This time I’m not going to be modest …and just shout HOORAY! My boys won again! Da iawn fechgyn! Thank you Cole & Jameson reporters for such fab commentary! Luckily Herdip didn’t fall of her seat this time. Grand Slam dreams very much alive!
So our days continue, as we battle nearer towards land! 318 nm to go, we are now aiming to land late on the 17th …so fingers crossed!
Yesterday we had a casualty! Herdip snapped one of our spoon come forks in half! We considered duck tapping it back together, but thought it was a job too much for duck tape even. So now we just share the one precious spoon come fork we have left which puts much more pressure on the “licking clean” ritual! This is even more high pressure now that we have only 118 baby wipes between us left, equating roughly to six wipe each a day – so clearly not to be wasted on anything other than essential business!
For those wizards at search engines out there, and with nothing better to do on a February weekend, there are a couple of topics that we have been pondering over, and we’d love to know the answers!
Firstly, our nail beds have turned luminous white, especially on our right hands … any idea why??
Secondly, what (if any) is the difference between the hair follicles’ on your head compared to the rest of your body?! If there is no difference – why has the hair on our legs now (finally!) stopped growing?
Oh the mind of an ocean rower!!
p.s HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY SIMMY
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Sunday, 10 February 2008
Friday, 8 February 2008
A sponsor who's not afraid to get his hands dirty for the cause!
Well we have fantastic news to report today! (Well we actually found out a few days ago, but it’s taken till now for the news to sink in). Thanks to Jamie & Mapeley’s efforts we have a further £25,000 added to our fundraising campaign! Jamie had been busy cleaning windows at Euston tower in support of our effort and the response he received was beyond expectations. If we’d have known, we could have skipped the ocean rowing effort, and just cleaned windows ………ONCE AGAIN THANK YO SO MUCH JAMIE!
We’ve literally been blown away by the news! And now find ourselves travelling over 2 nm an hour with the help of ENE winds, Antigua is just getting that little bit closer once more! One out of every five wave catches us beam on, but hey, we’re not complaining. What’s a drenching now & again! We’ve given up on dry clothes mostly by now anyway. We rank our clothes on the following scale
1 = soaking
2 = very wet
3 = wet
4 = damp
5 = cold to touch, possibly damp.
Anything 3 and above is a bonus to wear. We now just need to develop a scale for salt encrusted clothing, might just do that over the weekend!
Night times are different however, as we have the most amazing outfit! Our PVCs! No joking! BLACK PVC on the outside, and a lovely warm fleece lining. For bottom part, we have “pre-bent shorts” which has low cut waist especially, unfortunately they were designed for men, so we do have excessive unwanted material at the front, but still they are cosy on those cold dark nights. And of course a matching top, Herdip went for the long sleeve look, while I have the short sleeved number. So at the end of her last shift in the day, Herdip steps into the cabin, and for the first shift of the night …..out steps CATWOMAN! It looks as close to a leather jumpsuit as you could get! I just hope it comes with some special powers to get us there quicker ...…
We’ve literally been blown away by the news! And now find ourselves travelling over 2 nm an hour with the help of ENE winds, Antigua is just getting that little bit closer once more! One out of every five wave catches us beam on, but hey, we’re not complaining. What’s a drenching now & again! We’ve given up on dry clothes mostly by now anyway. We rank our clothes on the following scale
1 = soaking
2 = very wet
3 = wet
4 = damp
5 = cold to touch, possibly damp.
Anything 3 and above is a bonus to wear. We now just need to develop a scale for salt encrusted clothing, might just do that over the weekend!
Night times are different however, as we have the most amazing outfit! Our PVCs! No joking! BLACK PVC on the outside, and a lovely warm fleece lining. For bottom part, we have “pre-bent shorts” which has low cut waist especially, unfortunately they were designed for men, so we do have excessive unwanted material at the front, but still they are cosy on those cold dark nights. And of course a matching top, Herdip went for the long sleeve look, while I have the short sleeved number. So at the end of her last shift in the day, Herdip steps into the cabin, and for the first shift of the night …..out steps CATWOMAN! It looks as close to a leather jumpsuit as you could get! I just hope it comes with some special powers to get us there quicker ...…
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
The secret is out! - well done dips.
Last night was spent salivating as to what topping we would have had on our pancake if we were at home! We then discussed what we would abstain from over Lent. Being Sikh means that Herdip doesn’t really need to consider it but she was very happy to come up with suggestions for me. Out of my four favourite things in life, coffee, chocolate, champagne and … oh…three I meant three favourite things in life, we tried to consider which one I should give up. But then I thought to myself, I’ve actually been without all three (four) for close on nine weeks now already, so I’m not planning to abstain from any of them for any more!
Instead I’ve decided to give up rowing . . . .
Now being in a 24 foot rowing boat means that there’s NO chance of privacy. Secrets go right out the window. I’ve tried to sneak a few in, secrets that is, but “pop” out they come! Unless you're Herdip by the looks of it! Not only has she managed to hide an Options sachets (which we ran out of on our THIRD WEEK!), today she even popped out a Haribo Supermix bag. (HOORAY! It had 11 Ginger men!). Such was my surprise and delight I’ve not thought of questioning her of how many other little “secrets” she has stored, but at least now I know why she’s been so keen to push me overboard to clean the hull, it’s to give her time to raid the treats supplies! As long as she keeps making them appear now and again, and continues to share I’m more than happy!
For all the other secrets we’ve made the obligatory pact “What goes on tour, stays on tour”!
The rest of the day we’ve been very busy rewiring our broken charging plug (well 12 volt socket to be precise). Now, no jokes about how many nurses does it take to change a light bulb please! When sleep deprived, wind swept and panic setting in that we would be without sat phone, laptop (our lifeline) or ipods for the reminder of the “trip” it was a high pressured job! With three pin options and only two wires there were many combinations for us to work our way around. It didn’thelp that neither of us could remember what colour the live wire should be!
Well we are blonde & dippy remember! But finally, hey presto another challenge overcome and our sat phone is now charging beautifully! Phew!
Herdip – get back on the oars, I’m abstaining for Lent remember!
P.S Now that the Coppers have landed (Mission Atlantic) we can give it some welly, we were just too scared of being done for speeding before!! Well done boys!
Instead I’ve decided to give up rowing . . . .
Now being in a 24 foot rowing boat means that there’s NO chance of privacy. Secrets go right out the window. I’ve tried to sneak a few in, secrets that is, but “pop” out they come! Unless you're Herdip by the looks of it! Not only has she managed to hide an Options sachets (which we ran out of on our THIRD WEEK!), today she even popped out a Haribo Supermix bag. (HOORAY! It had 11 Ginger men!). Such was my surprise and delight I’ve not thought of questioning her of how many other little “secrets” she has stored, but at least now I know why she’s been so keen to push me overboard to clean the hull, it’s to give her time to raid the treats supplies! As long as she keeps making them appear now and again, and continues to share I’m more than happy!
For all the other secrets we’ve made the obligatory pact “What goes on tour, stays on tour”!
The rest of the day we’ve been very busy rewiring our broken charging plug (well 12 volt socket to be precise). Now, no jokes about how many nurses does it take to change a light bulb please! When sleep deprived, wind swept and panic setting in that we would be without sat phone, laptop (our lifeline) or ipods for the reminder of the “trip” it was a high pressured job! With three pin options and only two wires there were many combinations for us to work our way around. It didn’thelp that neither of us could remember what colour the live wire should be!
Well we are blonde & dippy remember! But finally, hey presto another challenge overcome and our sat phone is now charging beautifully! Phew!
Herdip – get back on the oars, I’m abstaining for Lent remember!
P.S Now that the Coppers have landed (Mission Atlantic) we can give it some welly, we were just too scared of being done for speeding before!! Well done boys!
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
Uncomfortably close . . . . (to each other and surrounding vessels)
Last night was quite nice because we actually got to row and the bonus being we were moving in the right direction! It was a relief not to have to spend another night in the cabin with two of us in there. I'm sure I poked my toes in Elin's nostrils a few times that night, didn't dare inspect my toes in the morning!!! The other problem with sharing the cabin is that your body tends to seize up really quickly, so you get backache, your hands cramp up too, which is not particularly pleasant. Hopefully we won't have to do it again, fingers crossed.
Tomorrow (6th), is going to be an emotional day for Elin for personal reasons, we had anticipated to be on land by now but unfortunately we are not, however I have the matter in hand . . . . . I had hidden a packet of ginger haribo men for her to cheer her up so shhh don't tell her till tomorrow. The other night she was fixated on chocolate and we promised we would not have our chocolate treat ( by the way this is chocolate from the grab bag , as you know our supplies finished quite a while ago) till we had reached the 500 mile mark. I don't know how she restrained herself, it must have been torture, because it took us hours to get to the 500 mark. I did however cave in to her demands by giving her a hot chocolate drink I had stashed away for such emergencies!!!
We have also had a lot of traffic at night from one cargo ship to another, it’s a bit like the M1 down here, must be getting near land. By the way my fantastic idea of using the LED light from the bow cabin works like a dream :-)
Tomorrow (6th), is going to be an emotional day for Elin for personal reasons, we had anticipated to be on land by now but unfortunately we are not, however I have the matter in hand . . . . . I had hidden a packet of ginger haribo men for her to cheer her up so shhh don't tell her till tomorrow. The other night she was fixated on chocolate and we promised we would not have our chocolate treat ( by the way this is chocolate from the grab bag , as you know our supplies finished quite a while ago) till we had reached the 500 mile mark. I don't know how she restrained herself, it must have been torture, because it took us hours to get to the 500 mark. I did however cave in to her demands by giving her a hot chocolate drink I had stashed away for such emergencies!!!
We have also had a lot of traffic at night from one cargo ship to another, it’s a bit like the M1 down here, must be getting near land. By the way my fantastic idea of using the LED light from the bow cabin works like a dream :-)
Monday, 4 February 2008
Time for repairs as progress is slow
Well the observant amongst you will have noticed that it has taken us 34 hours to do 18 miles! Painful to say the least! Now as much as I’d like to attribute our slow progress to excessive partying following the Welsh win or over indulging upon arriving at the 500 mile mark, sadly it is not the case!
There are three other clear reasons.
Firstly, following my accurate prediction of a Welsh win, I’m afraid that I have a rather sad sponsor on our hands! Now I don’t know if the average Joe Blogg out there knows how difficult it is to find a corporate sponsor for an Atlantic rowing race, especially since neither of us rowed or had previously been out to sea (not to mention the failed attempt statistics!!). So when you get a sponsor the key is to keep him happy at all times! With that aim in mind, we decided that if we stayed out at sea a few days longer, he’d think that he was getting more “days” for his money!!!And hopefully, it would give him time to recover from the English defeat! (Sorry Jamie!)
Secondly, our fundraising campaign! Everyone by now will know how passionate both of us are about metabolic medicine, our patients, and the much needed research in the area. So potentially the longer we are out here, the more time it allows for news of our attempt to be shared amongst the “masses”! The more people that get to hear, the more people that will donate (hopefully!). So for every day we are out here, please tell another person (your great Aunt, the person sat next to you at the bus, your ex, we don’t care who, just tell everyone) and fingers crossed . . . . we’ll soon reach our target!!
Thirdly, the wind! We have once again found ourselves stuck with strong north easterly winds, seriously pushing us off course, so all we can do (whether we want to or not!) is to hang on tight!
So with nothing much to do today, I had a play with the steering, and found it didn’t work so well. On further inspection I found that two pins on the rudder had snapped and the wooden padding on the bracket had fallen off. Nothing major, but repairs that needed attending to, and called for another trip “down under”! An hour later, with some success and the barnacles (can’t believe how quickly those little rascals grow!) once again scraped off …it was no wonder I was feeling “jet –lagged”. So now we’re happy to sit here, top up our sun tan and pray for that elusive easterly!
There are three other clear reasons.
Firstly, following my accurate prediction of a Welsh win, I’m afraid that I have a rather sad sponsor on our hands! Now I don’t know if the average Joe Blogg out there knows how difficult it is to find a corporate sponsor for an Atlantic rowing race, especially since neither of us rowed or had previously been out to sea (not to mention the failed attempt statistics!!). So when you get a sponsor the key is to keep him happy at all times! With that aim in mind, we decided that if we stayed out at sea a few days longer, he’d think that he was getting more “days” for his money!!!And hopefully, it would give him time to recover from the English defeat! (Sorry Jamie!)
Secondly, our fundraising campaign! Everyone by now will know how passionate both of us are about metabolic medicine, our patients, and the much needed research in the area. So potentially the longer we are out here, the more time it allows for news of our attempt to be shared amongst the “masses”! The more people that get to hear, the more people that will donate (hopefully!). So for every day we are out here, please tell another person (your great Aunt, the person sat next to you at the bus, your ex, we don’t care who, just tell everyone) and fingers crossed . . . . we’ll soon reach our target!!
Thirdly, the wind! We have once again found ourselves stuck with strong north easterly winds, seriously pushing us off course, so all we can do (whether we want to or not!) is to hang on tight!
So with nothing much to do today, I had a play with the steering, and found it didn’t work so well. On further inspection I found that two pins on the rudder had snapped and the wooden padding on the bracket had fallen off. Nothing major, but repairs that needed attending to, and called for another trip “down under”! An hour later, with some success and the barnacles (can’t believe how quickly those little rascals grow!) once again scraped off …it was no wonder I was feeling “jet –lagged”. So now we’re happy to sit here, top up our sun tan and pray for that elusive easterly!
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Welsh boys inspire!
Well where do I start, the temptation of course is to go straight and talk about the Welsh win, but I’ll be good and bore you with some rowing news first.Every day now feels pretty much the same, all 63 of them. We row, we eat, we sleep, we row, we eat, we sleep. Over & over & over again. To add to the monotony of it all we now have our daily squall, regular as clockwork between 10 and 11am (Herdip caught it badly today). After a few days of good mileage I guess we shouldn’t feel too aggrieved that we are now sitting in the same place thanks to strong northerly winds, just trying to maintain our position above 17 degrees north.
So now ….rugby!
At 16:30 I duly sang “Hen wlad fy nhadau” and prayed that the strong winds we had here were not impacting on my boys in Twickers! The Jameson reporters were complete stars and sent me an update at every exciting moment of the game, Ian just about managed to leave out any bias from the commentary too! So when the Welsh tries started to come in I started jumping up and down (as much as one can do in a cabin that’s not high enough to sit up in even!)… I then desperately tried to remember all the words to Max Boyce song (…and they were singing, Land of My Fathers, ar hyd y nos) to wait for final whistle & confirmation that our boys had won! HOORAY!!!!!!! They had done it! I was ecstatic!!!! Da iawn fechgyn! I just soooo wish I could have been there to celebrate!
Two things happened at that exact moment. We were hit by a big freak wave which hit us beam on, threw Herdip off her seat and flooded the deck big time (not good!) …BUT …on a positive side, and there’s always a positive … Herdip while lying waist deep in the blue stuff was struck with a moment of genius thinking ….Now as you know we’ve been without compass light for a few weeks now, which has made night rowing very difficult (practically impossible!) and it was really getting to us. Well Herdip’s amazing, fantastic & awesome idea was to remove the L.E.D light wired in our forward cabin (just storage for random things) rewire it along deck and attach it to compass! So that’s what we did!!! Our boat builder might have been cringing if he had seen our attempt (duck tape all the way!) but hey presto - it works!
We were slightly annoyed that the wind hindered us being able to put her fine idea into its full potential, and settled for a second nights sleep in the cabin. Woken up this morning by our SeaMe bleeping I stuck my head out of the hatch door, only to see one very bright star in an otherwise very dark night. When the SeaMe started to continue bleeping widely out of control I decided it was time for a second look …….duck it……the “bright star” was now attached to a great big yacht, merely a few meters away and heading straight for us! Herdip jumped on the VHF and I grabbed for the flare. It was so close that I also started shouting – hoping that there was someone on deck … seconds later (felt like hours) we get a response over VHF, they had seen us, and swerved out of our way! Our legs were shaking! In the “pleasantry” conversation that followed, they asked “Are you in a dinghy?” …sometimes I feel like we are!
And so with batted breath we wait for the adventures of our ninth week on the Atlantic to unfold … roll on Antigua (PRETTY PLEASE!)
P.S HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID! HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT DAY, LOVE & MISS YOULOADS. MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.
So now ….rugby!
At 16:30 I duly sang “Hen wlad fy nhadau” and prayed that the strong winds we had here were not impacting on my boys in Twickers! The Jameson reporters were complete stars and sent me an update at every exciting moment of the game, Ian just about managed to leave out any bias from the commentary too! So when the Welsh tries started to come in I started jumping up and down (as much as one can do in a cabin that’s not high enough to sit up in even!)… I then desperately tried to remember all the words to Max Boyce song (…and they were singing, Land of My Fathers, ar hyd y nos) to wait for final whistle & confirmation that our boys had won! HOORAY!!!!!!! They had done it! I was ecstatic!!!! Da iawn fechgyn! I just soooo wish I could have been there to celebrate!
Two things happened at that exact moment. We were hit by a big freak wave which hit us beam on, threw Herdip off her seat and flooded the deck big time (not good!) …BUT …on a positive side, and there’s always a positive … Herdip while lying waist deep in the blue stuff was struck with a moment of genius thinking ….Now as you know we’ve been without compass light for a few weeks now, which has made night rowing very difficult (practically impossible!) and it was really getting to us. Well Herdip’s amazing, fantastic & awesome idea was to remove the L.E.D light wired in our forward cabin (just storage for random things) rewire it along deck and attach it to compass! So that’s what we did!!! Our boat builder might have been cringing if he had seen our attempt (duck tape all the way!) but hey presto - it works!
We were slightly annoyed that the wind hindered us being able to put her fine idea into its full potential, and settled for a second nights sleep in the cabin. Woken up this morning by our SeaMe bleeping I stuck my head out of the hatch door, only to see one very bright star in an otherwise very dark night. When the SeaMe started to continue bleeping widely out of control I decided it was time for a second look …….duck it……the “bright star” was now attached to a great big yacht, merely a few meters away and heading straight for us! Herdip jumped on the VHF and I grabbed for the flare. It was so close that I also started shouting – hoping that there was someone on deck … seconds later (felt like hours) we get a response over VHF, they had seen us, and swerved out of our way! Our legs were shaking! In the “pleasantry” conversation that followed, they asked “Are you in a dinghy?” …sometimes I feel like we are!
And so with batted breath we wait for the adventures of our ninth week on the Atlantic to unfold … roll on Antigua (PRETTY PLEASE!)
P.S HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID! HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT DAY, LOVE & MISS YOULOADS. MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.
Friday, 1 February 2008
Dribble?!! did we really need to know this?! :-)
Well the weather is as unpredictable as a stroppy teenager! Take yesterday for example, we were rowing hard struggling to get a mile in an hour, and the sun was so hot we were rowing in our bikinis. Within no more than 5 minutes the bright blue sky had turned black, completely, and we had the biggest, longest, hardest spell of rain (aka squall) we’ve had since being out here. It hurt as it landed on my skin with such force, and I could hardly keep my eyes open to peep at the compass as they were stinging. It stopped just as it was time to swap shifts (good call Herdip!) and again within minutes we had bright blue skies & hot sunshine, I didn’t even need to get my towel out - I was dry within minutes.
A bonus was that immediately after we got some great “wave action”. Goodwind, massive waves, all at a perfect 270 degree bearing we need. We made some good mileage in a few hours, which was good, because a few hours later it changed again, the wind turned into a really strong south easterly, pushing us north leaving us unable to row. It did mean we had a six hours rest/sleep in one go though, which should recharge us slightly for the forthcoming days/weeks till we land …a bonus since we are now on rations of snacks every other day …
Herdip & I have been getting increasingly worried about a newly developed habit though. We’ve both started dribbling! Excessive dribbling! Now luckily so far, it only happens at night … but the amount is worrying! As I’ve said before,, we sleep in 90 minute stints, minus the getting out of (mostly wet) rowing clothes, going to toilet, eating quick snack, and the 10 minute wake up the call the other end, it usually leaves 60 minutes sleep time! Now being the ladies we are, neither of us have experienced any dribbling while sleeping before, but now we find ourselves waking up in puddles of the stuff …to an extent that we fear it may cause us severe fluid loss and dehydration! What on earth could be causing it? The heat? Dreams of fresh food causing us tosalivate? We just don’t know! We are bewildered …and of course pray that it stops immediately on arrival in Antigua! Most unbecoming of a lady …
Apart from that, not a lot to report, we had a lovely chat with Rachel & Lin on Barbara Ivy today, to discuss outfit and nail varnish colour for our landing in Antigua! Important issue to discuss at this stage of the game
A bonus was that immediately after we got some great “wave action”. Goodwind, massive waves, all at a perfect 270 degree bearing we need. We made some good mileage in a few hours, which was good, because a few hours later it changed again, the wind turned into a really strong south easterly, pushing us north leaving us unable to row. It did mean we had a six hours rest/sleep in one go though, which should recharge us slightly for the forthcoming days/weeks till we land …a bonus since we are now on rations of snacks every other day …
Herdip & I have been getting increasingly worried about a newly developed habit though. We’ve both started dribbling! Excessive dribbling! Now luckily so far, it only happens at night … but the amount is worrying! As I’ve said before,, we sleep in 90 minute stints, minus the getting out of (mostly wet) rowing clothes, going to toilet, eating quick snack, and the 10 minute wake up the call the other end, it usually leaves 60 minutes sleep time! Now being the ladies we are, neither of us have experienced any dribbling while sleeping before, but now we find ourselves waking up in puddles of the stuff …to an extent that we fear it may cause us severe fluid loss and dehydration! What on earth could be causing it? The heat? Dreams of fresh food causing us tosalivate? We just don’t know! We are bewildered …and of course pray that it stops immediately on arrival in Antigua! Most unbecoming of a lady …
Apart from that, not a lot to report, we had a lovely chat with Rachel & Lin on Barbara Ivy today, to discuss outfit and nail varnish colour for our landing in Antigua! Important issue to discuss at this stage of the game
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