Wednesday 11th May 2022
It’s often at times like this that you wonder why you do this! That kind of night, when you’d planned everything, where everything was just right in your head but you’d forgotten something very important: you are fighting against nature in a racing sailboat.
I had anticipated my passing into the stronger wind passage: tacking, the wind going downwind, sending a small downwind sail and Bob’s your uncle. I might even get lucky and catch up with the others! But that’s in fairy tales, or in the Glénans book.
In fact, I’ve been on it since the start, I’ve hardly slept but was hanging in there, I tacked, changed sails and had a quick nap. That was a few hours back. As I’m writing to you, I’m in the watch seat, after having changed sails three times because the wind went from 18 to 25 knots and all the alarms are ringing on board. The electrical panel is flashing like a Christmas tree.
But that’s nothing! Changing a sail is easy, but when the deck hatch at the front of the boat decided to go for a walk on deck and let tons and tons of water into the boat, that was something else… Since then, I’ve got back on course and finished tidying the boat. Well, almost, I still have to mop the inside of the boat to dry it all out after 2 hours of bilge pumping, 25 miles lost and a pretty low morale. So I indulged in a little nap to catch some strength to be ready for the next day!
Photo © Vincent Curutchet / Hublot