A New Years posting from the Velux 5 Oceans Skippers
An excerpt from Leader Brad Van Liew’s blogspot:
“2011! Wow, are you kidding?? That makes me really middle aged. I thought that would never happen, but bring it on! I have the distinct pleasure of ringing in the New Year in the middle of nowhere with no champagne, no woman to kiss at midnight, no ball dropping and nobody to sing that “old acquaintance be forgot” song that must be sung in unison annually. Instead, I will be pondering the meaning of life in what is forecast to be a moderate Southern Ocean sailing experience with all my Southern Ocean friends.
What will I do for New Year’s 2011?
First, Le Pingouin (LP) and I will have a chat as she has a lot to say about being middle aged. Boats live in dog years.? It is about seven years to one human year so she actually just broke through 60 years old. She also has more circumnavigations under her voluminous brazier than I do. She has done this race twice before and the Vendee globe twice as well, so this is her 5th solo circumnavigation race while it is my 3rd. It is quite amazing to think that she had more than 150,000 miles in global racing mileage before we even started this adventure. The ole girl is still one of the fastest monohulls ever conceived. Combined LP and I have spent more than a year of our lives hanging out down here in the most remote place on Earth. I still feel hardly welcome and am a strong advocate for the “tread lightly and garner safe passage” theory to get through this inhospitable but beautiful place.
Following my chat with LP, I will speak with the animals that constantly escort me along my route. The birds here are fantastic. They seem so fragile as they fly in circles around the boat and flitter about in the wake of LP as we charge along. Regardless of the weather they are always there and seem genuinely interested in why I would be asking for permission to transit their private place on Earth. The flock of birds I constantly encounter represent as many different sizes and shapes as the fleet of aircraft man has built, and they look their part. The Albatross look like B52 bombers with huge glider shaped wings and robust torsos as they fly forever while seemingly never flapping their wings. On the other end of the spectrum are the petrels which are like little compact fighter jets that zip around and jet through the waves, flapping their wings to give them super speed like they are using an afterburner.
Finally on this special transition to 2011, I will speak to the things that I hopefully won’t see. This includes the whales (of which I have only seen one since leaving Cape Town) and the icebergs which harbor so much of our world’s ecosystem in their frigid existence.
The primary message that I will try to convey to this watery world as we enter 2011 is an apology. I’d like to be an “eyes wide open” witness to the impact our human existence has on this place. Maybe I am a lone ambassador of sorts? As I write this I am sailing in 9 degree Celsius water in a place that should have far cooler water temperature. I am sailing deliberately further north than ever before because the Antarctic convergence (ice zone) is hundreds of miles further north than when I first sailed the Southern Ocean in 1998. The birds are far less in numbers than I have ever experienced, and the whales… well, we all know that story. My message will be a hollow New Year’s apology because I need to be honest with my friends down here. There is really nothing being done that will change the tide of globalization and human growth. We can hope that the pioneers of sustainability and green energy will be rewarded for tangible results. We can hope that rather than a typical New Year’s resolution that is a lot of promise and little movement, that maybe the human population of our fragile home will put some action behind the rhetoric.
I don’t pretend to know how much we affect this place through our actions and I am a firm believer that cyclic global temperatures are a natural weather occurrence, so I don’t wish to be tied up in the politics of it all. I just speak of plane facts that we know we can change. The whales are gone because we kill them for food and resources we no longer need. The bird population is off because we kill them with bad fishing practices and by throwing trash in the water that they eat. This planet is 70% covered in water. The life and delicate balance that water provides is the brine from which all known life came. Can you imagine if that balance is upset? Water can take the life away just as easily, and in a much shorter time, than it was given. The oceans provide every ounce of water we drink. If the ice caps were to melt (which they are) the vast majority of the world’s cities will become submerged. The sun and water are the two things that make every weather anomaly occur.
For crying out loud, the human body is something like 80% water isn’t it? We better start taking care of our oceans or they aren’t going to be here to take care of us.
This will be the somber but special New Year’s message I will share with my friends in the Southern Ocean. It will be a very “glass is half full” conclusion, basically stating that mankind is good and wants to continue to exist, and that we will do as a race what we have to do to survive.
Happy New Year’s and may you all take a few minutes to enjoy the beauty of the natural world in 2011.
Cheers,
Brad
Derek Hatfield gives an update on his southern ocean holiday.
“The Southern Ocean is full of extremes and the last twenty four hours proves it in spades. For the past day, all three of us at the front have been heading SE on strong winds with gusts to 30 kts. Boat speeds have been in the high teens and it has been a neck and neck drag race. About two hours ago I experienced one of the most dramatic transitions in my sailing career. The cloud cover was very low and it was raining; within
2 minutes the wind went from 28 kts to 10 kts and changed directions by 45 degrees. Leaving Active House wallowing in the huge waves undercanvassed. The wind has backed now by a permantent 45 degrees and within an hour the sun had come out. Such exteame weather changes are both humbling and awe inspiring.
Here’s to another year past that hopefully was a good one for each of you. And for 2011, I hope that all of your goals and aspirations come true. Happy New Year to you and your families and friends from Active House and the Spirit of Canada team.
Take Care. Be safe.
Derek
Chris Stanmore-Major reflects on his holiday.
I was throwing a reef in this morning and I suddenly realised that I was doing it right. I was moving efficiently; things were happening in their proper order and the whole procedure seemed quite tranquil and, dare I say it, professional compared to the frenetic machinations that have normally occurred when I have stepped up to reef in worsening weather previously. This morning despite 30kts coming on really quite quickly I felt on top of the situation and sure of what I was doing. Even when a reef line became tangled on its self and I had to crawl out to the end of the boom to free it. No problem I thought – I know where I’m going, how to get there and what I have to do once there to remedy the situation. It was exciting but wonderfully uneventful. It was a curious thing to stand there at the mast once it was all done – with the reef in, the boat back on course and all the little problems dealt with swiftly and reflect on the contrast between this and my first reefing experiences in the North Atlantic in October.
I remember I was nervous as hell and felt out of my depth in those early days, ventured forward to the mast each time I had to reef. The boat invariably was headed far too far up wind and she would be bucking and crashing through the waves like a submarine. With the main still not out far enough she would be sailing on her ear with the lee decks underwater and precious little it seemed for me to hold onto save the winch handle and the sail. The wind would be howling and the sail totally uninterested in what I wanted it to do. The noise of that huge spectra sail flogging its self silly, the angle of the decks and the knowledge that it was just me in charge of this asylum was enough to make me want to curl up and die. In response I would bellow at myself as I used to do to crew in heavy weather, issuing instructions (to myself), providing a supporting narrative (for myself) and pushing myself to keep going whatever went wrong (and a lot used to go wrong). I guess in the midst of shouting I was distracted enough not to notice how scared I was. This is not a new technique, I know – I have seen it in use on many boats over the years. This was just my turn and as there was no one to insult but myself, it worked.
I’m not sure exactly when all my dues were paid and I suddenly became a competent Open 60 mast man- probably over Christmas sometime where there was a lot of reef in, reef out action and in the bitter cold I had to stay focused on the task lest it take ages – leaving me cold and wet again. I have adapted things at the mast now to make things easier for myself – I have put marks on everything to provide references and developed a procedure in my head I must follow religiously but as this has happened I have also adapted continually to the job adjusting my technique in response to the cues given by the boat and making light of the attendant trouble. Not enough halyard tension? Tonight Chris you’re going away with a broken mast track! Not enough reefline on? My friend you win a chafed reefline! And little by little through perseverance to the task of learning how to reef, not just reefing but standing back and learning how to reef I have come to a point where I can tick a box in my mind and say,’ yes I can do that’ and move on to something else.
Is it funny for me to be halfway across the Southern Ocean in a solo Open 60 race and admit I have only just mastered something as basic as good reefing practice on the very boat I am trusting my life to? Maybe but bear in mind I am talking about learning ‘best practice’ here not just jogging along problem solving everything as I go. The only way to really be at home here and fast is for everything to become second nature and slick, not cobbled together and guessed at which is what gets
impossible dreams off the ground but doesn’t win races.
I think we all have these gaps in our knowledge that we step around each day thinking, ‘I must brush up on that one day’. Words we skip in reading as after however many years we still don’t really know what it means, parts of our work that remain mysterious and unknown and in leaving these stones unturned we do ourselves a disservice as I think we can never reach our full potential if we do not continue to adapt ourselves to life’s challenges by constant learning and review. I hope to forever remain a student constantly looking to improve my understanding both of sailing and the wider world as the joy of finally, by George! Getting it- whatever ‘it’ may be is a pleasure that just doesn’t age.
What is next? Well, next learning task will be good gybing – you would believe how cringe worthy that can be when it all goes wrong in 30kts – ah the fun I’ve had, boat on its side and going backwards. Also this evening I have a new question to ponder- why do I know so much about ‘My Fair Lady’?