Deliriously Tired

"Kimball, this might need a big edit, I'm dileriously tired ... "

Well, after we respelled deliriously, you were good, Matt. Get some sleep, will ya . . .


"Sailing" in the doldrums is agony. For three days we've been wallowing along at three knots of boat speed, with only the occasional puff from a cloud to boost us along.

Earlier today everyone on the boat lost their sense of humor.

Was bored of boredom.

Desperately wanted to be sailing again.

To twist the knife deeper, the race schedules showed that Green Dragon, Puma and Eriksson 4 had escaped the doldrums and were were already blasting away toward the scoring gate at Fernando, some 600 miles away.

I'm not sure. Were we more envious that they were winning? Or were we more envious that they were sailing and we were stuck?

This evening, our metamorphosis began.

A family of whales swam past, during dinner. Almost at the same moment the wind gently started to blow and the sun set, beautifully. A joke was told, a chuckle ensued and smiles returned.

After four hours of steadily building breeze we entered a wall of isolated squalls marking the southern boundary of the doldrums. It seemed that we had one more cloud to navigate ourselves around and we'd be clear to sail towards the scoring gate in the trade winds. However, due to a bad approach angle we were sucked into the squall. All hands jumped up on deck for a quick tack and a sail change from our masthead zero to our large reaching genoa. Then, just as we were cleaning up from the maneuvers, a gentle rain escalated into a downpour. In jubilation at the prospect of a fresh water 'shower' someone yelled
"hurry, get the soap". The dish soap came up on deck and we all jumped at the chance for a shower before the rain had a chance to subside.

Amongst the commotion of passing the soap around, and a joking accusation that Bert dropped the soap on purpose, we heard a heckling laughter coming from the companionway. It was our media crew, Sander, with his night vision video camera. The stern camera that recorded our spreader break the other night had been activated by Sander again. Sometimes we forget that our boat is wired with cameras like the set of Big Brother. Sander claims that he is going to make a fortune when we get to Cape Town with his video. I'm not sure if his intent is to blackmail us or to go internet-live with the website
www.dutchsailorsshower.com.

Time will tell, In the meantime we have a couple
boats to pass on our way to the scoring gate at Fernando.

And . . .

Recalling our spreader break and my accounts over the last couple of days, here is a pic of (do I have to call him by his real name?) Gerd-Jan Poortman up the rig to effect a brilliant repair.



And this is the repair.


Images by Sander Pluijm/Team Delta Lloyd/Volvo Ocean Race