Il mostro beating to Cape Horn en route to Rio De Janeiro on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Rick Deppe/PUMA Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Kenny Read (skipper)
In a bizarre way, life is at its simplest while ocean racing.
Everything happens in sequential patterns. Unless things go bad of course.
First of all, the simplest way to look at our lives is that they simply happen in twos. Two hours that is. We split our working crew in two groups of four. And of those four, two people rotate up and two come down every two hours.
The entire boat works on GMT time, and it simply is a case of looking at your watch and knowing that if an even hour is coming up it is time for a watch change soon.
The cycle of watch changes are ongoing and incredibly predictable. One of the guys on deck who has been there for the last four hours goes below and wakes up the two guys coming up about 20 minutes prior to their scheduled entrance up the ladder and into the elements. Now, those wake ups can come in many different ways depending on the mood of the waker.
1. The traditional shoulder shake along with a ‘mate, its time’.
2. The vigorous shake followed by ‘mate, I'm late to wake you and you only have 10 minutes’. Always followed by a "’hanks a lot!’ from the wakee.
3. The unconventional yet effective tearing out of the arm or leg hair.
This is typically done with a giggle from the waker and a ‘you're a _____’ from the wakee. Fill in the blank pretty much with any four letter word you prefer.
4. The unconventional, yet invigorating, fresh water spray bottle to the face. This is certainly novel and only once when I witnessed this was I actually concerned that the wakee had a chance of drowning.
Every two hours this process takes place.
On to the rest of the schedule.
Skipper Ken Read with Bowman Casey Smith onboard Il mostro en route to Rio De Janeiro on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Rick Deppe/PUMA Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
Six hours. The time that the weather comes in. 0000, 0600, 1200 and 1800 GMT the weather comes in and we fire up our on board server and download it from the Volvo web site. Every six hours I say to Capey (Andrew Cape – navigator), ‘weather soon huh’ to which he looks at me with a touch of disdain and silently says, ‘I know butt head, what do you think I am here for?’ I can't help it though. My reminder to him is probably some sort of unconscious reminder to myself. I don't know, I just can't help it.
The weather is our lifeblood. It is how we plan every move. We really race against the other yachts in the race as well as Mother Nature. She always wins. We just try to compete.
One of the few non even numbers we live by is three. That is how many main meals a day that are prepared. Ricky Deppe, the media man, is in charge of food, and has his own watch schedule as to when the preparation has to occur. Hot meals, especially down here in the Southern Ocean, are crucial to the boys and Ricky makes each meal in batches to try and insure that they are warm and ready when two guys get off watch. Either that or there will be hell to pay, and Ricky doesn't want to see that.
Finally the big number is one. One day at a time. Nearly every morning, when the sun comes up, I think to myself that the last 24 hours went really quick and we are one day closer to our destination. To be honest, I couldn't tell you what day of the week it was or what the date was. I couldn't say if my life depended on it how many days we have been out here. It is just one day at a time, and soon we will get channel fever - which means that you are so close you can taste land and all the pleasantries that go along with it. Especially after 40 days!
So don't tell me how many days it has been at sea because I don't really want to know. What I do know is that weather is in two hours and Salty (Rob Salthouse/NZL) and Erle (Erle Williams/NZL) just got woken using the #1 technique.
The beat goes on.
Volvo Ocean Race
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