Saturday 11th started off with a beautiful sunrise making the clouds in the sky a fiery red. At this point we had settled into the watch rotations and they were working well.

10mins to the second hour of a current watch either Niall or I would shout to both cabins to give them a wake up warning. This would then happen again with 5 and 2 minutes to the watch change.

Once the watch had changed the off coming watch would make a meal by boiling water in the jet boil. We always have hot water in flasks from the previous watch to prepare meals and we are just boiling more for the next watch. The meal preparation and eating takes about 15 mins.


Then the tricky bit of making sure you have been to the loo (bucket or bottle) depending on what you needed.

Once complete it's off to the cabin to get approximately 1hr 20mins sleep.

This was all going perfectly until the 17:00-19:00 watch when we received a weather warning from multiple sources, batten down the hatches was pretty much the summary from now until possibly Tuesday. The wind speed started to pick up and the sea state changed from calm toBF3 in a matter of 30mins. We went from wearing pants to foulies.

We were about to realise what a small boat in a large ocean really feels like.

Niall was already suffering with pressure points on his backside and using an inflated pillow for comfort when rowing.

Clément has some salt sores on his backside and sore hands.

I got hit with sea sickness despite wearing a anti sea sickness patch.

All we know is it going to continue to build and get worse.  Despite everything we are still smiling and looking forward to getting through the next few days. Niall was over the moon with the 9.8knts of boat speed.


From Colin's blog