Day 29 – Saturday 1 February 2020
By Joshua Jackson
On Day 25 of our crossing it became one of the more memorable days of our journey to Rio. The day started with Dom, Max and Ewan waking me up 30 minutes before my watch at 00h00 as they were scared because there was a black bird flying around the boat crowing. It was that same night and watch that there was no wind at all and Mika and I only managed to do 2.7 nautical miles in 2 hours, meaning our average speed over ground was only 1.3 knots! That’s 2.4km an hour which is like taking a really slow stroll. Needless to say, it was a painful 2 hours.
After sunrise, I was greeted by Matt tweaking my feet, telling me to get up so that we could go for a swim (this was at 07h30). So while everyone else was in the classroom or the office, I had just rolled out of bed and into the middle of the South Atlantic. But that was only the start of what was to come for the day. The temperature quickly rose and we found ourselves baking in the sun with no wind and our solution to this was more swimming!
However, swimming was not the only thing on the agenda. As we were going so slowly, it gave us the chance to give the hull a good scrub and get the last three weeks of growth off the boat. The rest of the crew quickly joined us for our afternoon swim session. By late afternoon, we went for another dip and had a game of polo.
To make our no wind day even better, Dan suggested that we check how much gas we had. We’ve been quite conservative given we are down to one 5kg bottle but to our delight we had almost a full bottle! We enjoyed a delicious supper of spaghetti bolognese with vegetarian mince.
Plunging into the ocean from your boat and staring down through the clear blue water with your mask on creates an indescribible feeling of isolation and respect for the sea. It is an experience like none other, looking at the boat from below the water and realising that this is and has been your world for the last three weeks.
But to us it’s not just a boat, it’s our home. The crew is like your family and we depend on each other for everything. Being out here gives you the opportunity to reflect on your thoughts and emotions in not just this passage but on life as well.
Last night the AIS (Automatic Identification System which informs you of other vessels) lit up like a Christmas tree with all the ships sitting off the oil and gas fields as we approached the Brazilian coastline. We were kept busy sailing the boat to its optimum at really good speeds while also keeping a close visual lookout for the lights of all the vessels around us and maintaining a good listening watch on the VHF Radio emergency channel 16.
Now with just over 100 nautical miles to go until the finish it’s going to be a nail biting time for all of us on board.