Day 4 – Wednesday 12 February.

By Cathleen Hughes.

Every crew member is back to their original good spirits and feeling like proper sailors. More showers were taken to freshen up. We received a couple emails from various scouting backgrounds about the race and wishing us well on our journey home. A very special email came from our fellow race crew member, Grant Chapman. It was comforting to know he arrived home safely and is enjoying telling the tales of the high seas. His message touched home to many of the crew members who sailed in the race with him.

An early morning discussion lead to the decision to close our supply of water from the main tanks and switch to the fore peak tanks as our primary source. Although we checked them in Rio and found no leaks, we decided that using up these tanks first would lower the chances of any possible loss of water and we could switch back to the main tank as a secondary source and will be able to monitor it easier.

Ashwyn’s mast climbing experience was put to good use again as he was winched up the mast to reattach the lazy jacks that had come loose during the first few rough days of the return trip. When he returned from his expedition up the mast, it seemed he was a changed person as he suddenly decided he wanted to cut his hair. Lorraine was the chosen hairstylist and quickly grabbed a pair of scissors from the chart table and took to the task before he changed his mind. At first it looked like we may be calling him ‘Patches’ for the rest of the journey but after he washed his hair he looked like a brand new man. Ashwyn said his mom would be ecstatic about his decision as she has wanted him to cut off his hair since he started growing it four years ago. He started to worry that customs in South Africa wouldn’t recognise him from his passport photo. He was soon comforted by Peter flattering words of how handsome he looked now.

During lunch Rory and Renier took to the role of storytelling. We heard tales of Reniers time in the military and Rory’s travels around Europe in his early years. Every crew member listened intensively and often broke into laughter. The stories carried on for hours with the topic changing every so often. Renier eventually brought up the topic of Rugby teams. Being from Rustenburg, he made it clear that he was a proud supporter of the Blue Bulls which was the wrong thing to say on a boat dominated by Cape Tonians who are all proud Western Province supporters. Suddenly the banter started between the two teams and even Lorraine, who is from Benoni, had her few words in favour of Western Province. Eventually the banter moulded into a discussion about the Springboks and the brief moment of tension was lifted.

Supper was Chicken a la King made with fresh chicken and a creamy sauce. For dessert the majority had guava and canned cream which was a refreshing change from the custard. For one crew member we found the last remnants of Ultra Mel left at the bottom of yesterday’s box. Once poured on top of the guava, the custard almost glowed a luminescent green. The bowl was passed down the line by each crew member offering the last dessert with custard, as if they were being courteous. Chris drew the short end of the straw and graciously accepted it. The colour didn’t seem to bother him much but once he had taken a spoonful he declared that it was below ‘Chris standards’ and the dessert was fed to the fish. We reckon that if this had been done in the dark, the dessert would have lit up a glowing trail behind the boat.

During the night shifts, we saw some clouds developing as well as a brief period of lightning on the horizon. The wind was very shifty and we eventually had to pole out the Genoa which took a while due to the fact that a tiny shackle from the beak of the pole had disappeared from the foredeck. After searching for a good half an hour the fore deck crew eventually decided to use a piece of nylon as a temporary fix.

All the crew members are catching up on their sleep as most now have to be shaken awake for the shifts where before you only had to whisper their name and they would respond. Many crew members have also been having dreams and one which is definitely most interesting is Virgil’s. He dreamt that Lorraine’s mom emailed us a bright red bathtub that we placed in the saloon and everyone was lining up to have a wonderful warm, fresh water bath. The crew was sceptical of this for many reasons which included the fact that the bath was actually emailed to us but we all agreed it would be fantastic to have a warm bath with fresh water.