Date: 27th March 2005. Location: 1,600miles to go. Weather: Clearing skies. Heading: To Cape Town.
People's days become governed by various timetables. This begins in the morning when the alarm goes off telling you to wake up and start a new day. Very rarely can an individual wake naturally in everyday life.
Train or bus timetables are then the next restriction and if not using public transport then rush hour traffic has a major effect on when you have to leave the house.
The working day then evolves around meetings, deadlines, appointments and probably more importantly lunch break and coffee break.
The evenings can then be determined by pub closing time, TV programming, or mealtimes, closely followed by bedtime to start the process again.
Random thoughts to be having at 3am in the Southern Ocean, I know. However, our daily timetable is very similarly based around meal times, as the general picture is sail, eat, sleep, eat, sail, etc. A big difference is that daytime and nighttime are irrelevant for us; the yacht still must sail as fast as possible no matter whether it is dark or light.
Mind you, it can probably be guaranteed that all the major mistakes and mishaps will happen while it is dark and most of the time during that sleep deprived part of the day. Like now, at 3am. No matter how long you are at sea for it still seems hard to adjust to waking up during the middle of the night to go to work for a few hours.
The reason these thoughts have been running through my head is because I have now noticed how my own timetabling has changed. Before I would be around for a couple of hours of each watch on deck and then do some admin and checks and generally run the day to day business of the yacht. This also involved plotting positions as and when they came in.
I can honestly say now that I now live on a six-hourly basis, which is from one sched to the next. Once the positions are plotted you can relax because you know where everyone is and can calculate where everyone is heading, then this subsides over the six hours and is replaced by needing to know how we are doing compared to the rest of the fleet, have they had the same wind, are they on the same tack or gybe, is our boat speed on target or are we losing miles?
I guess the urgency to know is related to our position in the fleet and also by the sheer fact that the sailing in this fleet is so close. It is highlighted again and again that even after 5,500 miles sailing in the remote waters of the Southern Ocean the yachts are often within sight of each other, still able to communicate by VHF and generally are not more that 50 miles from the next yacht. It is very impressive fleet sailing or maybe a fantastic advert for one-design yacht racing.
Dee Caffari, skipper Imagine it. Done
Dee Caffari/Yachting World, 27 March 2005
