Day 22 – Sunday 26 January.

By Grant Chapman.

The morning started off with promising winds but they never strengthened to more than 12knots throughout the day which proved very frustrating as we were all well aware of what speeds were required to make Rio in time and we were simply not achieving them. We would later discover that we only managed to do a total of 112 miles for the whole day which was pitifully short of our required 145 and what was more frustrating was that the other boats slightly ahead of us were getting better wind than us on exactly the same course and latitude. Surely our luck would change as we were doing everything right according to our daily GRIB file information, staying north as much as possible with the penalty of doing additional miles to get better winds that simply weren’t materializing. We needed winds of at least 12-13 knots to fill the spinnaker, otherwise Rotary Scout would just wallow at the mercy of the swell. At least the currents were in our favour and giving us a much-needed 1 knot boost in speed. We crossed the 300 meridian during the day and looked forward to getting to the 350 one a lot quicker.

Heavy cumulonimbus and cumulostratus clouds above them dotted the horizon off our starboard side, indicating that land was nearby, telltale signs that the Polynesians used to their advantage in the absence of charts or GPS and apparently still use on small subsistence fishing boats. The odd Gannet graced us with its presence which also confirmed that that we must be fairly close to land as they build their rookeries on the cliffs of terra firma which they like to frequent, unlike the albatrosses and petrels which seem never to need to land. We were inspecting the fishing lines and wondering why we weren’t getting any interest in our lures, having switched to more warmer water ones that had brighter colours than the blue/black/silver ones that are more effective in the colder Cape waters when we spotted a massive fish gliding along next to our lines. It was difficult to identify exactly what it was but looked like a Sailfish of almost 2m in length, its dorsal sail collapsed as it moved along just below the surface. The lack of any porpoiseing action ruled out the possibility of a dolphin and there was no see-sawing movement associated with a shark, apart from the fact that the shape of its dorsal fin fitted neither of these creatures. We considered that maybe our Finnish Rapalas were speaking the wrong language to these fish in Brazilian waters but one thing was for sure, the big fish we had just seen was not fooled by what we were trying to pass off as good prey fish. Fish do have excellent eyesight, with relatively large eyes to boot, which is why we usually got our bites in the early morning or late evening when the visibility in the water was not optimum. But there again maybe these times were just breakfast and dinner times like the rest of us.

Cathleen had the privilege of taking a call on the Satphone form her Dad while she was taking a shower off the stern of the boat. Lorraine delivered the phone to her with instructions from Peter that under no circumstances could our precious lifeline to shore be dropped overboard or get wet. Bobby and Gill Hughes were flying to Rio to meet Cathleen there and were very kindly sponsoring some much-needed repair equipment for the sails and other items of the boat that needed attention before the trip back to Cape Town after the race. They were also bringing out some more Rapallas as we were running low and the crew were keen to get some more fish on the way back home.

Grant completed his Chairman’s report for the 1st Bergvliet Sea Scout’s Sweet Valley Echo (SVE), our group’s award-winning quarterly newsletter that is so ably put together by Sarah-Leigh Enticott, a scouter in our group, and Ashwyn, also a scouter in our group, also wrote an article that took him the good part of 3 hours to compile – Adrian Velaers , our troop scouter, confirmed receipt of the articles saying that Ashwyn’s was worth all the effort.

Various crew members took advantage of the slower boat speed and stinking hot weather to take a dip off the stern of the boat, with some performing a range of acrobatic maneuvers to enter the water, as our timeshift images of Marcus show. Anyone going anywhere near the stern for any reason was always tethered to a lifeline, its importance becoming apparent after both Chris and Marcus said that they could easily outswim the boat moving along at only 3 knots, Marcus being a lifeguard and Chris a “natural swimmer”. After lots of what appeared to be flailing about in the water behind the boat – they called it swimming – in an attempt to catch the boat they conceded defeat and needed to be hauled back aboard totally spent after their escapades. “It’s the restriction of wearing the lifeline” was the excuse provided which nobody was buying.

Inevitably it became necessary for Peter as the master of the boat to have a quiet word with the odd crew member about their lack of contribution to chores and activities on board which served as a good wake-up call to everyone that we were a team that relied on each other to pull our respective weights. Suddenly the galley was a lot cleaner and the sink was no longer accumulating dirty dishes. The saloon could also be traversed without tripping over someone’s gear cluttering the sole en route to the heads. We also needed to be more focused about trimming the sails better as were in a race after all and everyone seemed to start taking their responsibilities more seriously.

For supper we enjoyed a good meal of gammon and pasta with sweet corn, it being a Sunday of course, followed by our regular fruit salad and Ultramel custard. We all agreed that none of would typically have had so much pudding as what we had been consuming each day but that it served us very well in lifting our spirits and helping us sleep better. The cabin lights were always switched over to the red LEDs at night to reserve our night vision but as they stayed on all night it wasn’t always easy to drop off into a deep sleep and we were always sleeping relatively lightly. The various watch changes also interrupted sleep as those coming off and on watch donned their PFDs and tethers which would clunk as they were clipped on. The result of this was that we slept a lot longer, catching up with a couple of hours of sleep during daylight hours and only emerging all together at lunch and dinner time.