Another typical day--get up after my 4am shift (torrential down pour)
and see Pig Pen trying to open a bag of cheerios, he struggles a bit and
then poof the bag pops open with cheerios flying all of the place. I say
good morning Oscar as he scoops cheerios out of nooks and crannies
attempting to get a complete bowl so he can try and splash milk into the
bowl. He does a good job and gets about 50% of the milk in the bowl. I
think we have a pilot for a new reality TV show, Felix and Oscar at Sea.
Rune has about 400 graphs, charts, tables with all sorts of predictions,
fuel usage and day use left, water usage and averages with and without
showers. Also ETA, other boats average daily performance and rolling
averages as the days continue on. He is quite the brainiack and keeps us
grounded to reality and data. When I start spewing comments like---
maybe if the wind dies and we dive way south and then head north 150
miles from the finish we can capture a podium position. Data master
brings me back to reality along with Pig Pen--the race was won in the
first day.. those boats that got to the synoptic wind first (just past
the Farallone Islands) are all in podium position. Ok smarty pants!
While all this is going on somebody is sailing the boat. Last night Mark
at the helm positioned Tiki on a enormous wave with bow pointed straight
down the pike and hit 19.6 knots a new all time speed record for Tiki
Blue. I was in my quarter birth at the time and was unsure what was
going on other then I knew Tiki was going fast and was praying that she
would stay up right. With Pig Pen's fine helmsmen skills he manage to
keep Tiki upright through and over the next wave. He was screaming his
lung off like a pirate gone mad. Once I realized it was out of sheer
excitement I put down the rosary beads.
Young Jack Sparrow (Alex) is really in tune with the ocean, his eclectic
music and fearlessness on the bow of the boat. When we are getting
spanked by squalls and decide that it is time to drop the spinnaker, who
do we send- Fearless Jack Sparrow. He nimbly goes to the pointy end
while sails, booms and rigging are screaming the sailors tune "bring me
down before I bring you down". Some how every single time he gets the
spiny down without dumping it in the ocean.
Tyler is part of the A team (Pig Pen and Tyler) and seem to be making
all the speed records for Tiki. They have bonded and I see a graduate
degree scholarship coming from the Howe foundation. Ryan has endured the
most difficult sleep conditions of the entire crew, sleeping in the v
birth with wet and dry spinnakers. Sometimes we don't even know if he is
up there. We laugh, that possibly on the next spinnaker hoist we will
see Ryan clinging to the spinnaker in the middle of the night. Ryan's
payoff with the v-birth is he gets his own private head and I can say
after 12 days the main salon head is fully ripe. In 2008 Pac Cup Judy
(the only women on the boat) insisted that all males sit to pea. We did
as told and heads remained relatively clean. I tried this in the
beginning with the crew however Pig Pen led a mutiny and now they all
stand up spraying wondrously at anything that looks like a toilet. So
I've implemented a back up rule to make sure all nozzles are in stream
mode and not spray mode before release. It's still a losing battle.
Ryan just got off the helm with a smile, said just hit 15 knots of boat
speed in 30 knots of wind. That's a PR for him! It's amazing how fast
these young guys learn 12 days and nights of squall sailing.
As we get closer to our destination reflection starts to creep into our
thoughts and discussions. While it has been a very challenging voyage,
the events, interaction and bonding are very hard to duplicate on land.
I know someday when I'm long gone the boys will be telling stories about
the 2012 Pacific Cup race to Hawaii with smiles and a fondness that will
remind them that life is good and to keep sailing on through the squalls
and gentle trades that life brings.
Cheers Capt'n Gary and Team Tiki Blue
No comments:
Post a Comment