What was I whittering on about back in Sydney? Crossing the Atlantic was a doddle, even if we did come in at 9th position so will miss our target position of being in top 5 of the overall race leaderboard.
We had a right mixture of weather, starting with cold and being on iceberg watch, to dense fog and on iceberg and any other shipping watch to sunshine and showers, topped off with 40knots of wind blasting us along.
The down side of this race is that someone brought a bug onboard and it ripped its way through our watch, a chest infection on a racing yacht mid-ocean is no fun but there is a plus side that you get sent to your bunk for as long as it takes to get over the worst of it and this means sleep. Lots and lots of, reasonably, uninterrupted sleep. Now that is a rarety and a luxury not to be, ahem, sneezed at.
So then here I am in Ireland sat in a comfortable hotel room enjoying the sensation of a steady platform beneath my feet. Admittedly my head is swaying just a little bit but I put this down to it being 8pm and we hit land at 5am, the showers by 5.15 and the bar at 5.30am. No, don't tut, I haven't been drinking all day, and yes mum I have eaten, I'm just shattered and have been down to meet a friend who came in 2nd on this race so toasted her success with a glass of champaign. What I should be doing now is heading down to the yacht club to catch up with my crewmies and fellow sailors but that bed is looking oh so comfortable.
Maybe I'll just have a quick snooze. . . .
footnote; I'm too tired to read this back and correct grammar/spelling but I'm sure you'll forgive me this one time
There's no beating about the bush, I am dreading this next race. There, I've said it out loud. Some or most of my closest friends know that prior to joining the race I couldn't bring myself to contemplate the Atlantic crossing and I was somehow miraculously going to get from Canada to Cork. I've got one hour before I have to join the boat and I am still unable to think about it. If I could get off now I would without hesitation or a look backward at the fleet.
Our tactitians told us last night that there are 2 options for our route;
1) head north then east - this is approx 200 miles shorter distance than opt 2, however we will have wind, waves and tide against us so it will be a hard 3-4 day slog and far from comfortable sailing.
2) head east then north - should be a much quicker race start but will still have to head north at some point and at this stage we don't have the weather to know if we'll still have a hard slog of it at the end.
I am just hoping and praying we go with option 2. When I joined the race in Hawaii we had just the awful conditions we could be about to face again and that was no laughing matter. I was scared out of my boots for the first week of that sail and I don't want to feel that fear again thank-you very much.
This morning I have been trying to tell myself over and over that I wanted to challenge myself, to feel a sense of achievement and to accomplish something big in the name of Matthew and so onboard I must go. Wish me luck.
T xx
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