DAY 26 – JAMES KAYLL

The blogs have been getting late in the day as we make the most of our improved conditions. Believe it or not I spent this afternoon receiving an acupuncture treatment from Jenks for my sore shoulder. We had a nice day today, very hot, but both today and yesterday were slow. We have a 10 – 15 knots wind and we really need 20 knots to get going properly. Thankfully the weather forecast is 18 – 20 knots for the next week or so and this should mean improved pace is on the horizon. The major upside is that we have finally regained the initiative and it’s no longer a battle of attrition. The last 4 – 5 days have been shorts and T-shirt, or simply Speedos and gloves if Jenks gets his way!

Weather at sea

The race duty officer sends us a daily weather text but his covers the whole fleet who are spread out over about 1,000 miles. We also have a specific report for our crew from the fantastic Tony Humphreys which is very accurate to our own location. The next 3 weeks should be easier to predict than the first 3. The weather should be more consistent and more predictable. We are running with the North equatorial current and the Trade winds. Ocean currents are caused by consistent winds blowing in a consistent direction and this is one of the reasons we went south so early. We have seen so little wildlife recently and have seen no boats for about a week but we did see a transatlantic flight – this is closest we have come to civilisation.

Fighting on

We went swimming yesterday and cleaned barnacles off the hull. It’s been our first opportunity to clean the hull. The anti-foul treatment worked well so we only had 15 – 20 min job. The routine is to have 1 person on shark-watch whilst others are washing. It is quite spooky being in the water – it’s about 4 – 5km below you and god knows what beneath you. The daily challenges continue and we don’t expect that to change. Nearly all of our deck hatches leak so almost every day we have to bail out and pump out our hatches. Thankfully the rations are waterproofed because things like fruit pastilles die immediately if exposed to water. We lost 50 snack packs in capsize!

I don’t think about the bigger picture a lot of the time, you are normally just absorbed by the day to day demands of life on board. But on a personal level you cannot help but be humbled by what all the guys are doing. Because Cayle and Scott have been through and are going through the rehab process they know what inspired them to get back into action. We hope this expedition will provide hope to others who are going through rehab.