11/15/2004: "Global Challenge update for Don"

Here's a message I just go from my sailor buddy Don....This race is insane...


Dear friends,

We finally arrived in Buenos Aires on November 4th after a tumultuous ride up the Rio Platte.
It's a huge 110 mile long estuary that’s about 100 miles wide at the mouth and narrows to 10 or
so miles at Buenos Aires. The water is very shallow and very brown. We entered on a pitch black
stormy evening with thunder and lightning and following winds of up to 45 knots. The
phosphorescence lit up the breaking wave tops creating a spectacular environment. We spent a very fast and sleepless night dodging ship wrecks and shallow water. While I was helming, we briefly reached a surfing speed of 19 knots and at times had less than a meter of water under the keel. It was an outrageous rolly, white-knuckle, out-of-control hell-ride under reefed main and poled out jib (held out on a spinnaker pole). It was also the first time I heard our skipper, James, admit that he was
worried (privately of course).

I had the honor of helming the boat for the afternoon finish under clearing skies and a brisk
following breeze. After motoring for an hour or so from the finish line to the Argentina Yacht Club,
we were greeted by many of the other teams who showered us with beer and champagne. Oddly, after 33 days of continuous and sometimes violent motion, I had no land-sickness (wavy floors and walls and difficulty walking) whatsoever.

We were hard at work for the first four days stripping the boat, cleaning, replenishing supplies,
inspecting sails and equipment, and doing repairs. We’ve spent the evenings in pubs and
restaurants consuming massive quantities of great food and beer. We finished up the work, completed our debriefings and team discussions, and we’re now taking ten days of rest and relaxation before
returning on Saturday, November 20th to entertain corporate sponsors and finish the preparations for
the next leg.

Many of us achieved significant milestones during leg 1 including longest passage (distance and
time), first time crossing an ocean, first time crossing the equator, longest time we can remember
going without a beer (we've just about caught up!), and finally starting the Global Challenge
race after four years of preparation.

Life on the boat is simple and tough. There are two teams of eight and nine people respectively
and there are two six-hour watches during the day, starting at 6 am, and three four-hour watches
during the night starting at 6 pm. So every other day, each team is on duty for a total of either
10 or 14 hours respectively (one six hour day watch and either one or two four-hour night watches).

During each 24-hour day, one member of each team takes a break from racing the boat and serves on
the “mother watch” The two mothers clean the heads, galley, walls, and ceilings, and prepare
the meals and clean up afterwards. For each team member, the mother watch comes around about every eight days and provides extra time for relaxing and sleeping since the duties only require about
10 hours out the 24-hour period. Mothers are also allowed to take a shower and wash clothes. We
dont allow showers at any other time. It took so long to dry clothes in the only space
available, a damp unventilated spare cabin, that they started to get stinky again before they dried. I
discovered that its best to simply wash the clothes I'm wearing, wring em out and put 'em right back on wet. They're a little uncomfortable but they dry in a few hours.

The food on board is nearly all freeze-dried and includes stews, curries, and other meat and
vegetable dishes. There are 14 varieties and since we have at least two hot meals per day, we cycle
through the selection in a week. A meal is prepared for the watch coming on duty and the leftovers
are chucked overboard (The on-watch gets a preview of their upcoming meal!). Then a new batch is
prepared for and consumed by the watch coming off duty and those leftovers are chucked.

The texture of the food is gooey and unappetizing and it causes gas and constipation (in an
already smelly environment). The food has been pre-packaged by our team and each day’s allocation is brought out in the morning and includes rations of powdered milk, sports drink supplement, and high-calorie breakfast drink powder. We also take eight vitamin and food supplement pills each day. Any food and supplies remaining from the previous day are chucked overboard to save weight while we rationed items that were in short supply including sun block, toilet paper, and shower soap.

Each day at breakfast we also received three snacks from grab bag. These include small plastic
bags of mixed nuts (raw and unsalted of course), mixed dried fruit pieces, carbohydrate bars
(similar to Power Bars), and sometimes candy. The handout is always followed by a flurry of activity as
people pick through and trade away what they don’t like such as the dried pineapple pieces from
their fruit bag for someone else’s walnuts from the nut bag. Pleasures are simple aboard!

Our sleeping quarters are very crowded and watch changes can be somewhat chaotic with eight or
nine people trying to get into their foul weather gear and find their life jackets in the confined
spaces. Since most of leg 1 was in warm weather, we often were just dressing in shorts and
tee-shirts which was much faster and easier. The problem will be much greater during leg 2 where we'll
be putting on bulky, one-piece dry-suits.

Although there are eighteen canvas pipe berths on the boat, we don’t use them all. We leave the
two forward two-person cabins for storage and we hot-bunk (shared) the remaining berths aft. We
normally sleep on the high side of the boat to reduce heeling so the off watch has to move from one
side of the boat to the other whenever we tack or gybe. The berths are fairly comfortable under
most circumstances but it’s still very difficult to sleep in the extreme rolly conditions that we
experienced with strong following winds and quartering seas.

All of the clothing we bring on board has been purchased by the team and most of it was branded
for our sponsor. Losing an article of clothing can be a disaster since all eighteen people have
identical items, right down to our underwear and socks.

We're obviously disappointed with our 10th place finish for leg 1 and our team is extensively
reviewing what went wrong and what we're going to do differently during the next leg. I can't
reveal our secret plans for doing better but time will soon tell if we’re on the right track.
Over beers the other night, one of my teammates privately made the blasphemous suggestion that maybe we're just not as good as we think we are! No way.

We encountered storms early in the first leg in the Bay of Biscay and off the coast of Portugal
and those were good warm-water training exercises for the upcoming Southern Ocean. We were becalmed for long periods of time near the Canary and Cape Verde Islands and that certainly contributed to our poor performance. We crossed the equator doing nine knots on a close reach with no sign of doldrum conditions anywhere. Below decks on these boats is very poorly ventilated so in spite of cool breezes above, we sweltered in the stagnant heat with most of us spending our off watch time lying around in our underwear in a state of sweaty insomnia.

Ive adapted well to life at sea. I can get up watch after watch and trim sails, perform
navigation, boat performance, and weather duties, and steer the boat without getting bored. I find the sights at sea interesting even if sparse. We saw lots of porpoises and sea birds and were
accompanied by a pod of whales for a while. We were invaded by four-inch long coral pink locusts 150
miles off the coast of North Africa. Flying fish landed on deck occasionally and birds sometimes
circled the boat waiting for us to disturb them so they could grab a meal in mid-air. A spectacular
meteor lit up the entire sky one night. The sunrises and sunsets were like none Ive ever seen
on land and the squall lines and other cloud formations in the tropics were fantastic.
Albatrosses followed us from time to time and the Southern Cross showed us the way south. And, yes, the weather systems all go backwards down here so we have to turn our weather reference books upside down!

I have five more days until our team meets again to prepare the boat and ourselves for the
Southern Ocean. The rough sea-state and the cold at the high latitudes, and the living conditions for
this next leg, expected to take 42 days or more, are our greatest fears. We've spent a long time
getting ready and now it's time for the test!

Til soon,

Don

www.metoyou.co.uk