A great update from our bowman Sam on Day 6, (Tues) but with all the strong wind excitement has only been able to go online today – enjoy!
Fortunately for us on team Concise, we have been great mates for quite some years now so a good atmosphere aboard comes fairly easily to us.......Having said this, I’m writing this to you on day 6, as a shell of my former enthused self, having sat for 48 hours now in sub 12 knot conditions in a boat that is almost wider then it is long! This therefore poses us with a problem in our not ideal conditions and so other forms of excitement need to be investigated and practiced, more often than not resulting in ‘Bullish Banter!’ towards just about anything!
This usually starts from minute 1 of the 2 hour watch system we are running here on Team Concise, and it has somehow come to the point where every second counts:
Get on deck early – you’re rinsed for being too keen and compared to a contestant on Countdown or Mastermind!
Get on deck late – LAZY, you’re holding the team back, just think where we could have been!
0.2kts below target speed – do you need me to take the tiller? Does your boyfriend sail?
5 Deg below angle – do you enjoy a reach around, is there any reason we’re heading to Africa?
No wind – Navigator is asleep or lost or writing love letters to the missus
Any extended task – can you stop messing around? Do you want me to sort that for you!
These comments, criticisms, digs etc for the moment are definitely constructive for us here aboard Concise, I think mainly due to the unexpected relaxed sailing conditions experienced so far, however time and conditions over the coming week will determine whether this ‘constructive criticism’ now becomes a morale breaker!
I’ll keep you posted on that one......... if I’m writing soppy lonely letter to you readers then the best guess is that I’ve been broken! Watch this space!
Sam
