Wednesday 20th December: It’s 06:32, almost coming up to an entire week at sea. We’ve just had the most awful run of night shifts. The sea has given us a good lashing. It’s been so rough, dark, cold, wet… we had driving rain going right into our faces – you couldn’t see a thing. Some nasty knockdowns. At the end of every shift, big waves come and dump a load of water on you literally 10 minutes before you come off the oars. It’s almost like the sea knows you’re nearly done. Coming off that last shift it was 6 minutes. The cabin is so wet, there’s condensation literally dripping off the walls. Nothing is drying. To be perfectly honest, this is not even fun. This is grim. I really want a hot shower. I want some dry clothes and I want a dry towel. But no, all I’ve got is wet clothes, a wet towel, and to get up again in an hour and a half to row again.
Getting changed in the cabin was difficult; it was only a few inches above head height, you had to be careful not to knock any of the buttons or switches on the wall, and most annoying of all, everything moved. The foul weather gear was a right pain to deal with, especially when it was wet, because it was so bulky and awkward to get in and out of. I kept the cabin light off to spare the girls on deck the sight of me stripping off. As I was wrestling my soggy trousers off my legs in the darkness, there was a loud slam, and I was thrown across the cabin to the starboard wall. In the split second I realised that the wall was now the floor and squeezed my eyes shut, tensing every muscle in my body to brace for the roll. But there was no roll. We hovered with the boat at a 90° angle for what felt like an eternity, before I heard screams of “GET ON PORT” through the door and flung my body weight to the other side. The next thing I heard was Viki shouting for me to go out on deck, so I pulled the wet gear back on and clambered back out. We had to open the cabin door, clip the harness on, and get out at lightning speed only when the person on deck said it was safe, because if we were to capsize with the door open, that would be game fully over.
Abs and Viki had been on the oars but only Abbey was rowing; Viks was assessing the damage. Another gate had broken, and a second one was bent. And this time, we had no spare. Ana had been woken up when the wave had hit, so she joined us on deck while we decided what to do. We concluded that the best option was to swap the gates around to leave us with four good ones for the bow and middle seats and put the dodgy broken ones in the stern seat. That was a task far easier said than done; Ana did the technical work while I taped up the bent one. We didn’t trust the tape to hold up to any big forces, so the verdict was that we could only row 3up if the conditions were calm enough. For a minute we thought that might be the end of our winning dream, but when we debriefed with Angus (who was still completely baffled at the sound of broken gates that “never break”!), he reassured us that adding an extra person on the oars when the waves are big is probably more of a hindrance than help – it’s impossible to row neat and strong with 3 people when you’re being battered from all angles.
Following every period of chaos, there seemed to be a period of calm. As the sky got lighter that morning, the sun broke into the sky through a layer of dramatic but beautiful clouds. I stood up and leant on the stern cabin to eat my breakfast of yesterday’s leftovers, taking in everything around me.
Thursday 21st December: 08:18. I’m standing at the stern cabin watching the waves roll towards us, sunrise in the distance, eating my spaghetti carbonara from last night, thinking there is probably no one else in the entire world doing this right now. Pretty damn special. Wow do I feel lucky.
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