 Paula practices her bunny impressions for later in the trip |
 |
 |
 All the sunsets were this cool! |
||||||||||||
 |
 Looking for nicks / tears in the spinnaker at night, by torchlight |
 |
 |
||||||||||||
 |
 Tim grinding the kite sheet |
 |
 Nice downwind action shot |
||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||
 Looking up the Yankee. These hanks that go all the way up have to be manually opened to attach/detach a sail. No furling on this boat - it's very manual! |
 Staysail ready to be hoisted |
Looking up at the spinnaker (this was out Race 1.5oz kite) |
 |
||||||||||||
 At night it gets a little colder, plus we were heading further South so more clothing layers were needed. |
 The calm days could be frustrating. |
 |
 |
||||||||||||
 When flying a kite, one person trims - watches and eases or takes in the sheet... |
 .. and because it's so big & therefore powerful, another person is on a winch to wind in when the person trimming requires. |
 It was really helpful of them to label the bits of sails for us leggers. If you'd see what a Yankee looks like with the clew at the top.... (ps. that's a JOKE!) |
 |
||||||||||||
 |
 |
 Into some of the rougher stuff... |
A look around |
||||||||||||
 James and myself enjoying ourselves! |
 Sail changes in rough conditions can be rather tricky. It's not the spray or the cold that make it tricky, its more that the surface you're standing on is constantly moving - angled at 35-40 degrees and dropping off waves (10, 20, 30ft...!) PLUS you then get the big waves wash all away. Don't know how I managed to take this pic - but it still makes the situation look calmer than it was! :) |
 Once a sail is changed the old one then has to be folded / flaked before being put back in its bag. This often takes 7 people as the wind and waves kind of make it difficult to fold a huge piece of cloth! |
 Mainsail has been reefed (brought part-way down to reduce sail area / power) and here someone is tightening a leech line. The person at the back is holding on to try and stop the first person falling too far if he falls. |
||||||||||||
 Doing the same thing at night... is just silly!! :) |
 |
 Me sporting my cheesy grin again!! Note the gloves - diving gloves.. the ONLY thing that will keep your hands dry! |
 |
||||||||||||
 This was FAR colder than this pic looks :) |
 When rougher, the crew doesn't sit right up on the high side as it's too dangerous when a freak wave comes along so we sit in the cockpit. |
 |
You'll see that one doesn't care how large one looks in full foul weather gear. The question "does my bum look big in this" was never heard!! |
||||||||||||
 James finds the snack box! The snack box was filled with chocolates which had far more than anyone could eat in it! Eat lots of chocolate AND lose weight? That's be the Global Challenge! :) |
 |
 |
 Paula's under the belief that Ben deleted this pic shortly after taking it! Ben probably should apologise - sorry!! :) |
||||||||||||
 |
 Fruit Pastilles were a valuable commodity on board! |
 |
 |
||||||||||||
 Preparing to drop the Yankee. Being here when the boat was bouncing into waves was quite strange in the way it effortlessly displaced such huge amounts of water |
 |
 Preparing to go on deck |
 Rob - looking delighted to have just completed a 22:00 - 02:00 watch! |
||||||||||||
 This is typical of the angle we lived at for 6 weeks. You just kind of adapt and don't think about it. :) |
 Kate tries to separate some fruit pastilles from her mini-EPIRB (they don't taste as nice!) |
 |
|
||||||||||||
 More foredeck action! |
 See - it is possible to be "arty" in the Southern Ocean, hands frozen off with a £130 camera! |
 Clive ponders on tactics! Note the screen in the background is full of telemetry from every aspect of the boats performance, averaged over many different time variants. All this can also produce graphs showing trends, etc.. Impressive stuff! |
 |
||||||||||||
 Sue - media officer |
 |
 Yellow, yellow, yellow! All Musto's finest - which is the finest made by anyone anywhere... so all the crew on all the boats look identical! How do you tell people apart (particularly as people have their face guard up) - name written on the head in a big felt pen! |
 Yankee 3 had to come down at 3am for emergency repairs when the leech line snapped. You could say it was "rather inconvenient!!" :) |
||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 On "mother" today and baking a cheese cake! |
So, to explain how these work....
-
18 people on the boat.
-
The skipper and 1st mate float between the watches
-
Remaining 16 people are divided into 2 'watches', called Grunters and Groaners
(the names from the noises people made as the sweated (hoisted/pulled up)
spinnakers on the training sails).
-
1 person from each watch will do "mother" for a day. Taken in turns being on
mother means one stays below when your watch is 'on' and cooks, cleans, makes
tea, etc. for all. There will be 2 mothers in a 24 hour period (for on watch /
off watch).
-
A day starts at 02:00 and the watch times vary between 2 days, but generally
there are 6 hour watches during the daylight and 4 hour watches during the night
and one day means more hours than the other:
02:00-06:00 on
06:00-12:00 off
12:00-18:00 on
18:00-22:00 off
22:00-02:00 on
02:00-06:00 off....
... and repeat!
Sleep is never a problem as people
are so tired and exhausted, but being woken up is a killer when you're in a
deep, deep sleep!
Wake up calls are half an hour before one has to be on deck and even earlier for
meals, so your real rest time is actually like this:
Off deck 02:00, 30m undress, sleep (02:30), woken up 05:00, 30m eat, 30m get ready - on deck 06:00
Off deck 06:00, 30m undress, 30m eat, sleep (07:00), woken up 11:00, 30m eat, 30m get ready - on deck 12:00
Off deck 12:00, 30m undress, 30m eat, sleep (13:00), woken up 17:00, 30m eat, 30m get ready, on deck 18:00
Off deck 18:00, 30m undress, 30m eat, sleep (19:00), woken up 21:30, 30m get ready, on deck 22:00
Off deck 22:00, 30m undress, sleep (22:30), woken up 01:30, 30m get ready, on deck 02:00
You can imagine there's a bit of
"Groundhog day" going on! :)
|
 |
 Bad hair day - EVERY day! (This is Sarah... I think!) :) |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 This is one of those 2am about to go on deck things. For an idea of heel of the boat, look at the angle of the paper on the notice board to the right! |
 |
 I didn't grow my beard more than this! PS. I don't think I look like Eminem here... the others said I did! :) |
 |
 |
 Our trusty radar |
 Nicko, the navigator, navigating. The foot strop is supporting his body as the boat is over at an angle |
 Changing gas bottles is always fun in these conditions! |
 |
 Reefing the main.... |
 .... |
|
 |
 Sue in the snakepit |
|
 The safe place to be - where crew members sit in really rough conditions |
 |
 |
 One of thousands of Albatross we saw during the trip. They seemed to like playing with the air that came off the sails |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 Yes, it really was as grey and miserable as this! |
 |
 |
 This was when I was on the foredeck about to take a picture when I spotted a large wave - I never got out of the way quick enough and this is during me getting knocked flat !! |
 |
 A mother job - cleaning the heads! A nasty job but an essential one as any infections will wipe through the whole crew in a day. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 Tea for 2 |
Trimming at night! |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Example of a "freak wave" - crew are sitting happily on the high side in reasonable conditions, and then this... Very dangerous and not funny |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 Newton about to enter the "Zero-G lounge" - where the on-watch (during 3 people/30min on deck at once times) wait whilst the off watch get changed. (It's a small boat and this is the only place to get out of the way when there are 18 people around!! |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 Skipper giving directions! |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 Ah, a letter from Rt Lt P.Peard to the website commending the pictures.. which ended up forwarded on and printed out on the notice board! Actually from someone at work taking the p*ss... but it made me laugh to see it there when coming down from a nasty night watch!! :)" |
Next page... More sailing stuff!
Page1 Page2 Page3 Page4 Page5 Page6 Page7 Page8