Day 23 – Sunday 26 January 2020

By Dominic Holling and Mika Wessels

By Dominic
Although it is one of our less regular activities, clothes washing do still occur. Whoever takes it upon them to do the washing does it for everyone.

Lunch is usually the time where we all get together and have a chill time with the whole crew. Since we have been running low on gas, we can no longer make our bread, a highlight of the day. So we have had to be conservative. In the night time we make extra-large potions of pasta so we can have it for lunch as well.

When we were all chilling together in the cockpit we played a game whereby we all voted a person for a certain title on the boat. Such included the hardest working, the laziest, the nap taker, and many more. This was quite fun to play, as you can’t see who else everyone is voting for, which makes the end results even more anticipated. We all had a good laugh and a cool bonding time

The night brought a little more interesting weather. We had seen a squall approaching as the sunset, so we dropped the spinnaker which we had up and were all on standby. The rain picked up later in the night. It got quite cold, but it was really cool to be helming with some rain coming over, as you there staying dry and having an awesome time.

Dan & Matt had a particularly interesting night watch. A wind shift had caused us to sail off track so gybed to get back on course. While we were putting out the geona on the spinnaker pole, Dan noticed that the main sail had dropped to about the first reef position! The outer core of the halyard has worn and was slipping through the Spinlock while it was off the winch. We dropped the pole, sailed further up into the wind, hoisted the main and secured it on the winch. Just as we thought we were stable and back on course, a rain squall hit us with the maximum gust reading as 31 knots! We quickly dropped to 2nd reed on both the main and the genoa. Despite having a reef in, we maintained good speed over the next 6 hours and shook it after sunrise.

As Ewan and I were about to hand over our night watch, the DSC VHF radio alarm sounded, Ewan jumped up thinking it was a distress alarm from another vessel. It turned out he had accidently activated his Man overboard Automatic Identification System unit! We woke up Daniel and he sent out an all station broadcast on VHF Channel 16 in case there were any vessels that may have picked up our false alarm.

By Mika
For the past week the crew has spent too much time watching movies and not enough time enjoying each other’s company (except when they snuggle up next to each other to watch a movie). Therefore, when the suggestion of a day away from our cell phones arose, it was readily accepted by each and every member of the crew. Needless to say, it was a blast of a day. Connections were strengthened and great minds were put to use.

We had an amazing time, crawling into the main sail’s stack pack, imagining it was a canoe and rowing our boat gently down the stream. Creating our own music and jamming to it in the cockpit was a sight to see, but a strenuous one to hear. As proven by the lack of bites on the fishing rod, we must’ve chased away all the fish in the surrounding area. Later that day, the sun reached its zenith to find two thrifty gentlemen banging their heads together in hopes of finding a solution to our gas problem. Food is fuel for the brain and thus they found themselves with two empty peach cans after a half an hour of fruitless debate, only to find that they literally had their solution in hand. A hop and a skip and half an hour later they had crafted a crude conservation stove with a billycan to go with it. Minutes later, we had hot water boiling in our braai. Nick and Josh had saved us from our tea and coffee deficiency.

As night came, my thoughts turned towards the crew. If you would’ve asked me before we left how the crew dynamic would be, I would have told you that we would keep to ourselves a lot of the time. After all, I didn’t have any frame of reference. Day one and nearly every day thereafter has proven me wrong. We are a tightly knit group. We are brothers bound together by a journey and a shared goal.