Race 4 – Day 2 – Deja Vu


Hello Dare To Lead crew, friends and family!

I’ve titled this blog “deja vu” because once again, we are beating into the wind and life at an angle has become that bit harder. There is a lot of speculation as to whether or not we will beat the Leg 3 record of 14 days upwind but, as this leg shouldn’t really last that long, we’re all hopeful it will not. As Mick mentioned yesterday, the super-short stopover in Fremantle was a bit fraught with little time to do much other than repairs and maintenance. The upshot being that we’re not all 100% rested starting off. Shout out to Neil who didn’t take a single day off and spent most of the stopover behind a sewing machine repairing our spinnakers. Also big up to Neil for teaching many of the rest of us how to do this so that he can have some time off in Sydney 🙂

We’re quite lucky at the moment as the winds are not stupidly high and the sea state remains reasonably calm…but we all know that may change at any moment. Those of us who are multi-leggers or the RTW crew have had some good experience on previous legs to help us acclimatise to conditions at 45 degrees but some of our new crew have struggled a bit. That said, they have all battled on and are coming right. Sea sickness seems to be abating (yes, Alyson is fine – back on deck and smiling away) and some good advice coming through on how to deal with cinching your bunk up and tying your lee cloth nice and tight so you don’t go for a mid-snooze aerial expedition. Day 2 and we’re all settling in. The sun is out and my watch (Starboard Watch) are enjoying soaking up the rays as we make our way south. Before coming down to write this blog, myself, Jenny and Carl were having a very busy morning whale watching (after ensuring all other duties were attended to, of course!).

I thought I would also take some time to talk to you about food. It’s an important topic on the boat as you can imagine. First up, all meal plans and shopping are completed by our Victualler (Carl) and his assistant (Mick). A massive endeavour in and of itself – as my dear Papa often says, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Despite this truism, Carl and Mick have managed to update and tweak our meal plans such that most of the people are happy all of the time. Kudos to them.

Essentially, the meal plan is a set menu for breakfast lunch and dinner on a 7-day cycle. Helps us keep track of what day it is. Breakfast is a standard cereal, porridge and toast. If you’re really lucky and the stores are still high, there will be fresh and dried fruits as well as condiments to chuck on to your tasty noms. Lunch and dinner are cooked meals of tinned, dried and packaged meats and sauces. You are usually having your meal just before you go on watch (the first serving) or when you come off. The second serving tends to require at least 25% more food than the first as starving crew who have not gorged themselves on snacks are ready to fill up the tanks before hitting the bunk. The gents have outdone themselves on snacks this race and I don’t think anyone is going to go hungry… though some may end up with Type 2 diabetes if they’re not careful! They’ve even stocked up plenty of non-chocolate snacks which means I can have something too (I’m allergic…I know, boo hoo for me. Don’t worry, I eat all the toffee!).

So, all the energy from our delicious noms is powering us back in to forward mid-fleet and we’re going to keep this up to the end. Podium podium, here we come!

With that, my darlings, I’m off to get another packet of cheesy twisties and see if I can spy out some marine wildlife. Hope you are all warm and snuggie where you are. Have a shower and a glass of Shiraz for me.

Smooches

SDx

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