Tuesday 2nd June,  2015

North Atlantic Ocean  36 02.2N 58 38.6W

Today's Blog by Richard  (Time zone: BST -3.0; UTC -2.0)

“Gentlemen do not sail to windward”.

We are now into our third day out from Bermuda and, whilst we are making great progress, it has all been sailing close to the wind.

For non-sailors among you, I should explain that we are leaning over at an angle of 20 degrees, on average. That may not sound much but it would be a fast run in downhill skiing so imagine what it must be like to walk up such a slope. Younger people would, no doubt, have no problem with this but it is much more of a challenge for old folk with weak core muscles.

It is great fun watching other crew members coping with this. It reminds me a bit of that Julie Waters character in Dinner Ladies (that series which nobody admitted to watching but everybody knows her posture) – bent knees and wobbly legs. Imagine you are on watch and you will shortly be relieved by a colleague. You peer down into the main cabin and you see a figure looking as if they are walking into a hurricane – at a very unlikely angle, stationary, hanging on with both hands, with teeth gritted. They have reached equilibrium and are trying to anticipate what the boat will do next. You see them prepare for the next step but the boat abruptly crashes down an unexpected wave, 60 degrees to their left. They lurch for the nearest grab handle – reaching it, if they’re lucky - but if not, careering off in another random and unexpected direction. They are almost certainly further away from their target place than when they took the step. However, they get back into equilibrium and prepare for the next step…………….

The simplest tasks become “challenge of the day”. For example, going to the bathroom (heads). We are currently sailing on starboard tack and this means, from the centre of the boat, the heads is “uphill” and Peter’s cabin “downhill” and the doors to each are directly opposite each other. The trick is to get into the heads and close the door before a wave sends you hurtling backwards into the very hard upper berth in Peter’s cabin. I have perfected a process whereby I lean on the wall adjacent to Peter’s door, haul myself through the heads doorway, immediately sliding left to avoid being hurled back whence I came.

A rather more serious aspect of being on starboard tack is that the pipe which feeds seawater to the generator for cooling purposes is seemingly out of the water for long enough to cause the generator to overheat so we have to go and sail in a different, flatter and wrong direction in order to run the generator and charge the batteries.

The most serious, however, occurred yesterday when I announced I was going to have a shower. As soon as I was in the shower, I could feel that the skipper had adjusted sails and course, seemingly to make the shower even more uncomfortable. Charming.

Later in the day, however, he said to me, inexplicably “Your boat. I’m off to have a shower” Can you guess what happened next, children?