 Morning again and it's not too bad here |
 |
 |
 I watched my foulies drying for a while - that was hard :) |
 |
 |
 Containers for the boats. They follow the race round the world |
 |
 |
 |
 Checking the mainsail... |
 ... then folding it. |
 The sail repair tent was now very busy |
 |
|
 |
 |
 Ruth had taken over winch maintenance from Rob |
 Newton received a congratulations card from his admirers at home - he was very pleased with it! |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 Saloon cushions taken out to try |
 Sheets washed and laid out |
 |
Sail coming off BG |
 Boots and saloon cushion covers for washing on Me to You |
 A toilet out for maintenance (I think.. it might just have been conveniently placed?!) |
 Table mountain and it's 'tablecloth' |
|
 Still waiting for a few more boats |
 |
 Stelmar sports its new OSG boom cover |
 Sarah sorts a spinnaker guy |
 Just a few of the cogs in a winch (the others would be in a bucket somewhere!!) |
 Club sponsors flags |
 Sue cleaning the crockery and cutlery |
 More drysuits drying |
 Alex looking far too happy next to that BP sign... :) |
 On the back of "Me to You"s team shirts: "Life changing, ocean racing, close hauling, opponent mauling, beam reaching, carbo eating, wave pounding, cape rounding, spinnaker flying, downwind gybing, sheet winching, mainsail reefing, constant heeling, what a feeling (!), course navigating, crew motivating, tears and laughter, we're always faster, with beers and cheers, we volunteers are tried and true, team me to you" Isn't that fantastic!! :) |
 Ruth switches to rubber gloves to continue with those winches |
 There's that man on his toilet again! |
 Time for the Kids arrival... |
|
 |
 The kids were delayed when they had to drop Ade off who dislocated his hip after (when asleep) the boat dropped off a monster wave and he landed on the support bar. Later then had no heater, broken leech lines, freak wave injuring 4 people at once, and were down on wind instruments after an earlier lightning strike. |
All seemed in very good spirits though! |
 |
 Ade gets back on.. |
 |
 |
 Skipper goes in! |
 |
 |
 |
 |Can you tell who just got off the boat? :) |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 Ah-ha... VAIO are in. That makes the whole fleet. |
 |
 V&A shops |
 Waterfront |
More of the waterfront |
 |
Scrubbing the hull on Me to You |
 More sails for inspection |
 |
 Some really fat seals almost sink the BG pontoon! |
Kids mainsail being flaked.... |
... and moved |
 Samsung start their repairs |
Me to You's bunk covers hanging out to dry. |
.. and with the bunks removed... the nasty support bars that did poor Ade so much harm |
 |
 Bunks drying on Save the Children |
 |
 Space to check sails is at a premium! |
 |
 |
 |
 Spare sheets (or is that old sheets for chucking?) |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||
|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
Well I guess that's my little adventure over with and it was quite something - what the hell to do next?! :) I'm not going to do into the personal reasons as to why I did it or what I wanted to get out of it on here but needless to say I got far more out of it than I expected to.
The wonderful thing about this race is that it's for non-professional sailors. Calling them 'amateurs' as Challenge Business often do may be harsh as some are near professional, but I know (sorry, knew!) nothing about sailing yet this incredible adventure was there for the taking for me. Yes, it's very very nasty at times, and certainly when compared to modern, pampered life... Challenge seem to have found a way to take 'normal' people through hell for them to return, safely and a better person with a great deal of appreciation for pretty much everything. They're doing another race in just a few years time, time enough to start saving... Global Challenge 2008 Do it - this is something you will not regret.
Many many thanks to.... the team for being such a great bunch of people, really welcoming me in from the beginning and always being supportive, Clive for being always such a cool cat & always in control, Vale for organising all the bits in between so well, our sponsors Stelmar / OSG who were very generous and supportive, my friends for constantly bombarding me with encouragement emails on board, Sarah/Justin/Natalie for looking after my house (and not painting my car pink!), James for being my manual spam/HTML/signature removal tool, and everyone at Challenge for putting on the most amazing, life changing event ever! :)
If you have any questions - do get in touch...
Ben
ben @ pikeynet . com
Return to Global Challenge page
Page1
Page2
Page3
Page4
Page5
Page6
Page7
Page8
Return to Global Challenge page