After a calm night yesterday, the tradewind is flowing very gently across the smooth, marine blue sea. From the moment the sun warms us, a collective frenzy seizes hold of the crew. It’s a big clean-up in both hulls! Orchestrated by Ronan, a big burst of bleach whitens the companionways, heads and galley again. Each person is forced to tidy ‘his room’, namely his bunk and his two boxes measuring around 50 cm wide. It’s an opportunity to rediscover all kinds of things that were all too soonabandoned in the past gales: socks, T-shirts…
Once the dirty laundry has been gathered, the cleaning done and the hoods opened wide, the odour of the companionways drops a notch, which according to each hull, is certainly no luxury for those opposite… You are sensitive to the odour of others, not your own.
Lionel has another project this Saturday morning. Benefiting from sailing without the spray, which is rare, he begins the repairs on the float. With white work overalls, grinder in hand, he attacks the carbon and the dust flies as far as the cockpit. Soon, with the help of David as préparateur, he adds resin, astride of the crack and five layers of carbon are cleverly orientated. The outer skin is now watertight. Whilst the epoxy cures, we are deprived of the large gennaker for three hours to remove any pressure on the structure and avoid distorting the ‘dressing’. The lamination of the interior skin will take a few days to dry out, prisoner of the sandwich, the time for it to drain.
With the help of Rony, Léo – in charge of onboard supplies –extracts the bags of food for the second half of the voyage from the beams in which they are stored. He makes the most of it to recount the pots of jam and observes that despite his immense management efforts, the remainder will be largely insufficient…
Zolive, to whom you’re better off entrusting a computer rather than a screwdriver, is shifting the satellite reception from the various apparatus on the ‘East Atlantic’ zone. Following that there is evidently a bug in the onboard means of transmission for a large part of the day, which ‘isn’t serious’ of course. Finally, after having checked everything, tested it, turned off all the onboard computers and then turned them all on again for several hours, everything returns to order. It’s a great moment. No longer having any means to receive weather information during this period, I’m making the most of the time to visit the two aft compartments, traversed by the rudder stocks, to scoop out the few litres which are inevitable in these areas.
In short, we’re tackling our third ocean with a ‘new’ boat. The guys have worked well and we gybed this afternoon just three miles from the coast of Namibia. It was a great spectacle of dunes, beige and ochre rocks and brown and rust-coloured cliffs. An arch of gigantic stone, little valleys sprinkled with rare clumps of vegetation, mountains far away and two very small houses. It’s another world. Whilst flying along at 30 knots on turquoise waters, our minds wander. From one sea to another, the miles file past, the dreams stack up and the voyages wait their turn.
A final gybe and we plunge, due west, to the heart of the Atlantic. Yesterday evening, it was doubtless our last albatross. Farewell to the southern winter, farewell Africa. Bound for St Helena…
Dominic Vittet