Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Sailing Diary: Leg 5, Race 7 - From the equator to Luzon Straights Along the Philippines East Cost



But before that, it turns out I forgot an important part of the cruise up to the equator, the Doldrums area...

So here is:

2/2/2024

Remember the watch that was lost two days ago? Well, I was sitting in the sail locker. When the huge top hatch of the sail lock is open it becomes a great place to escape the unbearable heat in the yacht's belly.

So I was sitting there and had a peek aside for a moment and what a surprise! In the corner I saw the watch! It turns out that it fell out of my arm when I helped take down or raise sails to or from the sail locker.

We arrived at the Doldrum Corridor, an area where many sailing ships have been stranded with no winds for days or even for long weeks. Luckily, competition rules allow us to run the engine for 36 hours in the corridor, where we must sail exactly no more than 10 degrees north (that is, up to 600 miles).

Yesterday was the Bartek's and mine cooking duty. Bartek is my bunk partner, which means that I meet him only during watch changes and in the cooking duties. Before lunch, I went up to the deck and discovered a spectacular sight. I don’t remember seeing a sea so quiet. Imagine a quiet water lake that extends to infinity. Occasionally flocks of flying fishes hovered on the surface of the water and a number of birds also hovered over trying to catch the fishes. One of the other yachts sailed about four hundred meters away from us.

After the cooking duty we have a full night's sleep and we also swap watches (to get to know the rest of the crew members). Since my next watch began in 1300, I got another precious rest time!

In the above picture, you see all of us huddling in the shade of the sails during a noon update meeting in the Doldrums...

6/2

I don't remember ever having experienced such a swings at a physical and emotional energy level. Yesterday was one of my worst days. "What am I doing here anyway?” I asked myself yesterday on the night shift when I was completely exhausted by the change of sails. Today, for the first time in many days I managed to sleep about four hours in a row, I felt much better. But this emotional pendulum exists all the time.

Yesterday in the afternoon, when I was in my bunk, I felt that the yacht was tilted more than usual and heard a commotion above. I was happy that I setup my bunk correctly and the piece of fabric that is supposed to protect me from falling did its job.

This storm cloud, destroyed our plans. After 24 hours of a nice progress when we thought we had already found the trade winds, suddenly we had to turn the wrong way. The other yachts that sailed behind us saw what was happening to us and took a turn to the North. We have been 24 hours under the clouds which caused us to drop to the 9th place 40 miles from the nearest yacht in front of us. The situation has improved and we’re back moving in the right direction, but we’ll need allot of luck to move beyond our position. Right now all we can do is it to sail better, helm at a straight line as possible and do our best trimming the sails.

8/2

The view of the sky in a bright night in the open sea is breathtaking. So many stars. On the watch from 1900 to 2300 we saw Orion, The South Cross, the North Star and many more constellations! On the dawn  watch (0300 to 0700), we saw the amazing scorpion system as well as Venus and the moon shine together.

These things help me move on in the emotional pendulum the I am experiencing.

In the race, our situation has improved very well because in the last 24 hours we had really good winds, while the other yachts have been stuck in wind holes. Our distance to the leading group is about 20 miles, which is nothing considering we've been through about 3000 miles so far. The race is still open.

9/2

We are already well trained in fast reefing, even this time when we were wet to our bones from the Monson rains. This time I was in a helm check position and found myself reaching to the coffee grinder before we started the reefing. That’s quite a distance to pass when the yacht is tilted by at least 45 degrees and you should be clipped on all the time. The strong winds allowed us to move further in our position.

Personally, because of the storm, I weren’t allowed to drive and that fact and the fact that I was being soaked in water just increased my moodiness. For night watch I wore the storm clothes because I couldn’t afford to wet any more clothes.

I am on cooking duty today, which means that I'll sleep all night. 

Yes, beyond the watches on deck, there are lots of other roles that go through duties: The cookies prepare meals all day and take care of the galley cleaning. Engineers check the engine, navigators fill a log every hour with all sorts of data (legal requirement), head cleaners (that how we call a toilet in a ship) take care for hygiene. One of the hardest duty is emptying the bilges. The bilge is the bottom of the yacht which takes water all the time. While there are pumps (manual), when the yacht is tilted, the water move to a location that the pumps do not reach and we use a bucket to drain them off. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean that there is a hole: the bilges are filled with rain, the waves that wash the deck and even from our sweat.

11/2

We’ve been on a pretty constant wind with the spinnaker for about three days. Today I got to helm again and felt much more comfortable. Helming time went through like nothing. Today we expect to reach a pretty stormy front and we are preparing for a survival mode. It seems that we will sail down wind with the storm. That means on one hand we will sail quickly and relatively comfortably and on the other hand we will be at the storm for more time as we sail with it.

13/2

The storm starts with strong winds and over time sea goes up and the waves wash us all. Waves of warm water. So we though we all wear storm clothes there are clogs or similar shoes on our feet. For me, the storm started a little before the strong winds started, when we went up to front deck for a Yankee 1 drop.

It isn't always the case, but at that night the move from the cockpit to the front deck was like a transition between two worlds:  from a relatively quiet world to a stormy and wet world. The waves washed us mercilessly when we struggle to lower the largest and heaviest headsail to the yacht. We folded the sail during the change of watches because it is easier to employ the entire crew for folding it.

The sail in a storm is far from being pleasant. Although the original plan was to sail downwind with the storm, the wind direction required an upwind sailing. Which means the yacht has always tilted at crazy angles. The watches themselves are pretty boring: we sit in the cockpit wearing storm clothes and absorb waves from time to time. I also got to helm the yacht twice, which was quite hard.

These are exactly the days I ask myself "what am I doing here?”. However, now the storm as passed, the sun went out and we raised the spinnaker. Even the heat in the yacht became reasonable. Tonight, I had to turn off the fan I felt too cold.

Our generator will probably be fixed only in Ha Long Bay, so for now we are running the engine in order to activate the water maker and to load the batteries of the yacht. As a result, the charging of private devices is limited because the yacht engine is use much more fuel than the generator.

And here is another video of storm sailing. I sit there with the blue hat and talk to Bob dressed in the red coat...





Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Sailing diary: Leg 5, Race 7 (part 1) - from Airlie Beach, Australia to the Equator

 29/1/2024

In the belly of the yacht the heat is unbearable and on the deck the sun is blazing. In the galley, the kitchen and dining room, we have two clocks. One of them has a thermometer. When we cook the temperature passes the maximum of the thermometer: above 50 degrees Celsius! I'm so glad I brought the rechargeable fans that allow me to sleep between shifts.

Today, the morning shift actually started well. I felt refreshed and ready for the different tasks. Also, I was chosen to helm second. Before helming, we do an helm check, keeping an eye on our previous helmsman. The goal is to steer the yacht in the prescribed direction with as few deviations as possible. After about an hour and a half of trying to overtake the yacht in front of us I moved to the helmsman's position. However, not for long. Not because I was helming badly but because my right leg burnt!

Despite a ton of sunscreen, I got a nasty burn.

I spent the rest of the shift moving between the sauna in the belly of the yacht and trying to find shade on the deck. Tomorrow I'll wear long pants.

I have aloe vera cream, so hopefully the leg will heal quickly.

We are currently tenth position, but our distance from the leading yacht is only about 10 miles which is nothing when it comes to a race of about 5,000 miles. We're making good progress and keeping the distance from the leaders so the competition is still open.

31/1

We weren't quite ready when we entered a storm cloud. When the wind suddenly picked up, I felt like I was trying to move the steering wheel to get the yacht back in the direction, but the steering wasn't moving. At first I thought it was because of the winds but then Harry hinted to me that Hannah had taken control of the wheel.

The state of the sea changed at once from a very comfortable state, winds of 20 knots with waves of about half a meter to winds of over 35 knots with waves at least three meters high while we are in full sail formation with the yacht at a high tilt. The first few minutes were very scary until Hannah took over the yacht and we managed to reef the sails. At the first moment, I found myself frozen while Hannah had to raise her voice telling to me to take care of the main sail. Finally, when I got off the helm toward the main sail sheet, I did it the long way (with of course constantly clipped on). We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the late hours of the evening in rough seas until the storm disappeared.

The next day, we sailed into a similar cloud. This time, we were prepared to reef the sails. Of course we were able to circumvent this storm and there was no need to reef. Skippers accustomed to "champagne" cruises will surely ask why we didn't reef the sails in advance. Well, we are in a race and reefing will slow us down. So, we are getting ready to reef but actually do it at the very last minute.

Here's a video from another incident where we were sailing in high winds...


Personally, I had a tough day, emotionally. It started with me not finding my drinking bottle, later discovered under my mattress, continued with a shoe that disappeared even though I had attached it to rubber bands designed to do so. The shoe was found under a sail, I don't know how it got there but it happened just when we had to get to the deck quickly due to a broken halyard (another event that happened to us). It continued with Hannah asking me to get off the helm because I couldn't get control of the yacht when sailing with a spinnaker at night.

At the end of the day I found out I had lost my watch. Surprisingly, the loss of a watch of a watch worth about $1000 annoyed me less me than the other stuff. I hope I'll find it too although there is a chance it lies in the bottom of the sea.

4/2

Ofcourse, we crossed the equator while I slept. We've had a lot of events since the last update, we've gone into an area with very weak winds. Which means hard work on board. Frequent changing of sails and trimming them all the time. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed these shifts. Doing it is good for me even though it is not easy, physically.

Of course, crossing the equator is a major event on the yacht. When the small, snowflakes (sailors that haven't crossed the equator) turn into a hard-shells tortoises. For this happy occasion, Neptune himself rise from the sea and judges each and any sailor who first crossed the equator. He accuses them of all sorts of ridiculous charges. I was accused of having a strange name, of being too slow in my responses and of blocking one of the heads (that's how we call a toilet on a yacht). Ofcourse, we all were found guilty. For punishment he purred a nasty pulp on our heads and announced that we are now hard-shells.

Bob, the ship's engineer who turned 70 yesterday, played Neptune very convincingly.

Few minutes later, we washed our heads (in seawater, of course).

Here are the new hard-shell owners in a photo shoot with Neptune...


As for the competition, we are currently not checking our position. In this segment, the yacht that will find the trade winds first, will have the greatest advantage. So we're on our way to finding the trade winds.

Friday, October 27, 2023

When reality knocks on your door


This post contains a paragraph that may be disturbing to some. Sorry for that but I have to tell the truth even when it is disturbing.

We huddled together in the darkness, five of us and our dog, in the room we had chosen as our safe room. The only sound was the occasional roar or bark of our other dogs outside, and we feared that the terrorists were getting closer.

Aviram, my partner, was afraid that even the faint light from my tablet would give us away, so I checked the news updates sparingly. But as the minutes ticked by, I couldn't help but feel a growing sense of dread.

After about half an hour, we got an update that it was a false alarm and we came out and continued our daily business "as usual".  This was the longest half an hour I it came to my senses, the horror that the people of southern Israel had waiting for hours in their homes, hopefully in a shelter, hearing the shooting of the Hamas-Isis terrorists in their neighbors home, understanding that Hamas-Isis terrorists are in their homes and holding the door of the shelter to prevent them from murdering babies, children and adults and raping there daughters.

It also made me realize, what I was already contemplating about, that I cannot leave my family and do leg 2 of the Clipper Race. Few hours later, I sent an email to the Race manager that I'm pulling out of this leg.

Well, I already was sure that the foreign company in which I had to fly to Uruguay will cancel the flight, however I started and could find a flight to Madrid with an Israeli airline company and continue from there to Montevideo (with the original flight which stopover in Madrid).

The encouraging news are that the race management has agreed to provide me a berth in leg 5 of the race, which means that, unless reality will knock again on my door, that I'll pass both the Equator and the international time line.

Monday, September 25, 2023

Life on a tilt - the extreme version - Level 4

The experience that the crew had during the race from Portsmouth to Puerto Sherry, reminded me of the level 4 experience we had. Here is the translation of the Hebrew blog post.

Suddenly, the yacht balances and becomes more tranquil. The atmosphere lightens, and even the weather seems to conform. When you experience this sensation, you know the yacht is sailing in backwinds.

When sailing in backwinds, the boat glides effortlessly, and everything is calmer. The apparent wind (the wind you feel on your face) is slower, leading novice sailors to believe that the boat is moving slow. However, yachts like the Clipper 70 actually move faster in backwinds, especially with the gennaker up.

The Clipper Race is set up to take advantage of the trade winds, so sailors spend most of their time sailing in backwinds. However, in a round-the-world race, a "short sail in headwinds" can mean several consecutive days of sailing in headwinds, with the boat tilted at 45 degrees or more to the left or right, night and day. This is what the yachts experienced in the recent race from Portsmouth to Puerto Sherry.

This post is about my experience of sailing for more than 24 hours in strong headwinds, extreme tilt, and high seas.

Down below

In one of my level 2 blog posts, I wrote about the difficulties of sailing on a yacht when it is tilted. The Clipper 70s can achieve greater tilt angles than the Clipper 68s on which we trained in level 2. The photo below shows Izzy in an exercise that demonstrates the tilt. The area where she is doing the exercise is sometimes referred to as "the death corridor." Most of the space down below is characterized by long and narrow corridors running the length of the boat, but this zone, which you encounter when you go down from the cockpit, runs through the width of the yacht. If you are not careful, you will fall around five meters onto the drysuit cabinet.

Indeed, just at the beginning of the sail, one of the crew slipped in this location, luckily with just a nasty scratch on their hand. After this incident, I took extra caution when going down from the cockpit to the lower deck.

During level 2 training, we would sail quite horizontally at night. However, during the race, you don't slow down because people need to sleep. The yacht is sailing at maximum possible speed 24/7, and if you need to tilt, you tilt.

In this situation, each activity requires a lot of energy and mental strength. My main difficulty, being not very flexible, was putting on my boots. I tried putting them on on the high wind side and then on the down wind side, but I encountered different difficulties in each case. Once or twice, I even angrily threw my boot. However, I got better at doing it over time.

As usual, I got the top bunk. You can adjust the angle of the bunk, and I took my skipper Hanna's advice and adjusted the angle to about 20 degrees toward the wall (in my case, the starboard wall). I also set up the mattress partially on the wall. This way, when the yacht tilted starboard, I basically slept on the wall, while when the yacht tilted to port, I slept partially on the bunk and partially on a piece of cloth that was meant to prevent me from falling down (and it actually did).

Surprisingly, going up to or down from the bunk was easier than I thought it would be, mainly because the corridor between the bunks is very narrow. When we tilted to port, I "walked" on the opposite wall, and when we tilted to starboard, I climbed up using the lower bunk and just rolled myself into the bunk. Zipping the sleeping bag was a completely different thing, which required my best acrobatic abilities.

On the upper decks

I remember one time when I was called to the helm during high-tilt sailing. To get to the helm station, I had to climb out of the cockpit to the high side of the yacht and go all the way back to the station. When the yacht is horizontal, it takes me less than thirty seconds to reach the station. However, on high tilt, it took me about three minutes to go through the same short path.

First, I had to climb to the high side of the deck (which is like climbing a mountain), then carefully move all the way back, and then climb into the helm station. During this time, I had to keep myself clipped to the yacht, which requires me in some cases to clip on the short tether to a new safety point, then clip off the long tether and clip it back on the new point, and then clip off the shorter tether. I had to do this three times when moving to the helm station! Of course, before taking the helm, I had to take a minute to catch my breath.

Therefore, even on the upper decks, every action requires much more time and energy. Even tidying the ropes in the cockpit, which is an essential activity, is energy-consuming.

After sailing almost continuously from Monday to Wednesday, most of it in headwinds, we returned to the Isle of Wight on Wednesday to anchor and get some rest before the training race that was held on Thursday and Friday. Since the real race is already underway, I will not translate the last chapter of the level 4 series, but I will share my experience of the real race from Punta del Este, Uruguay to Cape Town, South Africa later.

I'm sharing all the action from the race on Facebook - follow me to stay up-to-date! 





Tuesday, September 12, 2023

An exciting experience in a stormy night shift and to where did third of the team one to? - Clipper Race Level 4 Training

It is just before midnight, not too long after the start of the second night shift. For the whole day now we are constantly sailing upwind in a tilt of 45 degrees. The winds speed is 35 knots and the sea height is 3 meters. At these condition, Dan and me found ourselves crawling to the front deck to drop the head sail (Yankee 3 sail) while the waves giving us a good wash. At a certain point I discovered that I lost the sail tile, a rope that we use to secure the the head sail. Luckily Cat also joined us with an extra rope and tied the sail (wisely, she tied the sail tile to her storm suit).

This was a good test to my Musto ocean suite and ocean trousers as well as my boots (also Musto) and sealskin socks. Except for slaty lips and a bit of wetness on my sleeves I came out of this shaking experience completely dry. Well, I guess this is what I wanted from this training. Finally stormy condition which I'll surely encounter during the voyage.

In the following video that I took the next morning, we can see the crew preparing to hoist the same sail that we dropped at night (in a bit better calmer whether).

This happened during the first night when we actually sailed and this is how the day started...

After breakfast, we raised the anchor, trying not the scratch the new beautiful sponsor painting of the yacht. Almost immediatly we hoisted the sails and sailed almost constantly till Wednesday (well we had a short stopped to disembark one of the crew member who broke her ankle).

The Solent, the area residing between Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight had quite a nice whether (well, for England), however the minute you leave the edge of the Isle of Wight you reach the open sea of the English channel, where we met the mighty ocean forces.

It was almost like an invisible line. Before it the ocean is calm but after it we encountered winds of 30 knots and more (54KMH) and 3 meters waves. All this while we are sailing in head winds. We managed to sail at a speed of 10 knots which means that the apparent wind (the wind that you feel on the boat) reached 40 knots. All this factors cause clipper yacht to sail in a tilt of 40 degrees and more (and about that in the next chapter).

In Israel I sail with a yacht that has two sails. On a clipper yacht you can hoist three sails which we did. The mainsail, we set to third reef, we hoisted the stay sail (a sail that reached about two third of the mast and a storm jib (special head sail used when there are very strong winds).

And, as the yacht is sailing 24 hours a day, the crew was divided to two teams. The starbord team and the port team. During the days there were two shift of six hours each (0700 and 1300) and at night three shifts of four hours (1900, 2300 and 0300). Ofcourse there are other duties such as preparing food, cleaning the heads, engine checks, logging and navigation.

And with the speed, the waves and the waves came our green friend, the sea sickness. In few hours, I believe that at least third of the crew were incapacitated and others (including me) were partially functioning.

This is how, at a stormy night, I found myself performing a task that I usually avoid: going to the front deck and the bow. And it was an excellent experience for me.

Helming during a stormy night

Well, not as stormy as the night before. My first helming in this training happened during the second sailing night.

It was Tuesday, our third day on the sea. The winds were still strong and the waves high however one level below the previous night. This was also the day, where I may have experienced sea sickness. I did not vomit but I did felt bad. I discussed it with some of my fellow crew people and reached a major decision for my life: to stop drinking coffee. Yes, it seems that coffee increases sea sickness and due to its acidity can trigger vomits. The coffee has been replaced by herbal tea: mint or even better mint with ginger. You can eat a green apple to replace the arousing effect of the coffee and we had plenty of them on the boat. Two days I suffered from mild headache but it is better than sea sickness.

And, we you are wondering, from that day till today I do not consume coffee on regular basis (I did sinned couple of times).

But let's go back to helming. During the night shift, Cam our additional qualified person (And what a person he is), asked who wants to replace the helm man and I jumped on the opportunity.  

Because we sailed at night where you cannot see the waves coming at you, Cam gave me a great tip: when I see the bow rising I should turn the helm slightly toward the wave and then quickly return it to its original position. It took me few minutes to get used to it but it worked as charm when I got it.

It is hard to explain the experience inn words, but it was at the dark where the waves are invisible, that I felt a connection to the ocean rhythm. I felt the cyclic movement of the waves that combines uniform rhythm with a constant change.

This experience which is coming and going helped allot when I helmed during the training race at the end of the training.

In the next chapter I'll tell about the life on a yacht that sails two days in an extreme tilt. How do you climb the top bunk? and how do you not fall from it? How do you cook or even go to the toilet (which is called a head in a yacht).

This post is a translation of the original Hebrew language post. It is my own free hand translation so it may not exactly fit the original post wording.




Wednesday, August 30, 2023

BE careful of you ask for - Clipper Race Level 4 Training


As I wrote in my first English blog post, this is a translation of my Hebrew blog. It is not a google translation! I write it on my own (well, I must use google translation for specific word or phrase). English is not my mother tongue, so forgive me for my grammar and phrasing mistakes.

There are subjects that I do not translate to English and there are subjects that will be unique to the English version.

If you asked why there are no posts of the level 3 training. I can say that we had a very interesting training. We did an acquaintance with the actual race yacht, the Clipper 70 (a 70 fit yacht, more or less 22 meter long). We raise asymmetric spinnaker. However.. the weather was very calm with little wind so there was nothing much to tell.

Level four, that was a completely different story.

The way to level four: Crew Allocation Day

At May 20, me and some of the other Israelis participating at the race had a meetup in the house of Ziv Halevi, one of the participants. We gather in order to watch the live Crew Allocation event. This is the event where we, the crew, finds out about their team. I must say that the event was very tensed: one by one the skippers stood on stage, asked questions by the host. At the same time, each member of the skipper's team got an email message about their allocation.

My skipper was one of the last to be on the stage. Hannah is my skipper and Cameron is our AQP (Additional Qualified Person).

The was to level four: We have a sponsor!

We waited two month between the crew allocation day to the day where we got the message that we have a sponsor. In July, two weeks before the start of my level four training I found out that our sponsor is no other than Washington, DC (well, it is Events DC, the city's sporting and cultural event company.

As my level four training was the fourth and the last one before the beginning of the race, we did the training on a branded yacht!

A training that started in stormy
whether and ended crawling to the finish line of a training race

The fourth training is more realistic than the previous clipper training. The training is done on the actual yacht on which we will sail, lead by our skipper Hannah and her aqp Cameron (Cam for short) as well as the team's crew (in our case we hosted also four of team Qingdao crew as their yacht was full).
And more important, we spend all the training's time at sea.

However, before the training, we got our kit: long technical shirt, crew shorts, an official "Clipper Crew" jacket and of course, the Musto HPX Pro Ocean Smock and Trouser! After some fitting, I got a head shot for the team page and we settled on the yachts.

At the beginning of the training the participants told about themselves and on what they want to achieve in the training. Without hesitation I said that I want to experience a sailing in a stormy sea and to learn how to sail fast. I was not the only one to asked for that.

And indeed Poseidon grant our request: a stormy ocean at the first two day and an extreme tilt in order to achieve fast speed in head winds...

Immediately after the security brief and crew assessment we left Gosport Marina to return only after six days at friday (we did return for a ten minutes stop in order to offboard a wounded crew member).

At the first day, the sea was calm, which allow us to perform mandatory safety drills: man over board (well Bob overboard, a real size man dummy), we transferred Bob from our yacht to another yacht by dinghy and then they send it back to us and we dragged the other yacht and been dragged by her.

At the evening we anchored near the Isle of Wight. Olly and me prepared dinner in the comfort of the anchorage.

The next day was completely different...

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Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Living at an angle...

 




Great video, isn't it?
Even if my phone would have been charged and even if it was one me I wouldn't be able able to shoot this video. Simply because I was in the lower deck of the yacht, cooking and serving food for nineteen hungry people. All that while the yacht is sailing in an angle and the see is high. And most important for me... I felt good.

And this is what happened...

Immediately upon completing a training, Cliff sent Andy and me down to prepare lunch. After all this was our lunch shift. forty five minutes after we went down, we notified Cliff tht the food is ready. However... the yacht just left the Solent and went into the English channel. The winds picked up and so was the sea. We sailed with head winds (close haul as we call it in sailing English) and changed the angles to the wind frequently. The skipper decided that lunch can wait and asked us to keep it worm for an hour or so. So, we found ourselves keeping the food warm while the yacht changes its angle once to the starboard (right) and once to port (left) and vice versa.

In our first port angle, all the plates just flew out of the cupboard (actually a hole in the wall because doors adds lots of weight to the yacht, but they were supposed to be lashed with a special rope that did not exist there!). I put the dishes in a more protected hole. People that sail are probably accustomed to the self balancing stove. However, it seemed to me not balanced enough to keep the high cooking pot that was full with beans in tomato sauce. Due to the limited space on the stove, we put the kettle on the desk which was certainly not self balancing. I found myself, picking up the kettle every time the skipper shouted "Helm to Li" and setting it down on the low side of the galley when I heard "Li Ho".

I noticed that Andy, my partner at all shift, is not feeling well and recommended him to go up to get fresh air. He didn't come back till the evening.

Thus I found myself serving food alone to nineteen people who came down to the "mess hall" in two shifts. Luckily, after that, Ziv helped me with the disk washing and cleanup.

Finally, after two hours, I went up to the cockpit. I found five people, sitting at the aft behind the help, suffering from sea sickness.

Epilogue

When I speak with Aviram, my partner, about sea sickness. I always tell him that everyone can catch it at certain time. Aviram, who is very sensitive to sea sickness, answers quite angrily that i will never understand the terrible feeling of being sick. Maybe he is right... Hopefully...

Nonetheless, I have to say that I was more grouchy than usual when I worked at the galley. This maybe a symptom of sea sickness or this was due to me being stack below for so long?

Acknowledgment

This time I have double acknowledgment to Ziv Halevi, one for helping me in the galley and second for taking the above video (his blog is currently only in Hebrew).

And this is how the galley looks in horizontal state...










Sailing Diary: Leg 5, Race 7 - From the equator to Luzon Straights Along the Philippines East Cost

But before that, it turns out I forgot an important part of the cruise up to the equator, the Doldrums area... So here is: 2/2/2024 Remember...