I’ve been thinking of writing but was totally exhausted and also very busy in the last few days.
Here is a short summary of what we’ve gone through;
I guess it was thursday early morning hours when we had our windseeker on wind started to get stronger and stronger almost immediately so we were reefing one after the other and I heard one of my crew members was preparing the breakfast. All of a sudden I’ve heard her shouting in pain from the galley. It was very difficult for me to get to her and help as I had reef lines I’ve been pulling so I shouted something wrong at the galley can you please help. One other crew who was sleeping went quickly and helped her. Afterwards the tele doctors were consulted with, and to avoid any inflammation that can happen iki of the time on boat, decision was to take her back to the land. So we had sailed back to the land (in case you were watching race viewer), at aa sa proximity of 100 miles. There we met US coast guards, Lathat sent a helicopter to us and a very impressive operation started. There was a helicopter accompanied by a small plane coming over and swimmer was dropped down and then came over on our boat where he has climbed himself up impressively and took tje injured crew member with him. Since then we’ve heard that she is doing well, which we made us all happy. It’s a pity that she won’t be with us and we definitely will miss her wonderful company.
The following day and following night I have helmed on the Atlantic, some very firsts for me. I felt I did okay, and also tried training my ears to the sound of the wind so I don’t need to watch instruments continuously. Helming at night was ing, where you can target a star (from the helming point due to illumination from instruments, it isn’t possible to see many stars), and conscious that you won’t see it forever due to moving clouds. I’ve also learned that it is best to target a star closer to the horizon.
Also during the day we’ve seen some wonderful clouds, at some point it looked like the clouds were a sweater eaten by moths with few holes in them.. all amazing nature.
Yesterday I was one of the cookies, and spent a lot of time in the galley cooking, cleaning.. at some point I felt very exhausted and had very strong headaches and I felt like I’ve lost any of my muscle power. I didn’t realise that it was dehydration, so I’ve been taking lots of electrolytes in my water. While we have a working water maker, it’s just water with no minerals in, hence whatever you drink goes out immediately also I felt I sweated so much.
While being a cookie I realised how hungry people gets and how important it is to eat. So I’ll always keep that in mind in the rest of the race.
On the race front, before we decided heading back to land to meet with the coastguards, we’ve been in the top 3 I’ve heard, and due to this being a medical evacuation we’ve told that we don’t get a redress, so we’ll have to make our way back into the group, regardless of what has happened. I guess we don’t really worry about that much but it feels really good to hear how close we are getting to the group ahead of us. Boat ahead of us is nearly visible to us, which is a very good marker that we have been doing the right things.
Finally I didn’t have a visit from the greenmonster and decided not to report about it again, as I feel like my body is used to the motion, I’m hoping my sealegs will get better and better every day. I can also add that every move is a workout doing the day or night, when the boat is sailing at 40-45 degrees. I wonder how it’d feel to walk on the land again.
Enough for today, next time I’m hoping to write about our roles on the boat as well as shifts etc.
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