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| Friends For Life |
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| Written by Lin & Rachel at sea | |
| Tuesday, 29 January 2008 | |
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Is everything really so sweet on the boat between us? We often get asked about how we’ll cope with different situations onboard particularly if we start to get on each others nerves. It’s inevitable that will happen sometimes but thankfully not as often as perhaps we thought.
We spent a lot of time working through different situations and how we might react and deal with them before we started out on this and that work seems to have stood us in good stead. The most difficult times are when one of us is feeling low or frustrated. Lin for example got really frustrated with the steering recently – this was partly because the wind was so strong and the boat wanted to turn broadside to the wind and partly because of her injury preventing her from being as effective in the rowing seat as she may like. This ended in tears and lots of shouting and Rachel trying really hard to diffuse the situation. In the end it was very clear that all Lin needed was to be left alone to sort it out for herself so Rachel went back inside the cabin and said to call if she was needed. There are situations where we annoy each other but most of the time we just mutter to ourselves about it and don’t feel it’s worth mentioning to the other and if we do mention it, then it’s said once and that’s it. When people live together, they will discover things that annoy them about the other person, so it’s not surprising that being stuck on Barbara Ivy for a few months is going to be testing.  We understand one of the other female teams are not getting along so well with each other and that’s sad. At the end of this race, we only have each other who will know what it was like out here and reminiscing about the experience when we’re older and greyer will be quite important to us. So back to what’s been happening here lately. Yesterday was fairly uneventful on the rowing side – we’re still storming along Westwards to Antigua and slightly North due to a South Easterly that’s due to blow itself out soon. However, thanks to our friend Jo, we now have flights booked for Lin’s Dad and Son, Liam and Rachel’s Mum to come out to see us finish the race. We’re hoping Jo and Louise manage to get flights sorted too, especially after all the things they’ve done for us throughout the challenge – we’re wishing on all the shooting stars we see! This meant we had to make a guess on when we think we’re going to arrive – the obvious answer is an average of our current speed over the distance remaining but it’s not that simple as we’ve discovered the weather can be cruel. So we hope the plan comes together and our families get to see us into English Harbour. We haven’t seen a great deal of wildlife recently but hope this will change as we get closer to land. Messages:- Tallie in Gonubie – thank you for your message – the waves do seem to be a bit better but can change at any minute as I’m sure Bill & Pete will tell you. Have you managed to touch base with my friend Suzanne? Christina Jenkins @ Breast Cancer Care – Lin’s foot is improving and would get better quicker if she didn’t keep rowing with it!!!! We do have plenty of food thankfully, so much that we’re picking and choosing the meals we like now! Thank you for being proud of us, we hope we have done the charity proud and raised the profile a significant amount as well as the money. Donna Malcolm – Thank you so much for offering to pay for the solar battery charger. Can we sort this out when we return if you haven’t already made the donation online please? The cheque would need to be made payable to Atlantic Rowing Challenge and sent to Lin’s address. Donna, we keep losing the end of your messages because the 160 characters includes your email address! Ben March – Congratulations on the birth of your son Max Taylen – hope everything is going well and your nights aren’t too disrupted! Thank you for the Arsenal info too, gutted about Carling Cup Result! Julie Griffiths – Congratulation on becoming a grandmother again. Steve Dorling (Pink Harley Man) – Great to hear from you – unfortunately your message got corrupted so we could only read the first bit. Jo McKelvey – Thank you so much for sorting out the flights for our families. We realise the amount of stress this will have caused. Hope you’ll be out there too. You truly are a superstar. Gordon & Dave – That was just mean telling us about your Cadbury’s Cream Egg – had us both drooling like bloodhounds. Caroline – Rescue Boat in Antigua – Thank you so much for your message, we look forward to meeting you and being escorted from the finish line into English Harbour. Jen from The Reason Why – It’ll be interesting to see Steve & Paul with their beards – even funnier when they shave them off and the suntans will stop there… he he! Of course we have other hair problems that we intend to deal with before we arrive!!!! To all our supporters, with nearly 900 messages received to date, we’re sorry we can’t reply to all of them. However, we do really appreciate them all and will be typing them all up so we can keep them when we get back. They do make a huge difference to the morale on our little boat. Love and Hugs Lin & Rachel. |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 29 January 2008 ) |