Hair

Hair – especially for you Françoise.

Just before I left on this adventure, I met a fabulous woman, Françoise. She is the epitome of elegance, beauty and quietly effective strength and bravery. I have great admiration for her.  One of our conversations concerning my worries about the trip meandered to girlie issues, as you may have read in an earlier blog, my hair was looming in my mind as a really big issue.

How would I cope with unwashed hair? What would it look like!? What would I look like!?

Spots… Sweat… And the fun continues

On watch at 6 am today brought with it a Yankee 2 hank and hoist, a Yankee 3 drop and bag, swiftly followed by a staysail drop thanks to a threatening squall. Then a hoist and another drop followed by a Yankee drop intermingled with cleaning the bilges, prepping for reefing in and out and tacking twice.

hanging in there

We were all particularly disappointed by

Deja vu

Back to squall watching, remember, the domain of leg one. Well, they’re back!

It’s behind you!

and its getting bigger and blacker!

Coming on watch at 6 am we hoisted the code 3 spinnaker (the heavy one) and within less than half an hour had to drop it thanks to squall number one.

Naming of the watches

An important event in the life of team Switzerland, and as it turns out an easy one for one watch.

Due to a rather extended night out a number of the crew were feeling a little worse for wear due in no small part to their not insignificant consumption of jäger bombs.

North meets South

What amazing watch from 22h to 0200 h into the ITCZ otherwise known as the inter tropical convergence zone where the northern hemisphere meets the southern.

Our watch went from a calm code one lightweight spinnaker run to all hell breaking loose. A huge wind increase saw us

Squall watch

Immediately following our briefing about squalls in the tropics, especially the ferocious ones as we pass through the doldrums, I glance over my left shoulder as I’m busy trimming the spinnaker to the sight of a rather ominous looking cloud formation.

No doubting it’s a squall. However I draw the attention of our watch leader and skipper with a casual, “Hey guys, what do you think…?”