It Ain't Half Hot Mum!

I am sure many of us remember the old TV programme by that name but it is just perfect for the title of this blog. To describe where we are, if you have a map with latitude marked, just go to 17 degrees north and you will see we are off the south of Mexico and just approaching Guatemala. The round the world crew members tell me that this last 9 days have been the best run of days where the weather has been fine during the whole race. In the day, we are in shorts and T-shirts with wide-brimmed hats and copious amounts of sun tan cream. The six hour watch in the afternoon is a fight against dehydration and exhaustion. The wind has now died off so we have only "light airs" and there is barely enough breeze to cool you down. The heat is intensified down below because we have to run our generator to produce electricity and the "mothers" are baking bread for our next meal. As a consequence we all leak or rather crudely, sweat profusely all the time. Drinking sufficient is a constant battle and we have watch mates who have a role of ensuring we keep drinking. We also look at the colour of our wee! So life is quite testing.

But yesterday was special. It was my birthday. I had cards with me to open and that was a delight, a real connection with home. But my crew mates were fabulous. I was on watch from 10pm 'til 2am and I was asked to fill in the log at just after midnight and so that marked the start of my birthday. On returning to the deck from the navigation station, they sang Happy Birthday. Following the sleep break from 2am to 6am, when we all met on deck for watch handover, the whole crew sang it again. At Happy Half Hour during watch handover at 6pm, they sang a birthday song to me that they had written during the previous 2 days and pudding was a sort of birthday cake made up with everything from sponges to Haribos.

Malcolm’s birthday song, by the crew of Switzerland:

What should we do with the birthday sailor


What should we do with the birthday sailor


What should we do with the birthday sailor


on this Clipper Race vessel?



Malcolm is a tall kind sailor


Always smiling always cheerful

Keep us safe from what we're fearful


On this Clipper Race vessel



String up the bunks and grind that grinder


Sweat up the kite, give a lesson reminder


Mothering duties, non the finer

Caring for the crew


Give him a ride on a leaping dolphin

Reminisce with an elderly turtle


Hit him on the head with a squid that hurtles

To celebrate your birthday



Offer him a wish on a shooting star


Give him some wind to Panama


Wrap these gifts in a golden sunset


To celebrate your birthday



What should we do with the birthday sailor


What should we do with the birthday sailor


What should we do with the birthday sailor


on this Clipper Race vessel? 

Besides the crew marking my birthday, Mother Nature made her contribution. The sunrise and sunset were spectacular, we spotted a turtle, tuna fish were leaping out of the water and at one point we had a pod of about 20 dolphins playing around the boat for about 20 minutes. They rush in front of the bow and then circle around and do it again and again. I never cease to marvel at these wonderful animals.

It all sounds like a great day, however, there were difficulties. Two crew members had not drunk enough and went down with early symptoms of dehydration. Both were confined to down below and their liquid intake upped along with rehydration powders. Our generator stopped working the previous evening. This is a sizeable engine and the skipper, who is an engineer by training and one of the crew worked for over twelve hours to fix this. At one point we thought we could not do this and were to go onto power conservation mode along with water saving as the water maker needs power. To top all this, we had both heads (toilets) stop working properly and were almost at the point of having buckets and 'chuck it over the side' routines invoked. These events along with the heat and lack of sleep led to a visible decline in the crew's demeanour. However, a birthday and a final repair to the generator and a major piece of loo engineering by our German journalist, Harry, restored our morale.

So we continue to get hotter as we move towards the equator. We battle with light airs and wind holes, just trying to keep the boat going forward. But, we are really bonding as a crew, cooking great meals from basic ingredients, baking wonderful bread and cakes and getting more adept at some complex routines and sail evolutions (changes) on the boat.

I am getting messages from Cathy that you are keen for information about me and this slightly crazy adventure. I just want to thank you for all your support and care.

With my best wishes

Malcolm

NOTE: For those reading this via email update, don't forget to visit the blog at https://malclipper.blogspot.com where you can pledge support via donations to Malcolm's chosen charities - the Bobby Moore Fund tackling bowel cancer; the James Whale Fund for kidney cancer; and Prostate Cancer UK. 

Birthday cake!

Wet wipes and peppermint oil...

Hello from about 300 miles off the coast of Mexico as we race down towards Panama. It is now starting to get hot, but will become fairly unbearable once close to Central America.

I thought I would let you know what the first 5 days have been like and what I have learned.

The race start was a most hectic affair with the 12 boats tacking furiously in order to go under the Golden Gate Bridge at exactly the right time. I was pretty exhausted by the time we settled in to our direction south as I get given many of the heavyweight jobs or the infamous grinder. You may well have seen these on boats where you turn winches furiously by mean of two rotating handles. We saw a large liner making its way up into San Francisco and only the other yachts as they went their various ways. Since then we have seen nothing but sea. These oceans are vast and we have never been closer than about 300 miles from the coast.

Our skipper has adopted a bold strategy. She has gone out west to find the winds as they are often less strong nearer the coast. This is brave because it meant we did more miles than our competitors and after 3 days we were lying in 12th place, last.

Today at mid-day we are now heading on a direct course south east and are at the top of the speed charts as we have better winds. We are moving up the placings and the next couple of days will be key.

I am now getting into the rhythm of living very close to 19 other people at close quarters and with the sleep patterns. I have spoken of the two 6 hour daily watches and the three 4 hour watches at night. Well, with the noise of winches above your head, the heat and people sailing the boat, checking the engine and working in the navigation station, I am actually getting 2 hours of sleep and 4 at the most for the longer watch. And I smell. Our allowance of 6 wet wipes per day having sweated buckets on various jobs on deck and down below, do not quite fit the bill. Peppermint oil in my boots is helping a little. My bunk, which I share with Greg is about 4ft 10 ins high and has just 19 inches between the mattress and the ceiling (deck)!! Quite hard to get into for someone my size.

When on watch there are many jobs to be done besides actually sailing the boat. These include cleaning the two toilets (heads), emptying the bilges, adjust halyards, sheets and ropes as anti-chafe measures, filling in the log and interestingly, downloading statistics every half hour on our performance (speed, wind direction, wind speed and others). We can then look to see who are the best helms and how we can squeeze more pace out of Heidi.

The food is good considering that the daily budget is £3.50 per person. I was glad to help in the shopping for the food and storage of it on the boat. It all adds to the knowledge and experience.

Not much wildlife about and many people are hoping we see whales. It was lovely yesterday though as we had several dolphins darting around the boat at breakfast time, 6am.

Must get some sleep now, all four hours if its not too hot and noisy.

Cheers from the Pacific.

Malcolm

NOTE: For those reading this via email update, don't forget to visit the blog at https://malclipper.blogspot.com where you can pledge support via donations to Malcolm's chosen charities - the Bobby Moore Fund tackling bowel cancer; the James Whale Fund for kidney cancer; and Prostate Cancer UK. 

Relaxing on deck!

43 kilos of pasta...

The last week and a half has been filled with mounting excitement here in San Francisco. Initially this was a mixture of sightseeing and also seeing the various yachts coming into port after their huge journey of over 5000 miles from China. The crews look exhausted after the most challenging leg of the race. My team's boat Switzerland, or Heidi as we know her, has fared well and has arrived without any sail damage. However the UV light has started to affect most of the fleet's sales and we must be watchful to ensure no rips develop. After a deep clean, many of the crew went off to hotels for rest and recuperation.

Meanwhile, we new crew members started our roles by heading off to shop for food to get us to Jamaica. It is not often that one's shopping list includes 43 kilos of pasta and a similar amount of rice. We then spent almost a day dividing all the food into 30+days and putting this into bags to stow away all over the boat.

A further day was spent on a refresher sail for all the new crew members. This was very useful as some of us last sailed over 9 months ago. Most of the training came flooding back quickly.

Heidi is now pretty much ship shape and today we learned which watch we will be in and who we share a bunk with. We were also briefed on the race and associated info for our journey to Panama. 3300 miles of sailing over about 21 days. Initially we will get good following winds but these will fade at Mexico and the increase in temperature will become challenging.

I have just had my last dinner on land and will get some sleep in order to get on the boat by 8am. We slip the lines at 10am and take part in the Parade of Sail prior to the race start at the Golden Gate Bridge. What a privilege. So the phone will be off and emails will be scarce. My adventure and challenge is just hours away.

NOTE: For those reading this via email update, don't forget to visit the blog at https://malclipper.blogspot.com where you can pledge support via donations to Malcolm's chosen charities - the Bobby Moore Fund tackling bowel cancer; the James Whale Fund for kidney cancer; and Prostate Cancer UK.