Swollen Seas, Swollen Knees

Days at seahab:                                 16

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        48°47’4   N

                                                        005°40’0 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:           3685 miles travelled

                                                        3800 push-ups done

The bad weather we have been talking about has finally come, and has she ever. The seas have swollen to an enormous 6 m and the waves are walls of water that pitch us up into the air and barely cushion us at all when we fall. They crash and splash over us at two storeys high and have defeated the windscreen wipers completely, which now don't operate at all. The trickles of water flow more steadily into the faults in our structure and our checks have changed from hourly to constantly standing by. Cupboard doors have burst open, spewing their contents all over the floor and a table has sheered it’s bolts completely, allowing it to bulldoze across the saloon. Every second step leaves one airborne and more often than not we’re left crawling instead. It’s a nightmare, and we haven’t seen the worst of it.

Safety First, Safety Second

Days at seahab:                                 15

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        46°48’0   N

                                                        007°10’2 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:           3573 miles travelled

                                                        3800 push-ups done

To ensure that we’re always safe on the deep blue, we do hourly checks on all of the portholes, bilges, doors, and of course the most precarious of all, the engine room. Since Gale is the engineer and apparent know it all, he does all the engine room checks during from 8 am – 10 pm, and Mini Me and I do them throughout the night, whilst the boys are on bridge watch, so that he can get some (more) sleep.

Last night I woke up at 1:45 am, 15 minutes early as usual, to allow myself enough time to make Spencer a posh cup of Earl Grey tea. Why? Because he likes it and we all love and take care of one another, like a family. Half way through our watch the alarms started going nuts, telling us that the stabilizers had gone boogaloo. We woke the beast, who in turn went to go see what potting with his mechanics. After explaining the whole malarkey to us, Gale mentioned that he’d check the engine room one more time and go back to whatever sleeping environment gorillas snooze in. I asked nicely if he wouldn’t mind filling the log in while he was down there.

‘No, that’s your job’, he scoffed.

Spencer and I looked at one another.

‘Seriously?’ I checked.

‘Pfff, yeah. That’s for you to do’, he scoffed again like a pubescent teenager, spun on his heels like Mary-fucking-Poppins and literally traipsed his arse back down to the engine room. If you can imagine a fully grown, damn hairy, fat bastard with a wedgie mincing down a flight of stairs, this would be Gale.

‘Dickhead...’, I mumbled back.

I sighed as I got up, went down one flight of stairs, crossed the length of the yacht, went through a door, went through another, water-tight door, went down another flight of stairs, and went through another air-lock, water-tight door and into the engine room, where Gale was pretending to be nonchalant. I picked up the clipboard and quite literally queued behind him to get to the screen to take readings. I had to go down two flights of stairs and through three mechanical doors to get down there to do his job for him, when the lazy primate was down there anyway.

It took all my will not to comment as he passed me, ‘You know Pooh Bear, your honey don’t buy itself...’

Gale's honey rations from now on

Come Out to Play

Days at seahab:                                 14

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        43°18’8   N

                                                        009°41’1 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:           3345 miles travelled

                                                        3200 push-ups done

Even though the seas are huge, it cleared up into a wonderful sunny day, allowing us to get some Vit D on deck. We can tell that we’re back in the EU though, cos it’s bloody freezing.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead!

Days at seahab:                                 13

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        36°32’9   N

                                                        016°43’0 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:          3102 miles travelled

                                                        3200 push-ups done

Land in sight! Due to the bad weather we are three days behind schedule, so unfortunately we are trucking on towards the English Channel without stopping. Albeit being far in the distance, and although we won’t be touching down for another week, it’s good just to know it’s there.

Hopefully this peace of mind will help to improve my ridiculous state of insomnia. My watch is from 2am until 6am, and I share my first two hours with Spencer and my second two with the Leader. I should be going to sleep somewhere around eight or nine pm to get in a few good hours before waking up at 1:45 am, but this is the one time of the day when everyone is awake, and it would be impossible to go and lie in my cabin by myself when there are things going on outside (this phobia is called F.O.M.O, or Fear of Missing Out). By the time things quieten down it’s about 11 or 12 at night, and so late that in being anxious about getting just one hours sleep, I’m lucky if I get any at all.

This results in me stumbling up to the bridge at 2am, all slit-eyed and stroppy, spilling my piping hot green tea all over my damn self with a face on that could turn milk sour.

‘Good morning!’ quip Mini Me and Spencer, who have just spent the last two hours talking about dinghy sailing, ponies, dressage and Kate Middelton, or whatever the fuck posh poms talk about.

‘Umf’, is my response, as I collapse into Mini Me’s seat on the sofa and raise my legs up onto the bridge console.

‘Oh dear, you still haven’t slept then?’ asks Mini Me before she ends her watch for the night. I shake my head and draw up the hood on my sweater.

Fortunately for Mini Me, she is off to bed, as I replace her, but poor old Spencer is stuck with me for another two hours.

‘So Bella, how was your day then?’ he enquires wearily yet cheerily.

‘I’m becoming nocturnal because of this shitty watch schedule, I didn’t have a day, I got outta bed at two. How are we supposed to know it’s day anyway with the bloody storm shutters on, we live in perpetual darkness...’ Jesus, talk about don’t shoot the messenger.

‘Are we a little bit grumpy then?’, he asks a few moments later when he manages to work up some more courage.

‘I’m a ray of fucking sunshine. Leave me alone’.

That usually shuts him up for a good 15 minutes.

‘How’s your tea?’, he asks trying to goad me into conversation.

‘Bitter... Like me.’

Silence.

‘How’s your tea Spencer?’, I enquire after a very long pause.

BINGO!

This initiation of two-way discourse is the first sign that I’m coming out to play.

The chat starts up and I come into my own again, which entails everything from animated story-telling, colourful embellishing, over-the-top joke-telling, hysterical banter, hyperactive hand gestures, and some downright lying. Usually by the end of the two hours Spencer is somewhat worn out and ready for bed. However, this doesn’t slow me down at all and by this point I’ve usually done 250 sit-ups, 50 push-ups, 300 leg raises and about 600 bicep curls.

‘LEADER!’ I yell, jumping up onto the seat as he comes onto the bridge for watch, ‘You’ve come to lead us!’.

‘Woa, you’re active. You finally got some sleep then?’ he assumes.

‘No’ I reply cheerily, ‘I stayed up all night waiting to see you. Do you want some coffee?’ I smile creepily in the dark.

‘Go on, looks like I’ve got some catching up to do’.

6 am rolls around in no time and after watching the sun come up I’m in no mood for sleep, even though I’ve been up for 20 hours.

‘Leader, do you want some breakfast?!’ I ask enthusiastically.

‘Bella, you really should think about getting some sleep. And checking how much caffeine there is in green tea...’

‘Poppycock!’ I retort, mimicking Spencer, ‘I don't need sleep! And there is no caffeine in green tea, it's made from rainbows, fairy dust and unicorn wee’, I yell over my shoulder as I trot down to the crewmess to dish up some Cheerios.

Cabin Fever

Days at seahab:                                 12

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        38°40’3   N

                                                        009°50’5 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:           2964 miles travelled

                                                        2900 push-ups done

Ohmigod, the boredom. I tried my very best to not get out of bed today until I was thrown out, which happened at only midday.

I made my way up to the galley and sat on the sofa and watched Kay cook. Watching other people work makes me feel included. Then I made horrible love songs for her on Songify, which I later insisted she listened to in my presence. I considered painting my nails yet again, as in the last two weeks I have painted them clear, light pink, grey, red, purple and black, but found it to be too much effort.

Instead, I took to sitting my very bored and lazy arse back on the couch to start a 9 hour long online shopping spree, during which I purchased the following:

I also looked at ASOS, Matalan, Next, Very, Bershka, Blanco, Pull and Bear, Zara, Shifting Lily, Dresssale, Forever 21, Lauren Moshi, Zappos, Lulus, Stradivarius and Topshop, and have planned my entire summer wardrobe.

Somewhere in between all of this I got distracted googling pictures of Valeria Lukyanova, the human Barbie Doll. If you’d like to feel better about yourself and waste 20 minutes of your life that you can never get back again, click here. Or just read this blog.

Calm Before the Storm

Days at seahab:                                 11

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        36°32’9   N

                                                        016°43’0 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:           2617 miles travelled

                                                        2600 push-ups done

Everyone is getting rather antsy. Today I was on the verge of head-butting my printer into a million pieces because my dumb arse couldn’t get the paper in right. A little later Gale called Mini Me over the radio to ask for her help in printing in black and white. She got up, clipped her radio on her shorts, and just before she drained her last sip of coffee from her cup she mumbled, ‘Aren’t you the fucking engineer around here?’.

To boot, we are no longer arriving in the Azores today, but rather, we have deviated our course due to some evil weather pending, and are now headed for Lisbon. I told the Leader's Leader that this is where lesbians come from, and all he said was 'Awh yaaa', so I think he didn't understand me. This will add a few extra days to our weary travels, so no land in sight for another week.

The weather forecast that we received today predicted 18-20 ft seas, which is a nasty 4-5 m swell that will knock us around harder than Jake the Muss asking for some brekkie. That hard.

So writing will be at a minimum as I plan on not actually getting out of bed tomorrow unless I’m thrown out.

On the plus side, Kay and I are wreaking unimaginable annihilation on the Pictionary front. I am hoarse from shouting out the answers with such gusto. More often than not, we have already guessed it even before any other team has put pen to paper.

From Sunrise to Sunset

Days at seahab:                                 9

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        34°29’3   N

                                                        027°57’4 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:           2151 miles travelled

                                                        1900 push-ups done

I was sitting in the sky lounge when Spencer came in and asked me to take over the bridge watch so that he could make a pooh. I politely asked him if he could not use the day heads, as they were already clean, and to use his own. He came back looking a little uncomfortable and asked if I had seen Gale. I found it rather difficult to stifle my giggles, realising that he was the one to discover Gale’s doo-doo smeared on the seat. We will wait a few days to do it again and hopefully Gale will be the one to confront Spencer’s indiscretion.

Other than that today was spent mostly sunbathing and exercising, and I was pleased that the weather was finally calm enough to use the cross-trainer on the sun deck. We had an enormous pod of dolphins play in our wake for a long while, always a morale booster, and a beautiful sunset to admire. After dinner Mini Me and I challenged Spencer and the Leader to a Pictionary duel, which was hysterical and heated and the shrieks of laughter could be heard two decks down. The rest came to see what the ruckus was about, and as it turns out, everyone is interested in having an all-crew Pictionary-off tomorrow, and I can only imagine that Kay and I together will be invincible.

Sunrise

Dolphins on the bow

Kay chillin' with the dolphins

Sunset over the Atlantic

Please Be Sweet and Wipe the Seat

Days at seahab:                                 8

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        28°28’911   N

                                                        040°19’755 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:          1850 miles travelled

                                                        1600 push-ups done

So we’ve been at sea over a week without so much as a passing ship in sight. Naturally, boredom is starting to kick in. With most of us being on different sleep schedules, and without the colourful characters of Mario and Magnus to add some filth and some outlandish banter, things are just that little bit duller. Which means it’s definitely time to start lighting a few fires under a couple of botties.

Naturally, if we were to rile someone up we’d start with the most pedantic person on board, Gale. In a twist of luck, Spencer has moved in with Gale to allow Leader his own cabin, and we now have the über particular paired with the über polite. Sounds testy. The bathroom being the place to cause most offense, Kay and I have decided to go back to our never-accomplished idea of planting something odious as we did in There’s a Thief Amongst Us, and sit back and observe. This is what we got up to:

 

Oh dear, why are we so fucking childish?

Tantastic

Days at seahab:                                 6

Coordinates for your Google Earth:        28°28’911   N

                                                        040°19’755 W

Transatlantic Push-up Challenge:          1468 miles travelled

                                                        900 push-ups done

Finally the seas calmed a little today, allowing me to do some much needed work around the boat. So I lay in the sun all day and tanned. Whilst this makes for good vitamin D production and a smokin’ summer glow, it makes for shitty blog writing and unfortunately, even worse reading.

So I’d like to take the slow day to thank everyone again for reading. I love to check in and see the weird and wonderful places you log in from, it makes my day.

I received a few questions about the post There’s Something in the Water, as it wasn’t quite clear what was. Those are fish the size of your Fiat Panda that we like to call Charlie Sharks. I put up a video to give you a better idea, which you can see here.

Also, I have finally figured out how to make posting comments public without having to be a google member and all that malarkey, so now you can post freely. Booya! Not quite sure if I got it right yet, so feel free to test the theory and drop a line or two.

Lastly, in one of my earliest posts A Penny for the Swear Jar, I promised to repost some of the shite that Holly promised to be sending to my inbox. Well she has finally stopped traipsing around South East Asia on her whirlwind backpacking trip and decided to show me some love, with this:

 

 Bless her.