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From : Sarah Brice Yacht : Concert Date : Sunday 13th December, 1996
We've been out here for three weeks and it seems like that and more. We continue barrelling up on deck in all our layers to see what fun there is to be had, on days when at home you'd be taking your car round the corner to collect the Sunday papers rather than stick your nose outside. (Or forgoing the Sunday papers altogether!) I now understand why luxury cruises around the Southern Ocean are always on special offer at Travel Agents. This can be a pretty depressing place. A place of unremitting grey. A new shade of grey for sky and sea each day, and often the two are the same so it feels like sailing in a vacuum. I am being harsh though. We've recently been treated with several days of bright sunshine, which doesn't quite have us reaching for bikinis and sun cream, but certainly sunnies come out and you almost get warm in the sun. It also makes the squalls all the more dramatic when you can see them racing towards you. And they come in quickly! Dealing with squalls at night is a slightly different story. The form is that one of the on-watch is down below scrutinising and they call up when they see a squall moving in. The crew on deck are then all standby for a sail change or a reef, watching the wind speed indicator and waiting for the call to action. Helming in these conditions is like an arcade game - pitch black with only the instrument lights ahead of you, trying to hold a compass course as the wind gusts up to fifty knots. You ride most of the roller coaster waves, but one comes up out of the darkness and hits the bow, knocking the boat off course. You're gripping the wheel for dear life and find yourself being spun round with it as the wave hits, so your feet are lifted clear off the deck. Exciting stuff, but a high turnover in drivers - they don't last long. But somehow there's always a queue of punters with their 50p's wanting next turn. Great fun! So here we are apparently in the middle of nowhere, pressing on in what we believe is the right direction. The GPS assures us we're making progress, clocking down the miles to the next way point. The cruel thing is that just as you get down to zero, it flicks up the x - thousand miles to go to the following way point with not so much as a well done chaps. We sort ourselves out with extra treats for reaching these milestones, so it all seems worth the effort. When we reach Concert Gate, the plan is to have a special breakfast of boil-in-the-bag bacon and beans with mash, though how much of a "treat" this will be is open to debate! It'll be a big day when we see "Wellington" up on the screen, and a huge treat when we get there.
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