‘Right Here Right Now’ – by Mark Covell embedded and onboard Kosatka Team Russia
Remember in one of my blogs from leg one, I wrote about telling it like it is? Say what you see? Well I’m about to do the same again and lay it on the line as it is for me, not the crew, not the people back in what ever edit office my work goes to but right here right now.
Right now it’s 22.30 ship’s time and we are heading southeast at 28 knots in about 30 knots of wind. It has just taken me well over an hour to simply boil 5 litres of water and pore it into one container of freeze-dried food. It took me 25 minutes to find the lighter because today we had a small issue below decks with which way was up and which way was down.
We had a fresh 38 knots with two reefs and full A6 kite up. The Speedo was showing off with glimpses of 34 knots but mostly strutting about with its shirt off showing a solid 26 pack. I was in the office doing my lippy, trying to put the media station back together (reasons later). The boat’s motion was violent but no more offensive then normal when suddenly I am thrown to starboard, hitting the bulkhead door and breaking it clean off.
‘Gosh’ I said, ‘What the devil was that?’ My question was answered as the laptop, normally Velcroed down, landed in my lap with a catch any fullback would have been proud of. ‘Gravity has now chosen to work from left to right on Team Russia today’, I thought. Shoving the apple quickly down my trousers, I made the rest of my kit safe and solid. Thanks to Sarah from our hard working shore crew for my new pouches, nothing else fell.
As you can guess, the old up and down witch I had become rather fond of, was now looking more like side and ways. Luckily, I had the spreader camera view on the media station screen. It was showing one of those clever half-underwater, half blue-sky shots you see in BBC nature programmes. I could hear David Attenborough’s voice softy saying, ‘What the Volvo Ocean Sailor is experiencing here, is a Chinese Gybe, we don’t know enough about this species yet, but we believe they do this to keep cool when they overheat’.
Quickly breaking out my very own retake of The Blue Planet, I hit the record on my consol. I was torn between grabbing my camera and capturing more of the action or capturing the essential electrical navigation kit now hanging from the chart table like strange fruit in a southern wind. Wrongly, I chose safety over fame, bundling up as much as I could and wedging it behind a corner. I sorted myself out, stowing the collection of stuff rammed down my trousers and headed for the action with video in hand. Walking down the disorientating sidewalls, forward to the cockpit I could hear voices, commands one by one, clear and direct. The normal rage and rampage of the boat’s screams to slow down were gone. Just a quiet sloshing sound as the waves broke against the hull. As I clambered forward, I noticed the sleeping bags now moving with the water mixed with things normally stowed high and dry.
It’s all wrong, so wrong, but not the first time I have been in this predicament, except the last time I was sailing a Laser on holiday and the water was a lot warmer. So, we are laid flat on our starboard side, main in the water, kite still up and keel fully canted down pinning us to the sea with no runner on the port side. Sails that were stacked on the high side were now trying to swim back to Cape Town as the water flowed freely; washing water bottles and winch handles in and out. The crew on deck are standing on the sides of things, tailing winches from confusing angels, desperately trying to untangle the puzzle. Thank God, all on deck had life jackets and harnesses clipped on.
I’m now filming, but desperately aware that it’s not the most helpful thing I could be doing. As if the referee had finished his count of 10, slowly the boat is freed from its half nelson and the she breathes a sigh of relief as the keel bulb cants back to the good side. The lads, still working hard to prevent further issues, manhandle the kite down, get the stacked sails back in and secure runners and sheets. Sensing that my presence is not welcome and any commentary or remark would be curt and abrupt, I sloped away to put my world back into place for the third time this leg.
The first time was just after our depressing, paint drying Cape Town start, I discovering a very annoying high-pitched alarm in the media desk. It was like a perverse form of torture reaching the very inner of my inner ear. I rang the makers of my media torture chamber and discovered that it was designed to alert me to an electrical short somewhere in the boat that could be ready to burst in to flames at any time. ‘Oky doky’ just tell me how to find the problem and I’ll be off? The answer was not as simple as I had hoped. ‘Sit at the desk listening to hell’s acoustic screams and have someone else go through the boat independently switching off all each electrical systems until you isolate the issue’.
After five long hours of listening to Satan’s piercing mother-in-law bang on about her bunions, I was ready to kill something or someone. We had not found the evil little short and my media desk was still not operable. I voted to disconnect it or hit the beeper with large hammer and go to sleep and try to relieve my head of an ache fit for a hangover only achieved after a night out with Guy Swindles (the ‘voice of the race’).
I took the former option and tried to sleep. Now as discussed before on the Volvo, sleep does not come easily. I am not allowed a bunk as I have already bust two on the previous leg, so I get a wet bean bag on the high side of the thin isle that all the crew use to get to their bunks. It’s safe to say even though I’m not on watch every four hours and have more time to sleep and shouldn’t have any grounds to complain; it sucks! It just has no similarity to sleep in any way shape or form.
There aren’t enough sheep in New Zealand to count that would send you off on these insane boats. The common trick is to get so cream crackered knackered that your eyes can’t stay open any longer. Sooner or later, your body can’t fight it and overcomes the rattle and shake of the hull and you eventually slip into dreams of warm apple pie. I ultimately achieved nirvana and enjoyed short but exceeding good sleep… mmm, Mrs Kipling’s best.
Day two was another eventful one. I woke as one of the off watch crewmen shed his wet weather gear down on my face and then used my slumbering bones to step up to his bunk. There was no intention of rudeness; in his need to reach sanctuary of his pit, he just didn’t know I was sleeping there.
It was still blowing the knickers off Vickers, dogs off chains, frogs off drains and any other windy alliteration I could think of but were too rude to print. Anyway, time was getting on, I still hadn’t sent any media off the boat and I had a date with a bucket. I got up in the clothes I had slept in and didn’t shave or brush my teeth. I had a war to go to, the war with the water that had advanced in over night.
This is a constant battle. It’s as though the designers of the original Volvo 70 had thought that just sailing round the world with 10 sleep-deprived madmen in a turbo-charged sled was not hard enough. So they introduced internal water ingress. Leakage to you and me. Then to make it even harder, they gave it a sailing motion about as erratic as a shopping trolley with a dodgy wheel never tracking in a smooth motion. After the tough few days for the crew on deck, I have been trying to cook and bail as much as I can. With the media desk still not working 100% I was hoping that we would get some calmer water and I could solve the gremlins still lurking.
Every time I tried to write a blog or film, I would feel sick. It wasn’t your standard seasickness but a battered worn down mist that everybody was now feeling. The crew were pushing as hard they could, but still not making inroads against the fleet. Moral was low and we needed a pick up. It came from the unlikely depths of the food bag. Normally the bringer of all things inedible, this time we had a birthday surprise for Wouter Verbraak our navigator.
I found freeze-dried piña colada, chocolate cup cakes and party hats. We had a short round of Happy Birthday and raised a smile and all forgot our worries for a while. Seeing a full kitted out sailor in sea boots, survival suit, lifejacket and harness with a pointy party hat perched on his wet head is enough to put a smile on the most work-hardened face.
At the end of day two, I put my head down on the pillow and I didn’t have with a good feeling about the team and its fortunes. It was with a shock and surprise I was woken by a worried Nick Bubb, desperately trying to get to a pipe under my beanbag. As he rummaged he muttered words like, accident, sorry and quickly. Then he said the word I have become to loath, WATER.
In filling the stern ballast tank, the quick release valve had been accidentally opened, probably in the last aft stack. The result was water in the media station of Jacuzzi proportions. You didn’t need to use the orange dinghy bailer; you could fill a bucket direct from the shear depth. I couldn’t quite wake up from my sleep. I kept rubbing my face, not believing what was going on before me.
Water was occasionally sloshing in waves up onto the top of the desk and over my laptop and cameras stored in open compartment trays. This was my worst nightmare, to lose my kit and be held redundant and prisoner with nothing with which to capture life on board.
As Nick and Mike Joubert feverishly bailed like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I gathered the kit up and wrapped it up in a dry shirt, hoping that no serious damage had occurred. I had to take the lid off the media desk another time to check and clean up any damage. Luckily, no harm done that I couldn’t fix with some intense shaking and mopping with paper towel. It took about three hours to get the area back to its normal, slightly dripping, but not streaming state. When would I be able to stop battling with the boat and the elements and be free to operate as my role intended?
I put the kit back together and mopped out the remaining water, unaware of what oriental fun and games were still to come later on day three.
I had to laugh when I got a well-intended email from Volvo HQ, gently reminding me that I was behind on my media out put. That reminder was about the only gentle thing that has happened to me since my daughter’s good-bye kiss on the dock back in Cape Town.