 |
| Life onboard |
|
|
| Written by Lin & Rachel at sea | |
| Thursday, 06 December 2007 | |
|
We’re
settling into a routine onboard Barbara Ivy and it’s pretty simple –
eat, sleep and row!
We’ve
rowed solidly for 48 hours up to today, in some amazing conditions. The waves
are huge, over 30 feet today and some do have breaking crests so we got soaked.
The nights have been really tough as it’s been unbelievably windy and you
can’t see where you’re rowing at night, or what’s heading in
your direction. So we’re both knackered and sat out a few hours on the
sea anchor this morning. Now we’re trying to decide whether to brave it
outside again for a couple of hours and make the most of the daylight as we
seem to be drifting in the wrong direction! We took advice from Sally Kettle on
that one, but aren’t sure we’ve got it right yet! The boat is performing well in the heavy
seas though and bobbing around like a good ‘un. We love the texts we’re
getting, so please keep them coming as it’s easy to feel out of touch. Still not much of the promised sun –
so no sign of any naked rowing just yet. Thank goodness we brought our thermals
is all we can say! We were sorry to hear about the Titanic
Challenge boat pulling out of the race but wish them well and are pleased they
are both safe and well. You’ll be pleased to hear that we are always
harnessed onto the boat and row, eat and got to the loo strapped on! We even
slept in the harnesses a couple of nights ago as we had to keep getting up to
check things! We saw a big ship last night which was a
bit scary. It was on a different heading but we couldn’t raise them on
the VHF radio at all to check their exact route. We had our flares at the ready
if needed but luckily not this time! Finally, our blistered hands are doing OK now, but Rachel has named one particularly persistant blister Bertie. He’s on her right hand and between the second and third finger – showing no signs of moving on yet! |