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| Sunshine At Last! |
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| Written by Lin & Rachel at sea | |
| Sunday, 06 January 2008 | |
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The weather has finally given us a break. The spirit on the boat has risen massively as we are now able to get clothes dry, sore bottoms drying out and water made (nearly 20 litres and thinking about filling some things to do washing in – now there’s a novelty)!
This also means we’ve been able to charge up all our equipment, computer, camera batteries, IPOD/Walkmans etc. We had a big sort out on the boat yesterday putting all our rubbish into our bow hatch, excess food into the deck hatches and drying out our survival suits ready to go into one of the stern hatches. We’re very conscious that as we go through our food, the weight distribution needs to be thought out again so we don’t end up listing to one side or the other and even more importantly so we don’t end up bow heavy. The texts messages are still rolling in and we’re nearly up to 500. This morning’s boosting messages informed us we’ve now reached 1,000 miles from the start. We kind of hoped we’d get to the half way mark by Lin’s birthday (Monday 7th Jan) but we’re happy to settle for 1,000 for now. Kim in San Fransico Bay, we only got part of your message as the email address takes up some of the 160 characters. So in answer to the bit we did get, our hands are doing really well. We thought we would have really bad blisters by now but we’ve had a great combination of prevention for this and it has worked a treat. We have Kakadu kangaroo skin golfing gloves (they do sailing gloves too but the golfing ones had fewer seams) there’s a photo of a pair that have been used for 1 month in our gallery and a photo of Rachel’s hands as they are now. The other prevention is a blister stick given to us by New Wave from Germany, we’re not sure what’s in this but it works miracles when you do get blisters and shrivels them up to nothing. The only other thing is all the skin is peeling off our hands and feet but we think that’s down to them being wet a lot of the time and the salt water. We’re happy to answer any other questions you may have so please feel free to send more. Dale from Philadelphia, great to hear you and the Hope Afloat breast cancer survivors Dragon Boat Team are following our progress. We both remember watching the breast cancer survivors team racing at the 2001 Dragon Boat World Championships in Philly when we were racing for Great Britain, you’re all such an inspiration. Please say hi to Peter McNamara for us as he’s one of our sponsors. Emmanuel et Saupy, sorry to hear Saupy is in hospital, we send our love and big hugs and hope everything is ok. Kath Lewis, great to hear your Mum managed to beat Breast Cancer – great going Kath’s Mum. Debra, sorry to hear about your Mum too, hope she too can beat it. Donna Malcolm, thank you for your messages, they were great for when we were feeling a bit low. Brilliant to know our Dragon Boat Buddies are out there watching us. Happy birthday to Zoe Cottle and a belated one for your Dad, Syd. Happy 40th Birthday to Lin’s Sister Nicky last week too. Lin’s not adverse to spending her birthday in odd places with her 23rd spent flying to Kenya for a 3 month stint on Operation Raleigh, her 40th spent riding horses over snow covered lava fields and swimming in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. So being in the middle of the Atlantic in a little pink rowing boat isn’t that unusual really – is it! Dr George, glad to have you back onboard, we thought we’d lost you for good. Glad you had a cracking Christmas break. Keep the messages coming – including the fish jokes Jo! We’ll happily answer questions if you have any too. Love & hugs, Lin & Rachel |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 06 January 2008 ) |