Day 8 – Sunday 12 January.

By Grant Chapman.

We still had the big purple spinnaker up come morning, having flown it all night with which we managed to keep up a respectable average of 7.5 knots. Very little happened today which seemed appropriate given it was an official day of rest. Peter visited the heads and didn’t reappear for almost 2 hours – it wasn’t his plumbing that was the problem but that of the boat’s which had become blocked and he very nobly took it upon himself to clean it out on his own. The toilet bowl, being lower than the sea level, necessitates the use of an anti-siphon system to prevent sea water from being sucked back into the heads. Anything flushed down the loo travels up a pipe above sea level and then back down via a bend to an outlet below the sea water level. Several wetwipes were found to have clogged the bend which a male member of the crew “fessed up to” as being guilty of. Because fresh water is limited, the practicalities of life onboard a relatively small sailing boat such as Rotary Scout means that one has to shower in sea water and use wet wipes to freshen up your nooks and crannies.

The only pelagic bird we saw all day was a Leach’s Storm Petrel and we commented on how we only ever seemed to see lone individuals of a particular species. Most of the day was spent lazily listening to soothing jazz and classical music with Handel’s violin concertos sending everyone (but the helmsman) into a deep sleep. At sunset we had the charcoal braai going on the stern of the boat and we soon had the remaining piece of tuna sliced into steaks and char-grilled on the fire. We had first basted the fish in a green herb marinade consisting of parsley and thyme with black pepper in a teriyaki and olive oil sauce. The fish was delicious and enjoyed with savoury rice, sweet corn, peas, beans and a smidgen of sashimi trimmed off the fish carcass.

We were relaxing after dinner with full stomaches when suddenly it was action stations as the wind started gusting at up to 29 knots and we had to get the big bag up front down before it was blown to shreds. Being overpowered could also have broached the boat which would put the crew at risk of injury and certainly damage the rigging. Conventional wisdom has it that a crossing such as this is equivalent to 5 years of club racing in terms of wear and tear on the boat and her rigging. Judging by the damage suffered by so many boats in the race thus far such an assumption seemed quite accurate. We had only white sails up under a gibbous moon for the rest of the night while we pondered the story Marcus told of the ghost he kept seeing for the last 3 nights and whom he had named ‘Scarlet’. Unbeknown to Marcus, Lucy Norton who had been part of the 2000 Cape to Rio race crew had said that she had also seen a female ghost onboard during the race and that she seemed very friendly, singing to them late at night.

During the late night watch we spotted a big ship off the starboard bow, which those of us who had done the lights and shapes of Collregs (Collision Regulations at Sea) as part of our skipper’s tickets, identified as a large motor vessel over 50m in length with its 2 white mast head lights, the aft one higher than the one on the fore deck.

Viirgil preparing the braai for our char-grilled tuna

Chris removing the contents of the blocked heads