A week ago seems like a lifetime ago. Race 1 of Leg 1 from Portsmouth, United Kingdom to Puerto Sherry, Spain started September 3rd.
September 3 (Day 1)
I took a minute to myself in the morning and recorded a gratitude post that I shared online. I am grateful I took those few minutes to do that because our SIM cards were pulled rather abruptly shortly afterwards. One minute we were getting on the boat and chatting, the next we were turning in SIM cards and I was gathering everyone’s passports. I was assigned the role of Stopover Manager which I didn’t realize started a week before the race with Stopover 0 but I feel like I pulled it together enough that we were on the boat and on the water without too much chaos. Although I am not sure what too much or too little chaos would even look like these days. The send off from Portsmouth was pretty spectacular with all the anticipation, boats, people, and energy. Our boat’s slogan is “Car may vou” which I don’t think actually belongs to any one language but has French origins that I have roughly interpreted to mean “do this calmly”. This might be 100% made up.
We had a bit of a rough start to the race performance wise and I can’t say we improved much. We had a misjudgement of sorts and accidentally cut off another boat, Bekezela. We received some immediate verbal protest to our mistake and our skipper and AQP received a formal tongue lashing later after the race had finished but no penalty points were deducted. We had light winds which resulted in a lot of evolutions, one sail up, then down, then another up and another down…We adopted a saying “on the bus, off the bus” which was always said light heartily about the constant shifting in directions.
And my first round of seasickness started that evening. I was honestly feeling so discouraged. We did our mock parade of sails, MOB drill, and moved the boats from Gosport to Portsmouth on the Tuesday before the race started and even in light weather conditions, I ended up puking overboard. Okay, discouraged doesn’t describe how I was feeling about sailing going into this. The prospect of 11 months of puking in the fetal position was not what I signed up for. I came armed with another new seasickness medication and had started it before we left but I didn’t think it was having any effect… yet.
September 4th (Day 2)
The day started with more seasickness. My memories are honestly pretty vague from this time period as I was more or less in survival mode. My team gathered around and completed my tasks as I continued to be nauseous and vomit. Linda graciously stepped into my caretaker role as she prepared my bunk before I went below and went as far as taking off my shoes as I crawled into it still puking after one shift. I did elect to sleep through one of my watches and my team continued to pick up my slack. After a long sleep, I did become semi functional above deck. I spent some time helming and trimming the spinnaker (roles that I like but don’t feel as confident compared to when I am working in the pit). I was assigned navigation duties for the day, and my watch leader Eric stepped in and did our log book so I could stay on deck which I was so grateful for!
We had a bit of messy evolution and our lazy spinnaker sheet became knotted with our active sheet and I was able to be engaged in getting that sorted before another messy moment tied an even larger knot. We broke our tweaker line in the process and I was able to think on the fly and come up with an acceptable solution for that which as silly as tying a knot in the correct position sounds, felt a little empowering from my previously bed ridden state.
On my final night watch, Serge and I spotted a couple of dolphins in the dark. I heard one breath before I spotted it in the dark night. And we adopted a tiny bird that we named Benji.
September 5 (Day 3)
I received a slight reprieve from being sick, many dolphin sightings and a beautifully made chocolate cake for my birthday on September 5th! Age is a funny thing. I know it is a norm for women especially to hide their age but I would love to be a small piece in changing the stigma. I am proud of my 35 years. I have accomplished many things, I have lived, I have grown, I have seen so many beautiful things and experienced some amazing moments. Sometimes I still feel ‘behind’ but I am behind what someone else thinks is the schedule for my life. As long as I am just living my best life, I don’t feel like I should be ashamed of being 35 and I try to wear those years well. I can’t say it is easy all the time when people tell me I am too old for certain things, or that I missed my opportunity, or will miss my opportunity for certain things but I remind myself to trust the process and embrace my human experience.
The sun was out and we were upwind sailing which for some reason my body prefers to downwind sailing when it is acclimating to the sea. Upwind sailing has a consistent heel but the boat pitches more than it rolls. I saw Orion for the first time in the summer just before daybreak. I have always associated it with winter growing up in the States. It is so fascinating to see the constellations from a different place and season in the world. If I had to guess, we had around two dozen dolphins visit us during the day, leaping alongside the boat. One Portuguese man o’ war jelly floated by, also. After dinner, my crew sang happy birthday and brought a chocolate cake on deck. It was the first cake that Mark has ever baked as he was on galley duty. I was told he was pretty worried about messing it up.
I had felt quite a bit better than previous days so when I started to feel more seasick again the day afterwards, it was a bit discouraging again but we had encountered a storm. I was supposed to be on Engineering duty but I was back to barely functioning above deck let alone trying to work below deck checking bilges. Another teammate stepped up and Nickel did all my engineering duties for me for the next 24 hours as I tried to cope with my body. On night watch as I looked out at the stars, I asked the universe why I was going through this. The response I felt was, “I need to build you stronger”. I am not sure why, but this gave me some peace. I can’t quite tell if the ‘building stronger’ is physical or mental but I would assume it would be both.
September 7th (Day 5)
I woke up… And I didn’t feel terrible… What is this?? I gradually made my way to the deck, not quite sure what was going on. I sat on the deck eating my breakfast… I finally had an appetite again… I quietly told my body “look what you have overcome; I am so proud of you” I didn’t trust it yet but I sat back and observed how I didn’t feel like puking and I didn’t feel completely nauseous with my only instinct to be to crawl into bed in the fetal position.
At some point during the night watch, we had to do a sail change and I ended up on the foredeck. I was soaked as we took on waves that splashed down the back of my jacket and up my salopettes and into my boots. At one point my feet were swept out from under me as I held onto the shroud and I remember giggling and my teammate asking me if I was having fun.
September 8th (Day 6)
I am not sure where the time has gone. It feels like I just left Portsmouth but it also feels like I have been on the water forever. The seasickness is nearly 100% gone. I can even go below deck. Next hurdle… the smells. 22 people on board working, exhaust fumes (because we found out later, we had faulty batteries and had to run our generator non stop and had an exhaust leak), and the constant smell of food. The smells made me nauseous and wanted to puke, but it was different than before and I could hold my breath as I passed through those areas.
I had one of my perfect life moments. I don’t know if anyone else has these but if they don’t, I hope they will. It is a moment of complete peace where something in me says everything is going to be alright in the world. These moments are free of worry, anxiety, depression and are just peace. I had just performed well in a couple of evolutions, I was on deck, the sun was out, and Lumineers came on the play list. I have tried to reverse engineer these moments that I have had a few times. I can’t say there is one location or activity… Sometimes I am hiking, sometimes enjoying an amazing hot chocolate, sitting on a beach, driving and listening to music, camping and looking at the stars… But the one common thread is that I am 100% present and living in the moment when they occur.
Having my perfect moment on the boat completely changed the game for me from survival mode to embracing this journey. I woke up from my discouraged state. I shook off my dread. I breathed in hope and joy and passion again.
Eric asked about the nickname Pitbull… I gave him a skeptical look and he said it was because I was a boss in the pit. I can’t say I love it and am grateful it hasn’t caught on.
At some point during the day I spoke the phrase “and perfection will be satisfactory” which was my old standard that I used to live by. The one where I was exhausted and burnt out and stressed. I say it more or less jokingly when I see an area we could do better but we let slide and embrace the messiness that is life. I have heard my skipper quoting it a few times now and it brings a smile to my face each time.
Late nights with clear skies lead to a lot of stargazing and deeper conversations. These are good for my soul.
September 9th (Day 7)
More perfect moments… Morning on glass smooth water with Giffy and me at the helm and Josh DJing music we select on the speaker watching the squalls in the not far off distant build up. I should mention that at this point, we are dead last in the race, we have started to have a little bit of ruffling of feathers, we have realized that our victualling went way off track, we are way overweight on the boat… There was a lot working against us but I am riding my personal high and not letting go.
The calm waters also gave us a bit of a break. I have felt like a small hamster in one of the plastic balls when you let them run around your house for exercise but a toddler got ahold of us and has been shaking it constantly. I have bruises up and down my legs from collisions with the boat, basic functions like using the toilets, brushing my teeth and hair, standing in one place have been a challenge.
We used that break to remove all of our food from below deck and repack and gather our excess. At one point, I asked, “what else would you rather be doing?” and received a response “winning” to which I laughed. A little later, I looked at Giffy, Eoin, Mark, and Peter and told them “If I had to choose four random people from the whole world to re-victual food for a 30 day ocean crossing with, I would choose you guys!” which received some laughs. Giffy and I took a minute and worked on having our sharpie privileges removed as we drew a face on one of the bags that Eoin discovered later.
September 10th (Day 8)
Today was another gorgeous day with incredibly blue waters. I know they say the ocean is blue but I don’t think I ever realized how blue it really was until now. We have all of our food reorganized. We deep cleaned our sail locker to save time in port and because we have time now. We had some AMAZING brownies!!! The only drawbacks right now are that we are dead last, they are calling the race early so we can motor in and make it in time to prepare for the next race, we are running out of fuel because of our constant running of the generator and we have some crankiness on the boat… but other than that, life is grand!
We ended up taking a fuel transfer from CV22 (Bekezela)… which happened to be the boat we accidentally cutoff at the start of the race. Maybe I am not fully able to have empathy here but I can’t see being that upset about this mistake. We are all human, we have some complete rookies on the teams, we were all more or less randomly assigned our teams, life is too short to get that upset about such an insignificant moment. I could see it being a bigger deal if we had actually collided but no harm, no foul in my opinion but tensions still seem high between the two boats.
Then, CV22 started to have engine troubles and needed to be towed… So after receiving fuel from them, we extended our lines to them and towed them for a ways until we caught up to more boats in the fleet that had been slowing up. We still had our low fuel situation even with the transfer so another boat, Dare to Lead, took over towing Bekezela.
I took my braids out one morning to give my scalp a break and left my hair down before re-braiding. Eoin teased me that my hair all of sudden got big like my personality referencing my transition from seasick Jaci to acclimated Jaci. We all laughed.
We had some wind return and were able to sail the rest of the way into Puerto Sherry, Spain. As we got closer, we had to start dodging some shipping lanes and fishing boats again, but managed to make it in and safely complete race 1 leg 1! Oh, that was one other setback we had… we had a slight navigation error and accidentally entered a TSS zone (used to regulate the traffic at busy, confined waterways or around capes). Unfortunately, when we made this mistake we were not able to take the shortest path out but 180 and leave the same way we came in. We did manage to avoid all the orca exclusion zones. I know we were supposed to be avoiding the orcas as they have been causing some damage to boats with their ‘love nudges’ and chewing off of rudders but I would be lying if I told you that I hoped we didn’t see one…
Race 1 of Leg 1 from Portsmouth, United Kingdom to Puerto Sherry, Spain felt about 10 years long as I overcome seasickness, found my stride on the boat and we learned a lot as a team and hopefully are in an infinitely better position to start Race 2 of Leg 1 from Puerto Sherry, Spain to Punta Del Este, Uruguay. See ya in around 30 days in the Southern Hemisphere where from what I am told, I will no longer be a pollywog but a shellback and official child of King Neptune (more on that after the ceremony). Fingers crossed I get better at getting my sea legs after being on shore for three days in Spain!
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