Day 17 - The Censor-ship

 

I have been informed that "dropping a blog" is not an appropriate expression for posting an entry such as this. I tried to push for it, but to no avail. The idea was flushed.

 

I assume that you've all heard about the controversial secrecy bill in South Africa. We are facing a similar plight on board this very yacht. Before any blog entry gets sent through, it has to pass through censorship, where everything deemed inappropriate would be removed - the opening paragraph of this post, for instance.

I'm not going to mention the name(s) of the responsible party, but in protest, this post has sneakily been sent without going through the panel first.

Now that that's out the way, I'd like to address the accusations of me being a night-watch tyrant. I've only ever woken up the next watch early ONCE - with the exception of Ryan, who needs 15 minutes to wake up, get ready, and curse that people don't have a snooze button. Two nights ago I gave Kathryn and Ryan a bonus 20 minutes sleep, and then stayed on an extra 20 minutes to help them get settled. That same night, the following dialogue from the cockpit ensued:

"Time for a sail change. Call Brennan"

"BRENNAN! WAKE UP!"

*Brennan wakes up and starts getting ready*

"No, it's fine, we don't need him. BRENNAN, GO BACK TO SLEEP!"

This happened no less than THREE TIMES on the same night for a sail change, a gybe and a broach.

The breeze eased off a bit this afternoon, but was just at the wrong angle for us to hoist our Code 0 spinnaker - the Norwegian Blue. It's a remarkable bird, Norwegian Blue. Beau'iful plumage! (Monty Python, anyone?)

We cracked open our first bag of Futurelife yesterday. Some people consider this to be a last-resort meal, but we were too stoked for it. Hell, we've been holding our breath for the food bag with the Futurelife in it since day 1! That stuff is what the Spartans ate for breakfast.

We finally changed our clocks to local time! This may seem strange, but dad wanted to keep track of SA time so he didn't miss the early morning radio cross-overs. It's a relief that the sun is no longer setting at 23:00 and rising at 10:00. When the clocks suddenly jumped back by 4 hours, Ricky jokingly complained about getting instantly jet-lagged.

We're hearing stories about other teams being becalmed and going for swims. We have had no such luck. The wind has dropped low enough to go slowly, but never enough to stop. This is a problem for both the racer and the cruiser.

In aid of our bid to be an eco-friendly team, we have been charging our batteries using the solar panels that we got from Cobus van Wyk. These are only effective in the morning, because in the afternoon everything gets shaded by the spinnaker. Having afternoon sun means that you're not heading for Rio.

Other first-world problems that we have to deal with are the fact that we are down to 4 tea-bags, that egg for the last pancakes was off, and the biscuits from Mrs de Carvalho are all but finished. Afternoon tea is now pretty much ruined!

On a lighter note, I'd like to leave you all with a joke. Could someone please see to it that the Wits team gets this, as it applies directly to them?

Why did the Kudu cross the Atlantic?

Because it saw a Zebra crossing!

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaaaaaaa!

Love your Monday.

Brennan

PS. Less than 1000 miles to go!