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 Tim and Kate |
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 During a quiet spell - Paul repairs some hanks on the Yankee 3 |
 Again during a quiet spell, Julian replaces the broken stanchions (bent by the waves!) |
 Sweating the spinnaker up |
 The latest scheds came in, and when mapped onto MaxSea, we could see that Pindar was closeby. (btw, this is just 'a' shot of MaxSea - here it actually shows Sark, BP, Unisys to port and Pindar behind). |
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 ...so we got the bins out to have a look |
 It's actually easy to spot other boats out here as they're the only thing at all you'll see breaking the horizon. You can actually see Pindar in this picture |
This is another shot of the same a few hours on, but clearer and highlighted. Spotting human contact out here was very exciting :) |
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 Clive |
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 These are "Spikes", simply metal spikes used for jamming in shackles (under load) to force them open. They have names - here you can see Pink passion, Gold member and Black mamba |
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 Note the clothing used is generally the best there is so everyone wears the same... right down to the boots, socks, gloves, etc...! |
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 During a lot of the leg it was too cold to be on deck for more than 30 minutes so the watch system changed for just 3 people to be up at once. When crew came down, they just collapsed like this.. freezing cold and exhausted |
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 It really was as tiring as this...! |
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 Tim at the nav station |
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 It wasn't just the people being broken - this spring snapped from the side being under water, compressed over for too long (like days!) |
 Phill and Sarah |
 A lot of the sunsets were stunning |
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These bluebottle whales were quite a sight and the picture prompted "a letter from a fan". Of course it was just a colleague at work, but still got transmitted by satellite, printed out and stuck on a notice board 15,000 miles away in the middle of the Southern Ocean... and once more fellow crewmembers had more reason to think I was nuts as I was laughing on watch again for no apparent reason! "Morphometric differentiation" - now *that's* imaginative!! :)
Sirs, A long shot, but the excellent photographs displayed recently of the Whale Pods taken by your wildlife photographer aboard Stelmar has prompted the following question from the fellows and members at www.marinebio.org. Did Stelmar's photographer have an opportunity to shoot any footage of the wildlife in the waters around the Kerguelen Islands We are specifically interested in the genetic and morphometric differentiation between island and mainland southern elephant seal populations, and a sensitive photographic study from a professional photographer would greatly aid our research. We are hoping that there may have been some similar quality photographic records of these graceful and beautiful creatures - we can but hope, but I would appreciate you passing on the message on. If you are able, please post more of the fine, sensitive studies by Stelmar's photographer. Thank you in advance, we appreciate any help you can give to the scientific community Malcolm McMalarcy Dept of Oceanography and Marine Biology Wharf University 5NC Campus |
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 Sarah |
Kate and Paula |
 This area is normally full of water! |
 Fortunately the windows down below are rather strong! |
 Pindar on our tail! We were with them about this close for 2 days - was excellent to have something tangible to race against! The great thing is that boats were so evenly matched. We beat them in the end due to navigational decisions. |
 Tim |
 James |
Easter and a bunny made an appearance (to both watches!) and gave out a quiz and chocolate eggs. |
'Twas hard work!! |
 During the chat show (a set time of day where all boats must chat to each other on the radio) Pindar got all excited that we had bunny on board for Easter and assumed it must be Paula. Desperate for a look, they offered to drop back a place if we sent them a pic of our "bunny"... we were going to send them this, but I think their Skipper got involved and cancelled the deal! :) |
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 Preparing the spinnaker pole |
 The "scheds" come in (every 6 hours) and get imported into a spreadsheet that shows our position against the others, and colour codes our progress. Green means we covered more miles than another - so a full sheet of green is rather good. |
 The scheds times are eagerly awaited by all and are written up on a board for all to see (pieces of paper get soggy and become rather illegible after a few minutes in this boat!) |
 Unpack all the food for the day. The food was actually packed in August 2004, so is all dry - nothing fresh! There will be protein drinks, porridge, lunch, dinner, bread mix, chocolates, tea, coffee, etc.. |
 Cooking is interesting. The stove is gimballed - which means it's on a self-tilting, weight balanced hinge that works very well. Thing is, you're not... so there's some stretching to be had! When measuring exact amounts or pouring its often easier to put the receptacle on the gimball as well! Oh, bear in in mind the boat is jumping and bouncing... hence the foulie bottoms - to shield from boiling hot water! |
 A number of different foods are prepared / eaten, but this is the easiest - boil in the bag. You boil it, cut it open and serve! |
 Here's Paula modelling a boil-in-the-bag rice pudding. "Mmmm..." she says! |
 Generally you can get 8 people (the whole watch) round the table at the same time, with people on the high side bracing themselves with a foot between someone's leg on the low side. We had a bit of a problem with blocked drain holes in the coach roof though... so the inside was often wet and there were only about 4 dry seats! |
 Plastics get kept and disposed of later when on land. Food, paper, metal, glass all go in the slops bucket, which mother empties a few times a day by bringing it up and asking for someone to chuck it over the side. This bucket was actually lost later when Sarah literally threw it over the side! :) |
 There are 2 snack boxes, each with identical chocolates, 1 for each crew member. This stops arguments! |
 Different chocolates had different values for trade. The Dairy Milk bars were a popular option... |
 ... however, not as popular as Fruit Pastilles... these had a heavy trade value :) |
 As Mother one must pop up and ask for any tea orders... frequently! |
 Tea, Coffee, hot chocolate, protein drinks or soup was served in these hard-core, insulated metal cups that not only could be bashed but they kept contents warm for about an hour. |
One of the jobs of mother was to clean the floors and walls. Sometimes mother got carried away and (repeatedly) cleaned the gas-bottle usage information - prompting this rather clear message from Phill who was trying to keep track of usage!! |
 Cleaning the heads is done twice a day. Once cleaned the 'grey tank' must also be emptied - a nasty job. The grey tank contains the waste drained from the sink and shower tray and is a tank beneath the floor. Pumping it requires ones arm to go deep into the bilge and can take 500 pumps to empty. Remember the bouncing, heeling and dropping off waves.... |
 There are 2 heads, one on each side. When the boat is heeled over one should only use the low side as this is the only way the hand pump is able to operate correctly. Should someone 'forget' this (how, I have no idea!!) and use the high side... well lets just say there's a bit of a problem that the user leaves and of course REALLY annoys "mother" and prompts a stern notice on the board! Living on a small boat with a lot of people can bring about many different problems in life! |
 Ah, the email terminal. Right at the back of the boat it had a laptop with a screen and stupidly small keyboard running Windows XP with Telaurus email system using Outlook Express, connected via Iridum satellite. It'd work just like any normal windows PC only you had to stick money in the meter (credit card in $25 chunks) to send/ receive mail. The telephone on the side there worked like a normal phone (VERY odd) but you enter a pin number, which is associated with you and your account is debited. Interestingly the cost of making a call (from the middle of the Southern Ocean) was LESS than Vodafone charge for use of a UK cell phone in Australia. Something's just wrong there.... |
 On mother one also has to make desert. This is me making chocolate brownies... but what do you do when you've filled the baking tins and have some left over? |
 ... you put it in a bowl and give to James.... |
 ...who doesn't appreciate it quite so much later!! :) |
 Sometimes things get a bit tricky, like here. One watch asleep, the sail breaks and requires immediate attention (leech line snapped) and so it comes downstairs for repair... as the other watch wake up and want dinner. Standing room only!! |
 The gas alarm went off here and so we had to use a bilge pump to suck out the air/gas from the area. Most odd! |
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Other stuff downstairs... |
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 The bunks when not in use - sleeping bags rolled up. One has ones own bunk, but it exists on both sides and you share with your opposite number. You would always sleep on the high side. |
 Everyone has the same clothes, and its always interesting to find yours as you wake up to find the boats been bouncing away over night and everything you left in a place you remember... has no moved! Names on everything! |
 The bunks were arranged so 14 were at the back (7 each side) and 4 in the middle. The ones in the middle were in cabins and had heaters conveniently arranged so that they could make their own drying line! Oh the luxury!! ;) |
 Night vision is very important on the boats. It takes about 20 minutes to get, and about 20 seconds to ruin! For this reason at night there is red lighting down below to give just enough light to see what you're doing without messing your vision up or (through the windows) the vision of the helm and crew on deck. |
 As well as near the PC another phone exists near the nav table. Here Sue is giving a media interview. Although the phone can technically receive phone calls, it isn't permitted... but it turns out it has caller-id! So when someone's boyfriend called up accidentally (he was looking for an off-licence) hearing "who's that"... "Clive, skipper of team Stelmar"..."Ooh, sorry, this is XXX, could I speak to XXX please" - it was quite funny! :) |
 The foulie locker. Contains all the dropping wet Foul Weather clothing & life jackets. It also has the heater (diesel burner) and water maker). As the heater is too big for the boat it cycles on & off (when it has too much heat), and this pumps lots of smoke out onto the crew when it cycles back up. So Challenge tried to use more heat (to stop it doing this) by installing a huge radiator in the foulie locker. Result? Foulie locker was always lovely and warm!! :)
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 This was the exhaust from the heater. At maximum heat the exhaust reached 350 degrees... so we were well trained in keeping out of its way! It'd actually get turned off before any work occurred in this area as it'd burn through sails, foulies, legs, crewmembers, etc...! |
Water maker. Device that makes fresh water by pumping through a filter at an incredible high pressure. Normal rate: 1 litre per min, optimum rate: 2 litres per min. 4 water tanks of 80 litres each. 2 are for emergency, the other 2 daily use. We got through about a tank a day (HUUUUGE amounts!). Lose the water maker... BIG trouble. Also, it only worked on the port tack as the inlet was steep on the starboard side... strange to think this design flaw would escape a company that specialises in water makers for boats...? |
 The Nav station had 2 pcs, generally one would be used for SatC and weather faxes and the other for MaxSea (as seen on the right here) and the spreadsheet for telemetry logging. |
 Though most slept in their bunk, Paula was often found sleeping on the sails in the forepeak, next to her "wardrobe". It was once suggested to her that she had too many drysuits, and that they were all the same, but no, apparently a girl "needs choice" when she gets up. You should see her collection of blue welly boots to match... :) |
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 In a nutshell, downstairs was a haven. This view, from on deck at night was a very welcoming sight and made one feel you didn't have far to go to safety. |
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More on deck... |
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 Trimming at night |
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 Bagging a sail |
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Emptying the bilges with the "Octopus" (would reach the entire length of the boat, attached to a pump in the foulie locker) |
Happy campers about to make a visit to Zero G!! (Sarah, Rich, Newton) |
 "Wakey wakey - its that time again" |
 James has a look on the globe and realises just how far we have to go... and where we at right now! ;) |
 This is a shot from MaxSea. It can zoom in / out as much as you want. Each of the dots are the boats as plotted every 6 hours. To look at our route from here... is quite scary! |
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 Alex and Ruth |
 This is a shot from the radar showing the weather. We're in the middle.... Ah! |
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 More calm stuff |
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 I think this is me... |
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 Kate |
 Ruth was on mother and tried making jelly. We didn't have a fridge but it was so cold up on deck, she put the jelly in a few pans and popped them in the cuddy. Few hours later... jelly! Now if she'd been able to do ice cream we'd have been really impressed ;) |
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 Julian |
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This was the magic snack box - no matter how much you ate, it was impossible to empty! |
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 Paul points to his favourite bit of Ocean |
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 Paul |
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Another example of a freak wave. This sort of stuff does injure the crew |
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 James... always laughing... |
 ...Kate... wishing James would stop laughing - at least for 5 minutes :) |
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 Paula joins Sarah in a group "bad hair day" |
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On 22nd March we reached the psychologically important "waypoint Bravo", a waypoint placed in the race to prevent boats from going too far South (ie. dangerous icebergs). I thought I would do a bit of a jovial log in my typical sense of humour. Unfortunately the editor refused to publish the picture and thought that there were in fact people out there who would believe that there was a man, in a t-shirt, in a 20ft inflatable boat, 4000 miles from land in the Southern Ocean handing out fresh pants and therefore protest us! They might
have been right... but I was upset - I spent 5 minutes
photoshopping this pic :)
From: Ben Pike |
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Next page... Nearing Cape Town
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