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In the Southern Hemisphere!
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Tom Gruitt crosses the Equator.
"One of my sailing dreams came true today, I sailed into the Southern Hemisphere! We crossed the equator at roughly 0100 on Monday 12th, with strangely dressed people and a bar set up down below with rum, gin & tonic and one bottle of pear cider we had a small party on the boat. There were glow sticks a plenty and some of the guys dressed in leotards, tight vest tops and Phil dressed in a pink cowboy hat and a blue towel/skirt. I shall spare you all the photos. We all cheered and celebrated the crossing of hemispheres before listening to Jan make a little speech about how Neptune was so kind to give us wind all through the doldrums, for this we gave him a few gifts including a nice measure of Benromach whisky.
"Soon enough it was back to the reality of sailing after letting our hair down for an hour, oh how those rum and cokes went down nicely after being at sea for so long! A close battle with Spirit of Australia is on at the moment with us in second place only one nautical mile ahead, we believe we are in a far better position than them so should start to put the miles on them soon. Poor California is about 900 miles behind the leaders, Finland, and making slow progress. I can't bear to image what life on board that boat is like, the morale must be at a complete low. Contrary to this, life on board the 'Big Blue Canoe' that is Cape Breton Island Clipper, is great, there seems to be a great sense of harmony within the crew with hardly any arguments or bad words said and our skipper seems to be able to rest easily (this means generally he is in a good mood and does fewer Meer Kat impressions sticking his head up through the hatch!).
"Today I was on mother watch with Rob, I think we were dealt a little bit of a bad hand with the food bags, we had soup for lunch which seemed only enough to feed about five, so this had to be bulked up with water and sachets of powdered soup, mushrooms and some paprika. For dinner we had cous-cous, a blank canvas for attaching many flavours, the only this is that we had a limited amount of flavours to add that didn't involve more Salami. Peppers, tomatoes, apricots, pine nuts and raisins did the trick and people didn't seem to complain too much. Dessert came up trumps though, chocolate brownies served with the best custard I have ever made, at one point it rivaled the adhesive properties of Sikaflex but this was soon rectified to allow it to actually flow out of the jug and into the bowls!
"Cooking for 20 hungry sailors isn't easy, but the hardest part is doing all the washing up afterwards and all the general cleaning of the boat throughout the day, cleaning the heads at 0700 in the morning certainly wakes you up! Mother watch starts at 2100 and ends at the same time the next day, this means you have plenty of time the evening before to prepare any food, such as soaking beans or chick peas, neither of my favourite foods despite their liberal use for the last three weeks. The freshwater shower at the end of the day makes it worthwhile.
"A strange thing happened today, Luke logged onto the communications computer to send a few emails and we realised the screen had turned upside down! We are not sure if this is a direct effect of crossing the equator or someone sitting on the keyboard at some point after the party, whichever it is, it's making it hard to type this blog and I'm sure to develop a crick in my neck pretty soon, so I shall make this the end for now. We estimate only six days until we reach Rio, I can't wait!"
posted by Hyde Sails at
08:54
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