the crews were so close. Turns out seeing other boats is the motivation we need to perform well.
We were so happy coming over the finish line. To celebrate, on went the celebration playlist prepared shortly before the finish and out came the disco bulb for the motor up to our anchor point where we would set off again at 4.30am in the morning. The only shame was that most of the speakers on board had died by this point, so disco-celebrations were short. We also needed to get the boat prepped for going into our anchor point in Southend: head sails and main down, anchor dropped for the night. It was then to the bunk for a quick nap before waking up at 1.30am to do some casual anchor-watching at 2am. My final 1.30am wakeup – HURRAH!
The half hour of anchor watching quickly went by doing some exercise (I was hoping better late than never) then faffing around (maybe accidentally napping too) for a bit before waking up the next watch. They had had a couple of hours sleep so we got a couple of hours sleep before the 4.30am motor. The next day was going to be BIG.
After 10 days of mostly drinking and eating in Derry, I had mixed feelings about getting back into the boat. Being in the UK, it had almost felt like we were at home and I was prematurely crashing despite there being still a few more weeks to go! As a result, I missed out on the final Derry festivities but the next day made up for it: huge crowds turned up in Derry to see us off, lining the banks as we processed up and down the Foyle. Even as we travelled up the river to race start, boats were alongside us, shouting at us and celebrating all of the way. This was great for us: an excellent opportunity to practice our waves pre-London. The bank was so close at points we could hear messages from the crowds, all of us shouting “Thank you Derry!” in response. Derry has to be the friendliest place I’ve visited to date.
So this was it. The penultimate race to the Netherlands before this adventure was over.
We were warned at crew briefing in the Guildhall that this race was likely to be rough and that the real challenge would be dealing with the tides at Pentland Firth. Time it wrong and it would act like a gate, shutting you in whilst the other boats ahead sailed on. As this race was due to be short (6 days max), an mistakes were going to cost us dearly. Clearly it was going to be exciting!
For the first time, we had a proper race start, aka not a Le Mans start at sea. The boats came perilously close together as they all weaved back and forth between each other, waiting to cross the start line at Greenhouses. It felt like we were getting very close with there being just 12 boats; what the Sydney Hobart race start was like I can’t imagine! Either side of the estuary, there were crowds to see us off. Cannons at the start sent a shiver down my spine as they reminded me of the rowing bumps races I was missing this year. 4 minutes, 1 minute and so on. The cannons made me nervous, although I needn’t have worried: this race wouldn’t involve anywhere near as much physical pain as a rowing race.
Here we go! Race StartUs somewhere around Race Start looking pretty cool
The next 2 days then passed in a sleepy Stugeron-fuelled haze as I struggled to remain awake on any watch despite being within sight of nearly all of the other boats. Despite not having been sea-sick since Seattle, I still made sure to take the pills at the beginning of a race just incase an unusual swell set me off. At first, we had the Spinnaker up and it was what felt like constant gybing. For the first time, I actually got to helm during a couple of gybes – even though it was just a few, I briefly felt like a pro.
For the first time in the whole race, we were constantly in close proximity to the other boats. This gave us a chance to check out their Spinnakers and it was stunning to see how the other crews’ kites had fared. Verdict: dreadfully. There were awkward shaped spinnakers galore across the fleet with many a repair making them look like patchwork quilts. Our kites, on the other hand, were mint in comparison. This may have helped what was to come…
Somehow, we seemed to do pretty well this race. Racing to the top of Scotland in the dark, we could see 8 sets of lights behind us as we polled a nice, consistent 4th. Otherwise, it was foggy so even though boats were very near by we couldn’t see them, they’d just loom out of the fog every now and then. This meant that despite the close racing, we didn’t always feel it, the fog concealing the true proximity of the other boats.
When it wasn’t foggy, we definitely did feel the proximity to the other boats, Visit Seattle coming rather close to a few of the other crews on more than one occassion. My favourite was a rather interesting moment with Unicef whilst I was on the helm. All around me, everyone was exclaiming at how close Unicef was as we made a bit to cut infront of them. Would we make it? Would we make it!? I went for”eyes in the boat” approach. We made it. I didn’t even see them.
The second close call whilst I was on watch was with LMAX in the Pentland Firth. This was particularly satisfying as we flew in front of them, giving them a cheery wave as we went by. Yes, US in front of LMAX. HAHA! Oh How novel.
The highlight of this race and possibly of my entire race was going through the Pentland Firth. This was only the second time in my life I had been in/near to Scotland and as per the first visit, the weather was stunning. With clear blue skies, the view of the Orkney Isles was stunning, the visibility so good that we could see the abandoned crofters huts along their edge. A clear, chilly, summers day. Such good weather and views means I can never, ever go back to Scotland. It’ll have no choice but to rain on me then.
Passing through the Pentland Firth was when we managed to sneak into first place on this race, passing PSP, Danang, Derry and Clipper Telemed through some lucky tack timing. At one point, PSP, Danang and Derry were all travelling along in a lovely little line, one behind the other, nicely primed for us to overtake. I went to sleep with them on our starboard side: when I woke up, they were gone.
Our birdy friend & I
After this sneaky maneuver, it was then a case of hanging onto the lead to Den Helder: a drag race down the North Sea. En route, we were interrupted by a small sea bird trying to land on the boat. Eventually, the bird was successful at landing, repositioning itself every time we tacked. Shortly afterwards, rather lost pigeon tried to the same. Pigeons clearly aren’t made to land on boats, nor are they made to fly over the sea. I can only imagine that things didn’t end well for our poor pigeon friend. When not being entertained by birds (it’s the little things), once again, we resumed asking Amancio how far we had to go to the finish, conscious that the competition was barely 10 miles behind us. There must have been disbelief across the fleet when they realised we were in the lead and probably more disbelief that PSP were the boat chasing us – the two crews that earlier in the race had been consistently last!
Coming down the North Sea, passing the many, many gas rigs lit up like Blackpool tower, I finally woke up good and proper having ditched the sea sickness tablets. The conditions were nothing like that predicted, they weren’t needed. The final 24 hours were then very tense as we anticipated light winds with PSP just 6 miles behind us. Would we be able to hang onto first?!
One of the many rigs encountered in the North Sea, sinister in the distance
YES!
FIRST PLACE FOR VISIT SEATTLE!
We couldn’t believe it. Somehow we’d won a race, and what made it all the better was that we won into Den Helder, Jan’s home port. Visiting Facebook after the race, it was clear that our Shore Support had been following our every move. After crossing the finish line, we turned back to cheer in PSP as they also crossed, it being somewhat early in the morning. Never have 2 crews been quite so happy! It was then out with the prosecco, out with the disco ball! Time for some #danceifyouwanttogofaster. First into Den Helder!
Today it’s my birthday, and as it’s going to be a fairly unusual one, I thought I’d try and capture what daily life entails on Visit Seattle. I find that off the boat, I quickly become blasé about life on the boat, but I’m sure re-reading this in the future, it will look anything but normal. So, 24 hours on Visit Seattle. Here we go:
2nd July 2016
0000: Birthday begins with Emily singing “Happy birthday” to me from companionway as she is Mother. Damp, wet and cold but Woooooo!
0030: Do some exercises to warm up whilst sitting on the floor of cockpit (aka move my arms a bit). Floor quickly becomes a wall as we heel over so instead I stand on what was before an obstacle, leaning back now and then to stay upright when the boat really tips. Better clip on twice for luck. Short tether will stop me from falling from my chilly perch.
0045: We’re flying a kite but the wind has shifted so we’re now broaching. We ease the main out to help us bear away to stop this so a call is made for the preventers to be eased too. Clip, clip, crawl and I’ve moved 2 meters from the back of the cockpit to the front to sort out one of the preventers (lines that prevent the boom from swinging across and wiping us out should we accidentally gybe). Kneeling is required because the boat is still at a stupid angle. I listen out for calls from Amancio who is re-running the preventer on the foredeck: “grind”, “ease”. I wrap the other end of the line around a winch, put the handle in to grind, then have to use my body weight at this angle to turn handle.
0100: Remain perched by the preventer winch in case it needs to be adjusted again. My body is bent over my legs to stop the rain and spray getting into my hood. I can see the clock in the galley from here; nearly time to wake the next watch.
0120: As closest to the galley, I go down to wake the next watch. The first challenge is clipping and climbing over several taught lines to get to the hatch, then unclipping over said lines. Eventually, I end up pivoting on my belly on the companionway ledge to reach stupidly-placed my clip. Oooo my abs!
0125: If I’m going to wake the next watch up, it’s foulies off so that I don’t drip water everywhere. First, off comes the life jacket. Then, off with the woolly hat and undo all the various tabs and straps sealing me into my foulies at the wrists, waist and ankles. That done, it’s off with the foulie smock (always a challenge) followed by salopettes. God these foulies stink. I’m left in my duvet-like midlayers but I’m still bloody freezing. My hands are like ice.
0130: Off I go down each corridor to wake the off-watch. My chosen method is to call their name, say “Good morning” in an enthusiastic manner then put the red light on to get them up. They’re pretty dead to the world at this time of the morning.
0135: Back into galley to put the kettle on. This is pretty quick for once as the generator is on so I can use the electric kettle. I prepare 4 teas and 2 coffees for the next watch. As they slowly emerge into the galley, I let them know it’s cold (not that it’s not obvious of course). Get lots of “Happy birthdays” in return.
0150: The next watch head up on deck, then the rest of my watch come down sodden from the last 4 hours. I nip to the heads whilst it’s free at this point to get out of the galley as everyone else needs the space to get out of their foulies. I then retrieve my huge sleeping bag from its cubby hole at the end of my bunk and wrestle with it to get it flat. I then hoist the bunk up to a more accurate angle to stop me from falling out.
0155: Retrieve iPad from charging in the galley so I can write this blog.
0200: Right, mid-layers and base layers off. I hang them up on a bungee with karibiner clips by my bunk so they fit behind the door nicely. I climb up into my bunk ninja-stylee and try to get into my sleeping bag liner plus sleeping bag. Yes, I’m that cold. Now, to hot water bottle or not to hot water bottle?
0205: Success! I’m in and snug. No hot water bottle though. Time for a quick blog a la bunk.
Tippity tap…
0220: Blog done, ear plugs in from my keeping place in my bra (got to remember these details). Sleep!
Zzzzzzz…
0515: I’m woken by a shake on the arm. Wow I was asleep. The red light has gone on in the corridor and I snuggle down and begin a 60 second countdown; just one more minute. I reach 0 then start again. Then I realise I must get up, so it’s time to shuffle out of my cosy sleeping arrangement and rummage in my centre cave locker to find my extra-warm merino bottoms. I think I’ll need them; it sounds absolutely horrible outside, the sound of rain lashing above me. Merino leggings on, I then pummel my sleeping bag with my feet to the end of the bunk and kick it into the end cave locker. I’ve only recently discovered it’s much easier to get it in there that way rather than rolling it up.
0520: Leggings on, I partially swing myself out of my bunk and try to reach my seal-skin socks that are sitting on the generator pipe, but the bunk is hitched up too high. I can’t reach them so Ros kindly passes them to me as she goes by. Socks go on to seal in the leggings and stop me from getting wet feet from the floor. I then climb down and put on the long sleeved merino top over the short sleeved one I’ve slept in to stay warm.
0525: I retrieve my midlayer salopettes from behind the bulkhead door where they are hanging, pop them on and seal the leg tabs before putting on my rather damp boots. It’s then off to the heads before anymore layers go on, a mere 3 steps away. Zip, curtain closed!
0530: Another 3 steps from the heads and I’m in the galley, standing on the starboard side by the wet locker where our foulies are stored. We still have some fresh bread left from yesterday that Rachel baked as a treat, so rather than crazy sweet cereal, it’s lovely soft wholemeal bread with a thick dollop of peanut butter on top for breakfast; probably my healthiest breakfast to date on this boat. Be gone foul Cheerios…at least until tomorrow.
0540: A few steps back to my bunk and now the midlayer jacket goes on over my salopettes, only after tying my hair in a low ponytail and putting on my buff though to make sure I’m sealed in again the horrible weather I can hear. I contemplate adding another layer after being cold in the night but decide against it.
0550: It’s all back and forth, back and forth getting ready for deck. To the wet locker: I retrieve my foulie salopettes to keep me dry on deck. Off come the boots again, on go the salopettes over my midlayers and then back on with the boots, my foulies sealed over the top with tabs. I then wrestle myself into my foulie smock. Woolly hat is put on too, then hood up to allow my life jacket to go on. I then seal myself right in, doing up all of the neck and mouth flaps so that you can only see my eyes. Raaaaaaah…bring on that weather!
0600: Up the steps and up on deck. It’s not quite as bad as I thought up here: not absolutely horrible as anticipated, but only moderately horrible. Maybe I didn’t need quite so many layers. I undo the piece of my smock that goes over my mouth so I can breathe. The other watch are all still on deck as they’ve been asked to remain to help us gybe. The wind is pretty strong which could make it tricky: the more people on deck, the more people to (hopefully!) make it go smoothly.
0605 – 0700: Gybing. I first go to the starboard side of the boat to help bring the new spinnaker sheet across to be run for the other gybe, handing it to Ana at the stern and then back across the pit it goes to the primary winch. Huw then tells me to go to the port stern winch to ease off the preventer and then bring on the running back stay as the gybe goes on to support the mast. Huw is always on deck for changes such as this. I ease the preventer as before. Then I pull the running back stay line by hand around the winch to move it the 6 or so meters from its current position at the shrouds to further back on the boat. To do this, I’m also supposed to free the tricing line that keeps the back stay at the shrouds but I forget to undo the coil of rope – I always do this. The line gets stuck as the pulley system it runs through isn’t at the right angle. Huw kicks it, it runs, I continue pulling, sat wedged between the spinnaker sheet and those grinding on the pedestal. Gybe done, I help attach the wrap net at the gate. Off go the other watch for a sleep, our watch settling in for the next 6 hours.
0700: I settle in the cockpit by the grinders ready to grind or trim where needed. I love grinding (purely in a sailing context). Aaaaaand chat…
0715: I’m about to take over trimming the kite from Chris when Amancio calls me to helm next. Apparently I’ll be OK in this weather as I’m strong (HA!). Time for a bit more helming practice it is in strong winds then *gulp*. I navigate my way across the deck back to the helm, then clip onto the high side next to Amancio. He tells me what we need to do: 50-60 degrees on the compass, 120 apparent wind angle, juggle the waves. I step behind him in the helming cage, take the wheel and he shuffles out. I’m in control.
0715-0745: I’m on the helm for 30 minutes trying to keep the spinnaker flying downwind in the swell with the wind coming at an angle of 120 degrees. My shoulder muscles kill after half an hour from combating the waves to keep us on course. Jesse stands with me at the helm to make sure I’m doing it all OK. I manage to pretty much keep on course but it’s taking all of my concentration. Focus…
“Focus…”
0745: Hand over to Dana on the helm as Amancio did to me. Phew, time to give the arms a break for a bit. I sit infront of the helm and gaze out over the starboard side of the deck at the sea. Grey, grey, drizzly grey. It’s like being back in the UK!
0745-0800: Nod off on deck whilst sitting. So much activity after all (not every day is like this). Whoops.
0800: Chris asks if anyone wants coffee. COFFFFFEEEEEEEEE! Milk with a sugar to wake me up please. Now where was I…
0810: Coffee arrives, passed along the deck from person to person in the little blue plastic cups we have on the boat, cracked on the inside from 1000s of hot drinks and so offering you a little taste of everything they’ve contained before. Sugar was definitely the right move. Yum yum yum.
0815-onwards… So after 8.15, I totally failed at blogging due to getting caught up in the excitement of birthday. It’s now all blurred into one, but roughly, here’s what went on:
I’m still sitting by the helm chatting to Dana and Jesse occasionally when Amancio appears at the galley hatch with what looks like a water balloon. What is that? Whatever it is, apparently he’s aiming for me but he misses and it slides off the boat. It was a water balloon!
2 more water balloons are hurled by Amancio at me. This time I’m ready *assumes ninja pose infront of the helm*. The first one lands at my feet. The second one lands near Jesse and Dana behind me but we’re not sure where. Perhaps it’s in Dana’s hood for later?
Emily cracks out the glittery tattoos that Dionne gave me. Unfortunately, they’re not terribly effective at adhering to faces, so people sit around with jay clothes held to their faces for 20 minutes or more. Is it a tattoo, is it a horrific injury to the face?
Dana finds the eye patches her Mum gave her. OH YES!
Add eye patch to my sailing kit. Commence birthday pirate photo shoot! Lets see if any of these are posted by Clipper – I’d love it if they were.
Serious sailing with an eye patch. And not actually steering. Just posing. Arrrrrr.
Emily has come out on deck in the rain following her mother-duty sleep. Emily definitely doesn’t like rain. Rain is bad. Her foulies are not her friend in this situation.
Sometime around 1100, I go downstairs for the first time this watch to discover balloons and “happy birthday” banners adorning the galley. Brilliant!
1200 and it’s luuuuuunch cooked by Jon as Lucy. Quesadillas, nom nom nom. So many wrap-based meals on this boat.
After lunch, the other watch go upstairs whilst we eat ours, but they then come back downstairs to sing happy birthday to me. It’s then cake, and not just any cake : an amazing multicoloured cake made by Ana with candles and sparkling candles. Yaaaay!
I’m given multiple cards from the crew, my New York apartment buddies, Emily and then also my very own packs of Oreos from Emily. Even the ‘Double Stuf’ ones. Very lucky Mia!
Birthday love!
3 pieces of cake later (well, it is my birthday) and it’s definitely time for bed
I open and read my cards from home, attempt to hang them above my bunk and fail. Write a birthday email to Steve to let him know how my day has gone. There I discover emails also from both sets of grandparents and Sarah. Very, very lucky Mia!
My first piece of cake. Or perhaps my third judging by this expression.
1300: Sleepy time
Sometime in my off-watch: Restless sleep. Too hot and can smell burger cooking. Mmmm Burger…must be nearly time to get up. Write blog for a little bit then…
1715: Ergh. “Good morning” means I should get up. Just a bit more blog…
1800-2200: Similar to my earlier watch but involves some birthday bilge cleaning to spice things up. Woooo bilges! Chris very kindly did my antibac duties on the previous watch. I then have to tend to media duties, aka writing a birthday blog and uploading photos from the last few days to Clipper. This involves me going down to the Nav station at the back of the boat and squeezing in behind whoever is on the Nav PC to work on the Media PC. Out comes the memory card from the camera, on go the photos to the PC. I then select the best to upload to the Clipper server, switch over the Internet from email to media and tadaaaaa off they go. I send a couple from my birthday pirate shoot. It’s worth a try. Right, time for my final stint on deck for the day.
2200: The watch is over and the bed time ritual starts all over again! Foulies off…
Mia does Clipper 