Why

Alex, our skipper, asked me an interesting question yesterday.  He asked, "Why do you do this, why do you sail?"  He said that for him, his earliest memories were always thinking about the oceans and the clipper ships coming to and from Europe.  He said he was inspired by the early Roman and Greek explorers and this was the basis for his love of the water.  He also said that he recently new found respect and admiration for the New Bedford Whalers.  While in the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific two months ago Alex saw the outer limits of these whaling vessels territory and was on the actual island where Melville embarked on his whaling journey that would be the basis for Moby Dick.  Two months later, while standing in the New Bedford Whaling Museum he really saw the other bookend to what he saw in the Pacific.  I thought a bit about his question and although I sailed as a young man in New Jersey, it wasn´t until my Uncle Joe Melick gave me copies of Patrick O´Brien´s Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World books that I really gained an interest in sailing and particularly racing.  Although certainly a romantic vision of life on board a British Man of War, I found it fascinating that O´Brien used all of the correct nautical terminology for these ships.  Most of the time I found myself with two books on my lap -- an O´Brien book and a copy of the Oxford Guide to Ships and the Sea.  Aside from the idealistic thought of life at sea, I loved the idea of pushing hard to reach a destination or a chase and I think that somehow manifested itself into the reasons why I would voluntarily spend 3 weeks away from my wife and family to do what I love.  I owe a lot to my Uncle Joe for giving me those 2 books so long ago.


On a sad note, Ashley let me know this morning she was unable to break away from work to join me in Cowes at the finish.  A sober reminder to me of the commitments I have myself at IBM and at home and am eager to return and get back to the real life.

A Silver Lining

A rough night last night, with not much wind and a few auto-tacks doing 3 or 4 kts.  It´s really hard going without any wind and trying to keep this very large, finicky vessel on a straight line.  With under 700 miles to go, we are about the distance between Newport to Bermuda -- which I used to think was a long way, but now feels like a bit of a sprint in comparison.  A saving grace was a huge pod of dolphins that appeared as I was driving this morning jumping clear out of the water right next to the stern of the boat just as the sun was coming up.  With pink clouds peaking through a grey overcast sky there was a silver lining literally on the horizon.  Certainly gave me a bit of a lift.

Channel Fever

Ironically we have a bit of a Northerly wind tonight for Nordwind as we beat nearer to the English coast.  Not exactly what we want at this point as the wind is coming almost directly from the Lizard necessitating us to tack our way into the finish for now.  I am keeping my fingers crossed for a backing wind to help us come further North and East in order to buzz up the rhumbline.


There is a term that I have heard a few times this past day and that is "Channel Fever."  It starts slowly with some chatter about dockage, hotels, flights, and plans for when we eventually get to the UK.  It seems to be ramping up at almost an exponential pace though.  In fact, I think I head our helmsman call out "Tacking for England!" during a tack today.  Maybe a tad premature?  I think so.  With breaking the 1000 mile mark, we start to get a sense that we are nearing the completion of this race, but with 823 miles left to go, there is still a long way to go.  As John Hammel said to me before leaving, "this is a marathon, not a sprint" and those words keep coming back to me.  It is tough though as I just learned that Ashley will be making her way over to meet me in Cowes.  I can´t tell you how great that makes me feel.  Almost feverish...

Milestones Monotony and Mayhem

We hit a couple of important milestones today.  At 2PM local time we crossed over 2000 total miles traveled.  We also calculated that we have less than 1000 miles to get to Lizard Point on the rhumbline.  We made some major detours early to go South in order to get in better position for wind, so I am quite positive that we will break 3000 total miles traveled when we reach Cowes.  Pretty amazing.


Tonight Alex cooked a lovely meal of risotto with black truffle oil, tomato soup with garlic croutons and a salad.  It was really very nice and made us all feel a bit more civilized.  Unfortunately that was really my only proper meal of the day.  The rest of the days nutrients (if you can all them that) consisted of cold spaghetti for breakfast, a milkyway bar, a granola bar, 4 chocolate covered espresso beans and six or seven Starbursts (I had to do something while helping Andrew and Santi pack the spinnaker).  I also had a coke and a Red Bull at 3am last night while on watch -- you got to do what you got to do.  We have a desalination system on board that we use for showers etc. and the fresh water tanks were filled with local Newport water right before we left -- surprisingly this actually does not taste too bad -- it is filtered.  Hans brought along A LOT of San Pellegrino.  I mean A LOT.  I have been averaging about a litre and a half a day and so has everyone else.  We are running a bit low, but chances are there are a few extra cases stashed elsewhere.


Health wise, I have to say I am feeling good other than being perpetually exhausted.  The days and nights really start to flow together and I find myself just keeping my head down looking for sleep and determining how I am going to eat before my next watch.  I am "hot bunking" (it isn´t nearly as fun as it sounds) with Tom and Franco in a very small state room.  It was supposed to be just Tom and I, but another crew member didn´t want to share his double with Franco off watch.  Not wanting any problems we took it on ourselves to make it work.  Tom has been amazingly generous and accommodating about sharing his room and we have seemed to have found out how to make it work without being all over each other -- it not easy easy though.  With 3 watches, this means I am either in that bunk for 4 hours sleeping, spending 4 hours in the salon on "standby" ready to help the team on watch, or I am on watch -- either driving, doing sail changes, or manning the radar.  That´s 12 hours.  So basically hit ´repeat´ for the last 12 days and that´s pretty much where I am at.  I am tired just thinking about it!  Trust me though, it´s far from boring with your adrenaline pumping at times handling the boat through some of the crazy weather, beautiful ocean wildlife, and constant activity, it has been quite an experience.

Fly By Night

After a few days of little to no wind we are finally back in the grove moving along at 10kts.  This morning I came on deck at 8am for my watch under 2 spinnakers and our mizzen sail up.  Our watch was able to post 42 miles -- a new record for this trip among all the watches.  Whoohoo!  The fog and mist made seeing a long way difficult, but we were followed by a pod of about 20 or so dolphins playing in the 10ft swells and chop next to the boat.  They were jumping almost entirely out of the water a few at a time.  Accompanied by some billowing whitecaps and a sort of rain / fog at 55 degrees you would think we would be pretty unhappy, but since the wind was up, the mood was high.

Tonight we are doing about the same speed, but with a few reefs in the Main.  Trucking along with a very bright phosphorescence tail being kicked up behind the boat which fades off into the distance at about 30-40 yards.  I don´t know why, but it makes me think of a magic carpet ride.

Because it is so hard to see the sails at night you drive 100% by instruments.  Andrew and I have been calling this "The Needle Game" which tonight is basically keeping our bearing on our magnetic compass between 95 and 110 degrees.  Seems like a boring alternative to something like Angry Birds, but consider this: if you veer off course (especially to windward) by as little as 10 degrees you risk broaching, tearing the spin and waking up the captain and crew. This makes The Needle Game much more interesting.

Culture Club

We have quite a mix of nationalities (and personalities) on board for this race.  We have 4 Germans along with the owner Hans, Alex the captain is Italian but grew up in Argentina, Franco and Santi are from Argentina along with Peter (who is married to a Canadian from just outside London!), Tom is half French and half English, so he certainly has his share of personality conflicts (just kidding, he is a great guy).  That leaves the American contingent to Andrew and I and we felt we needed to celebrate July 4th in style.

Andrew and I cooked bacon cheese burgers for the crew in honor of Independence Day and served with coleslaw and ice cold beer.  We tried to set the mood with a little country music, but that didn´t take as well as the burgers (I fried up proscuttio and used that as bacon -- perhaps that was the reason for the positive reviews).  I guess Toby Keith and Jimmy Buffett are an acquired taste.

The Flemish Cap

We are 186 nm South and West of the Flemish Cap headed in a Northerly direction after riding the Gulf Stream for the last week.  There is a natural high off of the Azores and we don´t want to be that South anyway, so it was time to Jibe and make a more direct course to England.  This mornings watch was pretty challenging.  Although it was only blowing 10kts, we had these huge rollers from our stern quarter constantly making the boat either round up or auto jibe.  TONS of input into the steering wheel, so my arms are pretty dead only after an hour of driving.  Nothing like the Beneteau or newer boats I have driven.  Then again, I have not driven a lot in 10-15 ft rollers...  To make matters more interesting, we are shrouded in fog and can only see about 30 yards past the boat.  Nothing on Radar or AIS (a systems that reaches farther than Radar, but only applies to ships that have an AIS system -- a lot of Transatlantic bound boats, most tankers and larger cargo boats do), but I hear we were close to Carina last night -- maybe even saw some lights.  They have their AIS turned off as did British Soldier -- obviously both literally trying to fly under the Radar or in this case AIS.  Not surprising the Brits are going commando being Military and all.