Dear Marge,

DATE: 2002-11-15
LOCATION:021deg01N136deg48W
WEATHER: Warm, sunny, overcast. Water temp: 23C

Thank you for your email. Today has been strangely up and down. I didn't sleep much last night, struggling to keep my eyes open at the wheel. I was sitting there the other night in rolling seas and I realised I hadn't cleaned my teeth. They felt scummy so I thought I would just go and clean them. Then I thought to myself "if I leave the wheel we could broach, suffer a knock-down and all die. I have a choice between clean teeth and life". Just as I made my choice a huge wave swept the deck knocking me to my feet and, I thought, I had definitely made the right choice!

I awoke this morning in a grump. I had been awakened, and kept awake, by a heated and, as usual, futile debate about charts. It seemed to go on for hours as I rolled about on the galley bunk, trying to ignore it (my own bunk is still as wet as a fish-tank). Eventually I got up. My stomach felt sensitive so I went and sat outside, staring glumly at the grey rolling seas that look the same way they have for days. I reflected on loneliness, homesickness, friends, and family. Eventually I stomached a breakfast of pineapple and carnation milk. It reminded me of a time my Dad and I found a boffy (a mountain shelter) on the Isle of Jura and I had condensed milk for the first time. The boffy was stocked by visitors, so that a stranded party could find food and shelter should they need it. Phil told me a similar story about some people who were ship-wrecked and found an island, but died of starvation. People still leave tinned food in the hulk of an old boat in memory of those people, and for the next victims of the sea that should end up there.

The day wound on slowly. Bart decided to rewire the ship. I am glad it's not my boat, as he doesn't hesitate to drill holes in bulk-heads and snip into high-power cables. I read some more of White Teeth, a book I am enjoying a lot. It's hard to read for long, and I had to go and stare out to sea for a few hours to steady my stomach. Lunch was an apple. It's funny how you don't care about standards after a while. I was still in my night-clothes and Bart had got fish blood all over his pyjamas yesterday. He caught a 30lb Dorado, but the skipper wouldn't let us eat it yet, claiming it's too fresh! He is mad. The food is going off. In his usual way David is being wise after the event, muttering things about the suitability of the food and how it should have been stored in nets. We have a hold full of bilge water, molding onions, green potatoes and crushed eggs. The latter were thoughtfully stacked under the tinned food. The smell is incredibly bad. I have just thrown away the eggs, but no-one is brave enough to mop the slop out. The breakfast cereal and pasta is going soggy from sea water and we are only a week in!

We are pleased with our progress. We have covered 1500 miles, a third of the distance. Phil thinks we can get to Samoa in another ten days. I snorted my disbelief. 10 days if we kept up the ripping 12kn average we have with this trade wind and the tail of the hurricane over Mexico, yeah. But we are south of the trades now and will soon be in the doldrums. After that we have to fight the equatorial current and then we are in "cyclone alley", the southern trades. Still, I am being optimistic, and I want us to carry as much sail as we can, so that we reach dry land as soon as possible. However this is no longer an option after what happened earlier...

The boat carries two sails, by its design it has a jib and a main. It should have a spinnaker, but they wouldn't give that to us (they obviously knew something!). Bart blagged a genoa off an ex-Whitbread boat. It's huge for this boat - reaching a third of the way back to the cockpit (a 166% genoa). It's also old and worn and made from a very lightweight material.

We have flown the genoa when the airs were light and the jib when there is more wind. Today the plan was to change to the genoa, but instead of taking the jib down, we would fly the genoa loose, like a genika (a genoa/spinnaker hybrid). All well and good, but it provoked the usual discussion. Bart was all for thinking it through, but the skipper became grumpy and belligerent and issued his orders. In moderate seas, but running with the wind, we battled with half an acre of sail-cloth and flew it from the anchor-roller to the mast-head. It was quite an achievement: launching a sail the size of my garden under full power in to the air, like a spinnaker. I was admiring the thin fabric flapping in the wind and catching the sun like silk. I was even going to take a picture. Then there was a huge rip! Halfway across the sail, it tore, one half whipping up into the rigging, the other half dropping to the sea, dragging the boat around. We watched, horrified and powerless, as the last thread held for a moment, and then gave. With a lot of muscle power, we hauled the tattered remains into the boat. Now we are down to just one foresail and no spares. We are still holding ten knots in the force 4 winds with the jib, and the sea is calmer, but if this sail rips, our speed will be dramatically reduced.

I didn't get to enjoy my book very much today. I was reminded that I had volunteered to free the propeller. So with dread I hid in the saloon until they stopped the boat and wrapped a rope around the hull. David proclaimed his snorkeling gear wouldn't fit me so the skipper found me a pair of swim goggles. I sat at the back staring at the grey chop and wondered if I should back out. But for once I was determined. I wanted to be able to write back and say I'd done this. I could have made excuses but I had always thought, given this situation, it would be me being brave. I tied a rope around my waist and jumped straight off the back. It was very warm, warmer than Salcombe was this summer, and really quite pleasant. I then had to grope under the hull, to find the prop. Luckily the boat is narrow and shallow and it wasn't very far. I grabbed handfuls of fishing line out of the blades and went to the surface, gasping for air. So much water went up my nose that it is still dribbling out as I type this. A few more dives and finally I was gasping for breath and shivering from the fresh wind that was blowing. Bart finished off the job with one final handful of line, making it look easy. The engine is running fine now, and we are all relieved. It was very odd stopping a boat in the middle of the ocean like that, just hanging in the waves. The sea bed is over a kilometre away from the surface and I haven't seen any marine life, unless it's on the end of a fishing line. During the sail-hoist I hung at the front on the bow grappling with the luff of the sail. There was some argument going on at the mast, and I watched David retie his shoes laces about ten times. To kill time I stared out to sea, announcing to myself I was on Whale Watch. There were no whales to be seen, not that I was surprised. Just the white caps of rolling grey waves stretching for miles in every direction. Actually the isolation doesn't bother me like I thought it would. I thought that that would be the real killer, staring at nothing for weeks on end. But actually your life becomes 70ft of boat. Your world becomes very small. A little bit of white fibre-glass rocking around in a huge ocean.

This boat is very salubrious. It has the compulsory teak trim and soft tan leather seats. But when you look up it is like a soap dish just smooth white plastic. I have decided that I would rather a traditional boat, the barge I was on last year had a much nicer character and the warm smoky lounge with it's tea pot (that was always full) and old worn sofa felt much more my style. I just dream of how much I'd enjoy this boat if it were mine. What I could do with it and where I could go.

Radio is an amazing thing. We have an amateur radio that connects us to people all around the Pacific rim. We listened in on the "net" last night (a ham radio net, something that predates the Internet by decades). It is nice to know that someone knows where we are, despite the fact they couldn't get to us! I would love to talk to you on the radio in real time, instead of by email. If you could find out the frequencies that Raleigh use in Chile, I could talk to them. I'd love to tell them what I am up to now.
There was a guy talking about whales. I think he sounded a bit furtive, but he was making the point that whales are quite dangerous to get close to. In a little yacht like ours it would be like hitting an oil tanker, and the whale would come off worse for it as well. Still I await the day when the fins of dolphins curve by or I have a sighting of another mammal.

I had a chat with the skipper earlier, and the rest of the trip sounds really exciting. Once we reach Samoa, no passage will be over five days, as we work our way through most of East Asia, from tropical island to island. We are going to be seeing things that many people never get to see and from the privileged position of our own boat. He has planned several days of site-seeing in each island group, which sounds perfect. However I am resolved to get back to England for mid January, whilst he is saying we have until the end of Jan to site-see. I will disembark in Indonesia if necessary, but if this trip is as good as it sounds, I will stick it out as long as I can. Oh if only you could join me, it would be perfect! If David leaves, and I am first mate, then there would be a position for an able-seaman. He is resolved to get out at Samoa, but I don't believe he will. Things are already settling down, and all though every sailing manoeuvre starts an argument, Bart and David are accepting Phil's idiotic ways. I have lost all faith in him. I am not sure that Bart and David are that knowledgeable, but they can sail. Phil can't even hold the boat on a straight course. There is no way he is qualified. I think he is a ship's chef that suddenly decided he wanted to be a skipper, and got this job because it is a suicide mission.

We were working on the fore-deck (a risky business) when Phil gybed the boat! Yes, he put the boat into a full gybe. We had preventers rigged, so that this doesn't happen (it would demast us for sure). They held and the boom didn't swing. Instead the boat stalled and everything went oddly quiet. It was like those moments in films when they freeze-frame for dramatic effect. The boom just held there, completely backed. The boat skewed into windward with the toe rails deep under water. Were we going to capsize? Bart and I screamed abuse to the back of the boat, but the skipper stared in to space, his hands not even on the wheel. Luckily the laws of Physics were on our side, and slowly, after agonising minutes, the boat swerved back around to align itself with the wind, until the sail cracked back into shape, violently flinging the boat upright. The thunderous noise of everything flying about downstairs filled our ears.

Phil was unabashed. He does not understand the basics of sailing, that you can't point the boat any which way and just be taken along by the wind. He can't trim sails, and he has no accord for safety. He disabled the gas alarm, the most dangerous thing to do on a boat. He has no knowledge of man over board drill, our life raft isn't attached, so it wouldn't inflate in an emergency, and he waves any of our concerns aside. He has the stupidest ideas about hoisting and lowering sails. Everyone in the whole world, from Whitbread racers to dinghy sailors know that you have to head in to the wind to do this. Otherwise the sails are filled and under pressure, causing strain and damage. Phil is adamant that it has to be done this way, and if it weren't for us sneaking little shifts to windward and other tricks, we wouldn't have any sails left. It's ridiculous, as it causes massive strain to be put on the winches, halyards, sailcloth, rigging and us!

I don't believe that David will leave ship. Strangely we will be the best of buddies by the time we reach shore (assuming we do!) Somehow, despite our differences, we are all still smiling. Maybe its because we know we have to. I'm doing my best to be the up-beat, cheery person, a role I've never taken on before. I have gained the reputation for being the geek, for ever fixing radios and computers. I tried to explain that we can't pick up New Zealand radio due to the Earth's curvature, but Phil thinks if he shouts at me enough I will achieve it. So I nod and smile and turn up the volume on the static and let Phil curse the guy that installed our radio. Actually we have a good radio, and can talk to people all over the states. Phil reminds me of that skipper in Black Adder (Captain Slack-Bladder) that takes them round the Isle of Wight and they end up drinking their own piss. Other times I feel a bit like Hawk-Eye from MASH sitting manning the radio and trying my hardest to meekly please my superior.

Bart seems to be a bit of an international playboy. He is full of stories of his hot-headed Brazilian girlfriend and days spent drunk in Rio. Fred still remains a enigma. He is partly like "Beavis" (from the cartoon "Beavis and Butthead"), a sulky unhelpful teenage type. He is also quite a sharp-card, often surprising us with intelligent ideas and sharp observations. David remains unpopular, being very stand-offish and English and proper about everything but not communicating it well, muttering to himself how smart he is, and grunting out criticism when he is in no position to do so.

I'm jealous of you going climbing tonight. Not because of the climbing itself, I had enough excitement going up an 80ft mast in a swell, but because I know you will be seeing my friends. The dive club emailed me, it's nice to know they're reading the journals, and I am thinking of them, they are a really good, and I am missing them.

I will keep droning on about day-to-day life on the boat. It would be nice if you tell me what you've been up to and described things at home.

Anyway, almost spilt wine on the laptop, the boat is bucking all over the place. Time to sign off.

Ben