Ellen Macarthur Trust

Boxing Day

Boxing Day, 26th December 2009
 
I hope you all had a merry christmas. Ours was somewhat unorthodox. It's not every christmas you get to spend in the Atlantic ocean, thousands of miles from land and family but I'm certainly not complaining, every waking moment I realise how lucky I am to be out here, living out my dream. It was without doubt one of my busiest christmases, what with four live BBC TV appearances (BBC Breakfast, 2 x BBC News 24 and BBC World), plus five BBC radio interviews (2 x World Service, 2 x Five Live and Radio 4) plus a telephone interview with The Independent newspaper.  Regular followers will be aware of the problems I had in Lanzarote before we left regarding the urgent delivery of the ships satellite communications dome and how delays and mishaps looked certain to mean we would have no communications on the boat.  But with less than 24 hours before the situation was irretreavable, FEDEX pulled a complete rabbit out of the hat, mobilised goodness knows how many people and miraculously managed, with only hours to spare, to get all the communications equipment delivered to the boat. I wanted to mention that again because when I originally tried to convey the importance of the equipment it was difficult to put it into context, but reeling off that list of BBC coverage which we did yesterday, it illustrates just how important. THANK YOU AGAIN FEDEX and THANK YOU STRATOS for loaning us the equipment in the first place - if you saw or heard any of the interviews, I hope you agree the technology is 1st class. Between interviews we opened our prezzies which was a lovely reminder of home for all of us and quite emotional. I must make mention of one present in particular, that of a Borat "mankini", a present from Susana to Digby. If you haave no idea what I am talking about, I suggest you look at the picture on Susana's blog CLICK HERE, but be warned, it comes with a Certificate 18 warning - what was meant as a "joke" gift was for some reason, best known to himself, considered by Digby as a challenge and with absolutely no encouragement whatsoever, within seconds he was strutting the decks of Impossible Dream in this luminescent green man-thong, frightening the tuna and certainly not helping Susana's seasickness. Even now I find it a strangely disturbing image.
 
We all managed to find a few minutes to speak with our families which in itself was not easy with Susana's family being 12 hours ahead of GMT in NZ and Digby and my family both being 5 hours behind GMT in the Caribbean, but we all did get to talk to our loved ones. Despite putting the chicken (more  like a large canary complete with feet and gizzards hangimg out - that image of Digby in his mankini springs to mind again) in the oven at 6.00pm, it was 10pm by the time our christmas diinner was ready.  At one point, I thought we were going to have to break open the Army ration packs we have stowed away on board (courtesy of my mate Jason West of the Royal Engineers Yacht Club), but thankfully the little micro oven delivered up its contents just in time.  Once our stomachs were full, a wave of lethargy fell across us all, the physical and emotional stress of the day hitting us like a ton of bricks. Today has been a really relaxing day, I even caught another two dorado fish which we released back into the sea unharmed (I still have half a tuna in the fridge). 
 
For the umpteenth day in a row, there has been barely 5 knots of breeze but there is, finally, a ray of hope on the horizon; Monday is forecast to bring us 15 to 20 knots of breeze from the NE which will be, assuming they are correct, almost ideal weather conditions.  They are scheduled to stay for 3 to 4 days which could drastically benefit our arrival time which currently is estimated at the 5th January. I do hope so. Colin Bramble has organised so many wonderful events in Tortola based on our original arrival date of the 27th December, that our delay must be causing him logistrical nightmares - I'm so desperately sorry Colin, especially after all of your hard work and planning; my presence was planned to help raise much needed funds for the Tortola Sailability group - hopefully, we will still arrive in time to do something positive. 
 
Once again, many thanks for your scores of emails and messages left on my blog, I read them all.  I'm doing my best to reply to them but it's taking a while and with airtime costs at $50 USD / Mb, I can only afford to be online for 3 minutes a day, just enough time to download emails and upload my blog (hence no photos I'm afraid).  Digby & Susana need to use the system too so anyone wanting to sponsor our airtime costs would be most appreciated - the video blogs and email checks alone have already amounted to nearly £2,000 and we've got at least another 10 days to go. Until next time.