Some hours in the life of 3000 miles at sea...

So, it's finally come to the point where we must down tools and actually wave goodbye to land for the next month. We look set to head off on Friday, traditionally unlucky for sailors, which is a good start. This 3,000 mile sea leg has always been a big part of our trip and as we look around the boat at fully stowed cupboards, uncharacteristically clean clothes and clear decks it is apparent that there is no turning back. There are some nerves but most of all we just can't wait to get our teeth sunk into it. Despite making consistent progress for the last 3 months we still have the bizarre sensation of being able to fly home by dinner time if we wanted (this has been even more noticeable in the Canaries where we worked out it would be much cheaper to fly home and deliver presents in person than post the 2 parcels destined for the Gee and the Tuppen Christmas trees). When we arrive in Trinidad, hopefully sometime in late January, we will have crossed an ocean powered only by nature, be far enough South to get the swimmers on in mid winter and have entered our 3rd continent. It's an exciting time.

With the fact that we are going to be out of contact for the next 3-5 weeks in mind, we thought it would be good to give you some idea of what we are going to be doing with our time. In a nutshell, both a lot and not a lot...

I would like to say the day starts at 8 in the morning, but the day never really starts or ends. Time ceases to fall into the standard day and night and you begin living the rolling cycle of watches. I suppose we need to take an example. It's 3am. Someone calls Hol from out of her half sleep and she bolts upright ready to head up into the night. She is crawling out of the bunk next to me and into her wet weather gear, hat and head torch. As she transmogrifies into a passable likeness of Ellen MacArthur, I luxuriate in the extra space and warmth of bed. With the water crashing around the hull and the boat pitching continually beneath you, sleep remains elusive. All too soon after just a few snatches of dreamfilled sleep, I then see the tip of Hol's nose illuminated beneath the halogen glow of her head torch. It's 5am and she is summoning me onto deck. I stumble out and we fumble like moles passing in too narrow tunnel as i squeeze past her into the cold. Hol crawls back into the warmed bed. The brief exchange of information tells me there have been a few squalls coming through but nothing serious and we are yet to land the tuna we've been discussing and salivating over since fresh meat ran out a week ago.

It's then up through the galley and onto deck. The wind whips through the rigging and instantly wakes you as your eyes struggle to shake off sleep and focus in the gloom. You clip on and make your way to the exposed helm and park yourself. Checking speed shows a good 6 knots and sails full. You then assess the sea and the sky (incidentally all there is to assess) to see what the next 2 hours has in store for you. A couple of patches of cloud off in the distance with the odd flash of lightning, but nothing that´s going to reach us soon. An uncovered moon giving off a surprisingly comforting amount of light, the odd planet shimmering above the horizon and waves crashing gently every now and again. Sometimes the 2 or 3 hours of watch pass quickly as shooting stars streak overhead, your mind is awash with some thought from earlier or, if the weather allows, you dip in and out of a book. Other times you keep looking to your wrist as the minutes creep round reluctantly and you can think of nothing but bed. The best watches are sunrises and sunsets. You begin to appreciate the subtle differences in mood and light between the two. The moment the sun dips at sunset night begins, but night doesn't end with such definition. From the wonderful moment you realise the thick black is being oh so slowly lightened and diluted the day has begun. You may still have an hour before the sun shows itself on the horizon, but from that moment all the optimism, warmth and excitement floods into you. The fact that you may head straight down to bed as the day stretches itself across the sky seems alien to begin with, but it soon becomes clear that you need to sleep when you can if you are to avoid exhaustion and retain the enjoyment of the crossing. You rouse the next person from sleep as they take the first of the daylight shifts.

It is most likely 6 to 8 hours until your next shift. After as much sleep as you feel like you make your way onto deck. Your time off watch in the day can be filled with a huge array of things, but often nothing. Depending on your mood you can choose to escape to the rolling fecundity of Hardy's Wessex or maybe plunge into the roaring gales of the southern ocean with grand accounts of bygone nautical exploits. However, with the rolling watches and the tiredness it brings reaching double figures in pages read is a challenge rarely met. Hol is looking forward to test her theory that she can simply sit on deck, stare into the waves and sky and think for an indefinite amount of time; the results of which I'm a little nervous about.

Fishing is always a possible diversion. It also remains continual and fruitless. Despite infinite discussions with all and sundry we have met along the way (as well as the purchase of some nu-rave squid lures), we have turned up nothing. The elusive ingredient of luck appears to be absent from the fine blend of speed, depth, lure and line. This doesn't stop us fingering the lines knowingly every now and then and looking into the middle distance. The only thing caught tends to be the eye of the last person who felt the line who is secretly hoping they won't have just missed pulling up a monster.

Being an old boat there are always things to be tinkered with. The fact that you are sailing constantly for 24 hours a day means you are aging the boat much faster than most boats ever experience. In one day the amount of wear and tear on lines and sails is about the same as you would get in a a month or so of use by a regular weekend sailor. This means a close eye has to be run over everything and running repairs are inevitable. The old nautical adage of “a place for everything, everything in it's place” rings true on board as the constant movement of the boat means if it isn't stowed, stacked or tied then it is sure to entwine itself around you just when something goes wrong.

Food inevitably remains a focus for the passing of the hours. We take it in turns to be mum for a day (no feminism here I'm afraid) making meals for as long as you can stomach it below and washing up in a salt water filled bucket on deck. Depending on where your watch falls that day you may be woken by the smell of hot porridge coated in golden syrup, fresh bread or pasta and soup wafting into your cabin calling you up to feed. Feeding is important to everyone on the boat and food tends to consume about 60% of our conversation. Consequently we try and eat one meal all together up on deck at least once a day. In between meals the deck is regularly crossed with snacks of dried fruit, nuts, biscuits, crackers, occasional chocolate, crisps and even cake if someone is feeling generous. Hunger is the enemy that can bring on sea sicknesses and so must be suppressed at all times. Washing it all down with ginger teas, fresh coffee and hot chocolates all conspires to mean the usual upside of getting thinner on passage is one benefit lost on Lista.

Maybe we will be a little bit wiser by the time we touch land in 2009. Maybe we will erase all good things learnt by a huge rum fuelled bender on arrival. Whatever happens we will have completed the biggest challenge of the trip so far and be a good chunk of the way round the world!

Wishing everyone a joy filled festive season and look forward to catching up on the other side of the pond. If you would like a less Gee and Tups sided account of our sailing adventures so far then check out Dave and Kat's online log at http://www.listalight.co.uk/.

P.S. This is joint blogging for those who think Nick is scared of the dark and Hol is growing a beard

Christmas photos for one and all

With only a few days before setting off for the big push across the Atlantic we come to the final and most important of the preparations... spending many torrid hours sat listening to 80´s classics like Total Eclipse of the Heart uploading photos.

The latest lots of Moroccan chicken love, seasickness and local nudity can all be found here.

Morocco
Canaries

There is a slideshow option as well if you want to see my straggly beard in all its high definition glory.
Big love

My first solo night watch

About a week ago I headed out from the safety and warmth of my cabin into the depths of the night to watch over our boat on my own. All I had to do was sit at the helm looking out for boats and making sure that the sails kept full of wind. Its pretty simple stuff. Nonetheless a pang of fear hung over me and suddenly heading out there felt very similar to edging towards the darkest depths of the back garden in the middle of the night when I was 7. However much you tell yourself its the same as that garden you played in during the daytime, there's no fighting against your imagination creating a different world. Suddenly the back shed is a den of goblins, those trees are alive and waiting to gobble you up, the grass is full of snakes, the bushes hiding giant human eating spiders and in those dark corners hidden away from the moonlight are witches waiting to use your blood for their potions.

Similarly, for those first few minutes(1) of lonely darkness at the helm, Lista became a perilous vessel, vulnerable to potential attack from all sides. Those creaks and groans of Lista´s beamy frame that we have come to love took on a whole new world. Before I knew it I had worked myself up into a frensy of childish fear. Whales were surely trying to mate with the boat from below, the tiny fish following us all day had now attracted the attention of sharks that were trying to eat their way through the propeller, a seaweed laden half man, half monster was going to climb up and pull us all down into his ocean kingdom at any moment, hidden rocks were waiting to ship wreck us everywhere and that tidal wave was definitely on its way. But despite your mind, once you've committed to doing it there's no going back. However strong the temptation to crawl back to safety is, turning around would be giving in to your inner wimp and who knows what would follow once that had happened.

I personally have a pretty large amount of wimp going on. Until about 4 years old I failed to leave the safety of clinging to my mothers legs wherever we went. At 8 years old I was still crying about being left at school. I am still secretly pretty scared whenever I am left alone in the dark. This little trip around the world is my way of fighting against my inner wimp. I have been trying to suppress it for years. I figure heading out into the wilderness of the ocean, foreign cities, tribal settlements, up mountains, across deserts, down rivers and the likes would help me rid of it for good. In fact I fear that by subjecting my wimpiness to all this bravery is merely bringing it to the surface over and over again. Never before have I been so aware of being a scaredy cat. At least once I have achieved all these 'daring' feats I can justifiably crawl into a little haven of safety for the rest of my life. Well... maybe. We'll see.

Since completing a 5 day, 400 mile, vomit ridden, wildlife full hop into the Atlantic we have been soaking up some sun on Isla Graciosa in The Canaries. The island has a population of 600 people, 500 straw hats, 300 land rovers, 20 nudists and 3 volcanoes. It is also apparently a hot spot for pilot whales, but sadly we have found nothing other than small fry. The quest for mega fauna continues.

(1) The joys of the wilderness of the ocean, where the phosphorescence below you is as bright as the stars above, soon kicks in and fear is replaced with peaceful contemplation.

An African interlude

Our first glimpse of Africa was a big orange haze hovering in an otherwise black horizon. It was 4am and we were flopping around in a dead calm sea waiting for daybreak before we hit the ignition and faced whatever Morocco had to throw at us. We still had another two and a half hours to wait before the sun blessed us with light. Suspense and anticipation was high. That fuzz of light in the distance was Africa and we had made it here with almost nothing but our own sweat and toil. For the last 4 days we had known nothing but our bubble of a wooden boat bobbing about in a big blue sea. In a few hours time we would be in a completely different world as our bubble collides with foreign lands. No frantic packing of bags, queues, flashing lights on boards, flight numbers, tickets, passport checks, announcements or conveyor belts in sight. We just rocked up in Africa, completely unannounced and unexpected. Drifting into somewhere by boat is the closest you can get to making the world a bigger place again. The simplicity and calmness of it feels ancient. As the sun crept up and we crawled closer and closer to land the more foreign we became. Each step towards to shore is a little bit further from your comfort zone and a little bit closer to an unknown world. First you see a nondescript coastline but bit by bit the detail comes through; a town, buildings, a port, crumbling walls, human smells, mosques, fishing boats, birds, the sound of engines running, fishermen shouting. After a long stint of seeing little other than different forms of blue the stimulation is overwhelming and your mind spins with what you are about to experience. With no sterile airport, transfers, motorways or tourists to buffer your entrance a feeling of vulnerability runs high and suddenly the world is huge.

As it happened our arrival in El Jadida was remarkably smooth. Given the number of fishing boats we have seen smashing into each other since, it might have been the smoothest mooring this port has ever seen. El Jadida port is closed from sea and so it wasn't until we were 20m from concrete that we had any idea where we were or what to expect. As we turned into the enclosed walls there was a space of little more than 10 minutes in which we all dropped jaw, gasped with awe at everything we saw, received numerous directions about where to go, doubted help from shore, trusted it, put some lines together, got some fenders out, attracted a 20 plus man crowd and secured ourselves to land.

And so we arrived in Africa, right bang in the heart of a Moroccan fishing port. Twenty four hours a day this port is an explosion of activity. The coming and going of everything from 90 to 10 foot wooden fishing boats never stops. They plough in or out of port, overflowing with more nets, crates, fish, fumes and men than seems possible, regardless of what other boats are moored up to them, in their way or who is about to get crushed. The local sailing and windsurfing club operates in the same (rather small) space and regardless of wind conditions. Often at midday we look onto a gaggle of kids or an overweight parent frantically try to jibe their lasers or windsurfs to avoid an oncoming fishing boat, seagull attack or anything else that might cause them to topple into the faeces and fish gut filled water. And that is all just on the water. The surrounding port is also home to the fish market, the dry docks, conspicuous looking warehouses, the local midget, a bonfire, most of the population when they don't have anything else to do, some confused egrets, a thousand or so cocky seagulls, an infestation of scrounging cats and a bunch of bored officials. Lista has been happily bobbing amongst it all for a week and so we have lived, breathed, smelt, ate and slept the life of El Jadida with little respite.

From the port we wondered into the town, thinking that we must have arrived in the hub and so perhaps there was little else to see. How wrong we were. The port is considerably organised compared to the torrent of activity onshore. The hecticness of this land smacks you in the face everywhere you turn. There is no time for structure or organisation here, everyones too busy buying, selling, mending, making, discussing or playing something. Why would you waste your time contemplating the most efficient way to do something when you could just get on with it? Everyone here goes about their business as they see best, without the input of consultants, instruction manuals or experts. Its how England would look if it was built solely on the back of suburban Sunday DIY experiments. The garden shed approach to life. Grow some stuff, load it up on a cart, take it into town, sprawl it in front of people and wait there until they buy it for a price that works for you and works for them. Make a hole in the town wall, heat it up, bake some bread in it and wait for people to buy it. Breed some animals, throw them in a van, bring them down to town, bring a slaughtering kit and some scales and wait for the demand to flood in. Catch some fish, bring them into port, wait for people to gather around your boat and barter for your goods or just eat them there and then. The same approach goes for everything; nuts, seeds, cakes, bread, meats, eggs, popcorn, tea, tins, fruit, veg, fish, cloth, wood, bikes, cooking appliances, adidas tracksuits, pants, socks, CDs, TVs, towels, books, toilet brushes, beds, sofas, coffee and the list could go on. Pretty much anything you could ever want will be piled up in front of you for your taking within a 100m sq of the middle of town. No space is spared for the convenience of the buyer. Each man is selling his stuff regardless of the man next door. Nothing is masked behind plastic, on shelves, through bar codes, queues, systems, calories or e numbers. Everything is presented and bought the only way its ever looked.

As we become more and more accustomed to shopping in this hodge podge of goods our systems at home seem increasingly ridiculous. Somewhere miles away someone breeds about a million chickens, somehow they get killed, someone builds a massive factory so the meat can be cut up and packaged, it travels some more miles to get to a massive store in the middle of nowhere, someone puts a load of information on a label that means something but no ones really sure what, someone in a big office somewhere dictates its price and then we pick it up, put it in a plastic bag and probably drive for a good 20 minutes to get it home. We must have gotten really bored at some point to spend the time thinking that one up.

This raw approach to life expands far beyond the overflowing limits of the market. A trip to the local Hamman presented washing in an entirely new light. It was initially traumatic, as I strutted in butt naked to be welcomed by a room full of women of all sizes scrubbing their bits and staring at me as if they had never seen something so pink before. However once eyes turned away and I found a corner to hide away in it was an incredible experience and I was rather envious of this cultural and social naked time. Everyone needs to wash so why not do it with all your friends and family in a tiled room filled with steam and buckets of hot water? And so the simplicity continues. If people want tea then they will sit on the floor and drink some tea, if kids want to play football on main roads the cars will have to avoid them, if you need to whizz your motorbike across a pavement at full speed then go for it or if you need to pray on the spot then whip out a rug and get on with it. Life is for the taking so what are we waiting for?