TEAM RUSSIA LEG TWO DAY 4: received 18.11.08 0906 GMT
In case you are wondering…
Waves roaring over the deck, intense loud slamming, and hanging on to your bunk whilst trying to catch some sleep. What’s up? I thought this was meant to be a nice sub-tropical leg! Forget the champagne sailing, the only bubbles we are seeing are on the camera lenses. Forget the ‘80s look with shorts and T-shirts and ray-bans, think survival suits and helmets. Forget a nice foie-grass on toast, think ‘how do I get as many calories as possible in without spilling the whole lot on the ceiling’.
My four-year old son keeps dragging us to the Volvo Dome to watch the Volvo movie. He loves the wild music, the pictures of waves exploding into white on the bow. For 10-minutes he doesn’t blink and his mouth is wide open in amazement. In the mean time, my wife is holding back tears and grabs my hand tight. At the end of the movie, he asks: ‘Daddy, you do all this for a trophy? Silly Daddy!’ My wife in the meantime is thinking of the sleepless nights she will have when she knows we are pushing the boats down south with no help within days.
The Volvo is not just a bunch of guys racing their mates, it is a community of families travelling around the world, living the race every minute of the day. I keep this as a reminder to myself when I try to motivate myself to get out of the nice warm bunk and push hard again. On the boat, we are pulling the long straw with amazing surfs and crazy sailing. We are incredibly lucky with the support we get from our families, friends and shore crew who in the end make our dream possible.
We are completely under water again and conditions are extreme whilst we are blasting east. East? Yes, in case you are wondering, we did get the note from the Race Committee that we have changed destinations. No we are not going to Australia, we are going to Asia. Soon however Australia will be the closest continent as it is yet another day and a half before we turn north towards India. By tonight conditions should improve a bit, with the 35-40knot winds over and done with. So far no breakages, so we are in a good shape.
Even though our easterly route means an extra 900 nm of sailing, none of us is complaining. The alternative scenario is namely a beat all the way from Cape Town to Mauritius. This is by far the most likely scenario, so has our good behaviour in Cape Town made the Gods of the Sea look on us favorably? Who knows, but in any case, we have a big high blocking our way north at the moment, and two low pressure systems will help to get round it to the east. The added bonus of being far east is that we will have a great wind angle in the trade winds later (and we might be able to crack that champagne?)
Back to my bunk for another bumpy ride. We have a tight luff sail up, so less chance of broaching, pitch poling or other nasty stuff. Phew!
Sleep well my love, we are fast, but safe!
Wouter Verbraak - navigator