Donate a Pint

Leaving Liverpool was one of the strangest and emotionally mixed experiences of my life and the torment had been building up for months. After leaving work, saying goodbye to friends and then packing my life onto a boat, it had been a long, long goodbye. In the week leading up to the 16th September, a date that will live long in my memory, a number of close friends and family had made Hurculian efforts to come and visit. I was very touched by their committment and it made leaving all the harder. I put off making the final family phone calls until I could delay no longer. They hurt and each one brought that familiar lump to my throat. I guess it was a testiment to how much they all mean to me but I think it was safe to say that I was a wreck. Thankfully I had the solitude of a hotel room to enable me to shed my tears and regain some kind of composure before battling through the next call. Was this really living the dream?

The week had been full of happy memories, revisiting the city I’d enjoyed as a student, visits, texts, emails and calls to wish me fair winds and plenty of team bonding sessions over beers and climbing walls. In between times, we also had to prepare the boat for our 35,000 mile adventure. It had all come to this; 11:38 September 16 and Western Australia 2011.com slipped her lines. It was a painful and frustrating couple of hours as we progressed through the lock system, friends and family metres away but with the carnival atmosphere in the docks there was no way we could converse - if ever there was a time when eyes tell a story it was then.

As soon as we hit the Mersey, the sunshine disappeared, the winds picked up, nerves died down and the excitement began. This was it. I was starkly aware that this was 5 years of dreaming coming to fruition.

We set up in formation behind the tall ship that was leading and had a quiet chuckle at the thousands of spectators lining the dockside that were soaked by the jets of water from the fire boat behind. From my perspective the start was a confusing and disorientating mess to the extent that I didn’t even know the race had started until we were 1 minute into it. Cannons fired boats were trying to t-bone each other to get around the buoys and there was plenty of screaming to be heard over the high winds.

Leaving the cannons and crowds of Liverpool behind, we battled up the Mersey to receive yet more cannon fire and appreciation from spectators lining the Wirral and taking a breather to catch a glimpse of the airobatic display behind us. The winds were ferocious - what had happened to the sunshine we’d enjoyed all week in the docks?

As the watch leader I was terrified. I felt responsible for the 7 lives on my watch and it was blowing a gale. The first 36 hours of the race were some of the toughest conditions I’d faced and I felt as though I should have known what was going on! It was a long night; there were sails in the wrong places, winches were slipping, we were tacking every couple of minutes, we were one crew member down due to illness and yes, I was back in that very familiar but unenviable place of reproducing everything I’d ever swallowed and more over the decking. To make matters worse, the skipper was in bed on IV fluids - not ideal by any means. I didn’t once change my clothing or clean my teeth and I was asleep in my bunk before I could get into my sleeping bag. I just wanted to wake up and the race be over.

After that baptism of fire, conditions started to change. We had large swells but northerly winds enabled us to surf down them which was great fun. Maybe the Southern Ocean will be fun afterall? I started to settle into my role as Watch Leader, the sun started to shine, getting up 4 times a day became the norm, the winds were dying and my stomach settled down. Now I was enjoying my sailing again.

The contrast over those first couple of days and the final hours was incredible. The sun was shining, the seas were a millpond and we were struggling to find any wind - we managed 0 knots on the speedo! As a result, the race committee decided to change the finish line so that we could start motoring at midnight and make it to La Rochelle on a reasonable day. The evening brought what I expect will remain as a highlight of the whole trip. Phospheresence was flickering in the waters and then we were joined by a school of dolphins, their outlines highlighted in the fluorescent sparkles. You could watch them clearly honing in on the boat like a torpedo, turning on a halfpence, playing just off our bow. In the dead of night, I lay on the deck, my hand inches from their fins, ecstatic to see these wonderful creatures just off the French coast.

I was woken half way through an off-watch and told that skipper wanted a word. I wasn’t sure what it was but I feared the worst. He informed myself and the other Watch Leader that we were in 9th position and with the 10th boat having retired due to a serious accident onboard we took the option to finish our race early, start the motor and try to get into La Rochelle before the locks closed to enable our 3 crew in need of a dentist a chance of early treatment. It was gutting to have to admit defeat but it would only have been delaying the inevitable.

It was a relaxed and pleasant trip in and despite being a competitive sportsman, coming in 9th didn’t bother me - old age perhaps or maybe there’s more to this experience than winning. But then it hit me. We were in the town hall for prize giving and we had no role to play in the ceremony other than standing back and applauding. I didn’t like it one bit and my determination built. We will do better next time. What happened? I don’t really know but I think it was a combination of tactics, not pushing the boat as hard as others and not pushing ourselves. The conditions are not an excuse, afterall every boat suffered in the same way.

It’s been a good rest, I’ve restocked on plenty of pain au chocolat (found out where la gare really is - Tricolore was correct!!) and hopefully we’ve rejuvinated. There’s a steely determination on board to do better and I think we will. With so much having happened in the first 4 days, I can only wonder what the next 4 weeks and 5,000 miles will bring….

Anxiously I stepped on board ‘home’ for the next 11 months. After 6 months without even thinking about a boat, I questioned my recent focus on raising money for charity rather than learning how to sail. Yet again, the controls looked familiar but remembering how to use them seemed a dim and distant memory.

With new drugs inside me, travel bands on and a determination to battle sea sickness we headed out of port. Despite being the middle of the summer, the sky was overcast, the wind was blowing and the waves were lapping the top of the deck. I was delighted to get through 12 hours without any queasy feeling but then in the afternoon it reappeared like a recurring nightmare. The body has an amazing ability to forget just how awful you feel sometimes. I was going to keep count of the number of times I re-decorated the deck but I ran out of fingers and toes within a couple of hours! The only reassurance I had was that I was not alone and others went down one by one. With only 4 of us on our watch, with one steering the boat from the helm, it left three to change sails and operate the rest of the yacht. Going to my bunk was not an option. We were taking two minutes out to try and get to the side of the boat (preferably downwind from everyone else) and then carrying on, humping sails around the foredeck in the dead of night with waves constantly hitting us. Drained of all energy, with no food inside us and dehydrated, our determination and strength were tested. It was a very, very long night.

Thankfully after 24 hours I felt much, much better and managed to hold down some food and water. As we went through the motions of the boat operations, I remembered what I was doing and things came back to me reasonably quickly. We were on a watch system, so we were 4 hours on, 4 hours off during the day and 3 hours on, 3 hours off during the night. For those of us that have never really experienced it before, it was weird!! I’ve done shift work before but this is very different because there is no “big sleep” as my 3 year old nephew would call it, at any point in your life. There were times when you would only get a couple of hours kip by the time you’d eaten and got to your bunk, so was it worth getting into a sleeping bag? It took a real effort and I didn’t make it on a few occasions. You get up a handful of times every day - when do you brush your teeth? When should you eat breakfast? Life took on a very different time zone. There’s no such thing as battle on to the end and we’ll have a lie in soon because it doesn’t ever come. I’m sure I’ll get used to it but right now, it still feels strange.

Again, the week finished with a race. Not ten minutes in, we blew a hole through our spinnaker sail. It was spectacular as the boat was sailing along with a huge great big sail streaming along, attached to the boat only at the very top of the mast. It made getting it in quite a challenge and life was pretty manic for 15 minutes! It was quite amusing watching the other boats then follow suit one after the other and sail after sail were ripped apart by the powerful winds.

As it was a race around the Isle of Wight (and beyond) it took over 13 hours to complete. The reality of racing life was very different to what I had experienced so far. There are long periods with little activity other than the trimming of sails, which only requires a couple of people. This proved difficult to dress for as it was pretty chilly sat on the edge of the boat getting wet, but then you overheat when you do have to tack or gibe. A conundrum that I’ve yet to figure out….

The second week saw many new faces join the crew and we were fully manned to the extent that we gave one of our crew to another boat for the week! This meant that when my poor car was used to transport a week’s food shopping for 18 people, I was virtually doing wheelies on the way back!

Having spent the previous week on the water, I had gained much more confidence and I was much happier on the water and really, really enjoyed it. There was a great atmosphere on board and I think I’ll have a great laugh with all the crew. The format pretty much followed the same as the previous week although I am delighted to report that I wasn’t ill despite quite a few others going through that trauma.

Much to my surprise I was named as one of the rotating watch leaders but this proved to be a fantastic learning experience. I was forced to understand the full process of each manoeuvre and developed an understanding that I hadn’t appreciated beforehand. While I am still very much one of the novices on board, I feel as though I came on leaps and bounds during the week, both in confidence and knowledge. However, with it came the responsibility of the boat and when the skipper was asleep, I was supposed to be the one in charge so nodding off at 3 in the morning in the freezing rain really wasn’t an option despite some pretty strong temptation!

The TV crews came out to do some media work from their helicopter half way through the week. Amazingly the sun appeared for the first time in 10 days just as they approached. It was great to see all the boats line up in formation, sailing along just metres apart from each other. There was a genuine excitement on board and you could feel the energy levels rising. Having all 18 crew perched on the side of the boat as it keeled over, getting hit by every oncoming wave was a great sight and I’m sure it provided some impressive footage.

By the end of the week the wind had died down so much that it had come to a standstill. So much so in fact that the race was cancelled. We set our anchor and I followed a couple of others into the water for a much needed swim (and it also offered the opportunity for a much needed wash!). In a stupid moment of bravado, we decided to swim ashore to the Isle of Wight and we soon discovered that distances over water are very, very deceptive. By the time we’d landed on the beach, I was freezing so it seemed like a good idea to go for a run….that is until the sunbather turned over and displayed his naked butt and we realised that we were on a nudist beach. It was a quick decision to jump back in the water and swim to the boat. After lunch, a cuppa and multiple layers, I finally warmed up again.

After motoring ashore and going through the rigmarole of a deep clean, we hit the pub and then finished the week with the first of what I suspect will be many boat parties onboard WA. I can’t wait for the race and to spend a year sailing, sleeping, eating and maybe the odd party… No time for anything else!