ARC Day Ten guest written by Kez

With all this talk of the difference of having two girls as part of this crossing compared to two years ago (clean heads, delicacies for supper etc), I thought I might correct any impression that Fatty and I spend our time cleaning and cooking. In truth there is a very fair division of labour, with Paul a more than dab hand in the galley and Frewie was even caught yesterday baking bread. 

The best thing about being Mother for the day, and in total charge of all meals, washing up and cleaning the cockpit, is that for the next two days we can legitimately do nothing in the galley and just listen to the crashing of pots and pans without feeling in the slightest bit guilty. We have a very good routine with pretty much three hours on and six hours off throughout. Catching up on sleep is important, but as it is so much nicer to be around when everyone else is, every now and then we get told to take ourselves off, and that includes Frewie who I’m pleased to say is doing exactly that while I write this blog.

Today the sky has turned grey and we have squalls all round but nothing as yet too threatening. It resembles so much the Solent at the moment, not the blue skies and night watches in shorts that I was promised....but yesterday we had a brilliant and beautiful day, perfect sailing with 18 knots of wind and we covered 206nm under blue skies. I’ve come to measure my increasing competency around the boat with a slowing rate of acquiring bruises. After the first few days, I don’t think there was a bit of me without one; a particularly unattractive one on my forearm looks as if I’ve been violently gripped but I promise I haven’t. The skipper, it will come as no surprise, does not have a single bruise!

Frewie is the most patient of teachers and he has painstakingly added to my understanding of both the mechanics of the boat and the finer points of sailing. But understanding the language of a boat is a challenge in itself and just when you think you have got the hang of it  the same object changes its name, its function of greater  importance: the preventer becomes a fore-guy, warps can become springs and sheets, of course, never are. The nicest name for a rope I’ve come across is a Barber Hauler which is not a rope at all, by the way, but a line... The aft starboard locker has transformed itself into the emergency locker (rather important to know when we need the grab bag in a hurry) and even the kitchen, I mean galley, and bathroom, a head (can anyone tell me why?!) provide more confusion.

I feel there is no need to describe the sea any further as Frewie does a good job of that but before I left there were some people who warned that boredom may be an issue. So far I haven’t been bored once and we are busy all the time and any thoughts of sitting on the aft deck reading a book have had to be abandoned. Fatty and I have however managed to schedule in a daily game of Bananagrams, which is keenly fought,  but luckily for crew harmony, Paul has decided to join us diluting our competitive spirit.

More than anything, I feel enormously privileged to be here, on Juno and in such good and generous company.