I’ve woken for my next watch and the engine is off, thank God! The engine is noisy, belts out some heat into the living quarters. It’s stifling hot and the noise from the diesel transfer pump, used to fill the day tank, would wake the living dead. So, peace and quiet below again, at last.
When I finish my watch, I’m back on Mother Duty (it’s every six days) with Michelle, who’s still not on top form with sea sickness. Before I went to bed, I left some oats to soak over night for a hearty bowl of porridge in the morning, along with cereal and assorted hot drinks. I’ve found a new cracking mix of porridge, Biscoff and milk. A real boost, but a sugar rush 1st thing in the morning. After a week at sea, you get to know who’s up for breakfast and who is still struggling with sea sickness or just not a morning person. Generally, the crew are all great in the morning and with the weather being so warm, the majority of breakfast is served on deck. Time for a clean up and start looking at lunch. Lucy has given us some cracking menus and recipes. But I’ve now got to prepare a special one-pot dish, a bit like a deconstructed sushi dish, with smoked salmon and sushi rice. I’m right out of my comfort zone. This is certainly something I’d never order or eat, let alone prepare and cook. I surprised myself, it looked and tasted fantastic and might even feature in one of James’s films. I didn’t really make enough sushi rice, but at least it all went. Finally, a pasta dish for dinner which was rather simple in execution, with a cheese sauce and a few chilli flakes and some fresh chopped chilli added which again went down well. Unfortunately, a bit of miss communication between Michelle and I meant that the leftovers promised to Oli, were binned. Michelle, who’s struggled all week with sea sickness, tidied up, supported by the wonderful Tracey. Then off to bed for some much-needed shut eye. A note to oneself, when using fresh chillies in the galley, make sure you wash your hands thoroughly before changing your underwear, it can lead to a slightly uncomfortable nights sleep, if you get my drift!
Out of the Doldrums, pushing for position
At this stage of the race it’s difficult to get a real handle where everyone is positioned until we get the official schedule, and more importantly, everyone has finished using their engine. As we come out of the Doldrums corridor the wind is ok but it’s on the nose again. So much for down wind sailing! I’m sure we’ve been duped. I can’t remember the last time we flew a kite? Oh yes I can, we wrapped the kite that time. However, on the positive, upwind sailing is a little less stressful!
It’s all shaken out and we’re in a great 3rd spot, behind Washington DC and Warrant. As I’ve said, the Doldrums and the use of your engine is all a bit of a lottery, where you can drop out of the fleet leaders. So, entering 1st and exiting 3rd isn’t too bad, but the fleet are all fairly bunched up.
Who’d have thought it, Warrant took a gamble, stuck their engine on at the beginning of the corridor and it’s worked for them. So, well done. We’ve just got to chase them down. They have always been pretty quick when up wind sailing is involved so it will be an interesting tussle.
With the fleet being fairly close together, with every wind hole we close up, then we try and get away from everyone as we exit. It’s a constant battle. Finally, we’ve managed to find a way out of the latest hole and escape from the bulk of the fleet leaving Washington, Warrant and ourselves a little bit clear of the others.
Our next target is Warrant. We keep catching them, hit another wind hole. They get away and we go through the process again. I’m not sure how the rest of the crew feel, but I get really deflated with the process. You work really hard, get some progress and then go backwards. I’ve talked before about helming and how it can win and loose races. We’ve been given a course to steer and that message doesn’t seem to resonate with some folk. Concentration is key, if we are all great then laughing and joking would be fine, but we’re not and from time to time our accuracy lets us down, big time. As an example, there are lots of random reefs down here, mostly caused by underwater volcanoes that have risen up from the seabed over time, dramatically reducing water depth down to as little as 6m in places. Whilst this wouldn’t necessarily cause us issues, our SOP’s dictate, we cannot race in less than 20m of water, without a penalty of at least 6 hours, so we need to make sure we keep clear. Because of inaccurate helming and gradual slippage of our initial course, whilst trying to keep one of these reefs to Starboard, we’ve had to alter our course at the last minute to now pass the reef to Port, adding unnecessary miles to our course and more importantly, letting Warrant and Washington get away from us. I find it so frustrating and I think I’m beginning to piss off a few of my crew mates by my constant nagging whilst on check helm.
These Wind holes are going on for days and days, every watch has the same feel. We check Warrants position, we can see her stern lights, we can see her speed and course on AIS. We get close and there’s a wind change, a wind hole, or a mistake and they get away again. However, the banter on the boat is still really good. But the heat is just relentless, difficult to sleep and it’s disappointing when you come back on watch to find we’ve made no gains and Warrant have escaped again! Just for once can we have some weather that benefits us!
Neptune Pays a Visit
Wednesday 28 January 2026 at 04.42 UTC and we’ve passed the Equator heading North. For many on the boat, this is at least the 2nd passing of the Equator. For me, I’ve passed North to South and now South to North. For 5 crew members it’s their 1st time and as Polywogs, they too will become Shell Backs, as the rest of the crew. I can feel a ceremony coming. And, as if by magic, “Petranella” arrived on deck to introduce Neptune, God of the Sea, to help the Polywogs complete their journey into Shell Backs, with some sea water, chucked over them, for their troubles. Watch the video, it’s hilarious. Ironically, as Neptune was giving his speech a pod of Dolphins turned up, unfortunately just out of camera shot. Both Petra and Tony unfortunately missed the event.
Whilst we’ve left the Doldrums, the cloud formations are stunning. It was similar when we passed through the Doldrums in the Atlantic but here in the pacific there is an extra intensity where Sun sets are amazing behind monolithic columns of clouds, looking rather like a Colosseum. Behind the clouds after Sunset, we’ve had lightening shows for hours. Hugh flashes of light from all directions, some sheet and some forked. I’m just glad we’re not in the middle of it.
As we near the scoring gate, it looks like Washington will claim line honours and 3 points, but it’s a close-run thing between Warrant and ourselves for 2nd Spot. They’ve held us off for days, as the wind keeps letting us down. We get within 5.1 miles of them and that’s as close as we get as a new weather schedule comes in. We could get caught in a wind hole for days if we don’t move north, so we change our priority, heading for the northern end of the scoring gate and stop chasing down Warrant. It’s painfully slow with 360 degrees of wind changes, small squalls, where we’re chasing wind angles just trying to keep moving North. A new schedule comes in and it looks like all the fleet, where possible, are heading North to get away from this potential wind hole and GOSH are on our tails. There is that feeling, that after all the effort put in by the crew, we might not even secure 1 point. Warrant have got away from us in the last squall and subsequent wind hole. I go to bed with everything crossed as to get nothing for our efforts would be such a shame.
Our next watch has everybody on deck as we’re going to fly the kite for the 1st time and we’ve finally got through the gate. I think I’ve aged a couple of years this last week as we believe GOSH were held up in the same wind hole, we just need confirmation that we’ve collected a point and carry on heading North.
James, our OBR, has brought his tobacco on board and as an ex-smoker I get the brotherhood of the smoking fraternity, it’s a social thing, a time to chat about stuff. The back of the boat has become like the school yard smoking zone. Every few hours James would head back with his tobacco followed by his cohorts. I only mention it as it hasn’t happened on any other leg on such regularity and maybe I feel a little bit left out of the group. It could be short lived as James was talking about having to ration the sharing of his tobacco. I wonder what will happen when James leaves the boat in Subic Bay
James also brings with him a stash of photographic kit including two drones, his own and Clippers. It has been interesting watching him launch and retrieve the Clipper’s drone. On occasions, for reasons James or the manual cannot explain, the drone refuses to launch, which can be a tad frustrating for him when you’re on a tight schedule. Today he decided to film the launch and retrieval of the drone, which worked great until he realised the record button wasn’t hit at the correct time. Take two, ready for the launch with safety gloves and glasses in place, Dominique with the trusted GoPro running and off goes the drone, just mili seconds into the flight and it kind of flips over and drops out of the sky and into the sea. It disappears from view in a few seconds to gasps from everyone on deck, followed by a silence, followed by a few expletives. It looks like a system error, but the controller data needs to be sent to the manufacturer to ascertain what’s happened, a bit like the black box of an aeroplane, the manufacturer can decipher what’s occurred. Really clever stuff.
Sunburnt, Soaked, and Serving Up Another Watch
This week has been a bit of a challenge, a lot of heat, a lot of frustration, a lack of sleep, no wind, too much wind, wind in the wrong direction, not being able to catch Warrant, which leads to more frustration on the boat. I sort of lost it with Craig one evening as I couldn’t understand what we were trying to do! I apologised at the next watch after a bit of reflection.
I’m back up on deck for my last watch before going on Mother again with Michelle for Sunday Sundown. My Watch starts at 02.00 with pandemonium. A big squall had just come through and another was on its way. The Yankee 1 had already been dropped and the on-watch had started to set up for reef 1 on the main sail. I crawled under the traveller to help Stewart as it kicked off, massive gusts of wind and torrential rain and I mean stair-rods. I’d caught a bit too much sun on the old head yesterday, so it was a tad sensitive. I didn’t expect rain this hard and as the boat was listing over, we had to dump more wind by moving the boom down the traveler. It basically helps spill wind out the back of the sail. It helped for a while but as the rain kept belting down we let out some main sheet to dump even more wind out of the mainsail. Again, it worked for a while with gusts of 30 knots. With the rain hammering down, gallons of fresh water where cascading off the bottom of the mainsail, my head was stinging and my eyes where hurting with the force of the rain. Eventually we had to put a reef in, led by Gavin. Even though he’s shouting to be heard above the wind and rain, it’s still calming and controlled, which helps immensely. Reef 1 made and I was soaked through. I had only a pair of light weight LPX Musto shorts, a summer T-shirt and a light weight LPX Musto jacket and of course my trusty Crocs. Craig, our 1st mate, who had been helming through all of this, decided he’d had enough and passed helming duties to me but I was shivering with the cold. After 30 minutes, I had to call it quits and crawled back under the traveller and down below. I went to get a change of clothes, but Mitchell was soundly sleeping (we hot bunk) and I didn’t want to disturb her, so went back to the galley, turned on the cooker, made some hot drinks for my watch, then started getting breakfast started. There was no bread available, so no toast.
Gavin has a thing about turning the Generator on just to make toast. My thoughts are, turn the generator on to make water, charge the boats batteries and make use of the 240 volt supply to make toast.
So, we had cereal and fruit. But, at the last minute I find a bag of porridge so quickly mix up the water and milk and got the porridge on the go. I’ll let Michelle have a bit of a lie-in, as she looked tired and she’s not good with mothering when it gets a bit rough and she would confess to not be much of a cook either. She pulls her weight by doing the washing up and cleaning. Once we’re all tidy and ship shape it’s time to look at lunch and today we have koftas to prepare. Not something I would buy or have eaten before so roll the sleeves up and have a go. Lunch completed, tidy the galley and get dinner on. A beef stew with boiled rice. Many of you guys who have read my blog before, know only too well that my mother watch and spinnakers don’t normally go down that well. After most of the afternoon, getting dinner ready for 17.30, and also making some small pizzas as appetisers for Sunday sundown, I stick my head up onto the deck and tell Gavin that dinner is ready. He replies, “we’ll be putting the kite up first!” An hour passes before I can serve dinner. Luckily the meal wasn’t spoiled, apart from the gluten free appetiser for Dominic, rice cakes with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, which turned into a cheese puddle. It’s the thought that counts. I think the food went down well, but not 100%, sure in the chaos of flying the kite. Tidy up again then off to bed at around 8 pm. I’ll be back up at five for my watch
I love a Sunday Sundown which completes another week on my circumnavigation, in what’s been a very trying seven days. Hopefully next week brings better things