I may be about to ruin the romance of sailing for some of
you. The next few paragraphs might shatter the picturesque illusion of what it
looks like to sail across an ocean. These are the things that no one tells you
and no one talks about. So forgive me.
After about a day on the sea you quickly forget any notion
of sailing being an elegant and glamorous lifestyle. Contrary to what you might
believe, sailing across the ocean is no holiday. It took us 28 long and often
perilous days on the open wilderness of the sea to get to the Caribbean and it will take 24
hours to fly home. There must be some logic sailors are missing…
For most of the voyage you are doing everything on a 30
degree angle. And this angle keeps shifting from right to left. Opening the
cupboards is basically a safety hazard. As soon as you open a cupboard all the
contents begin to spill out or violently fly across the room depending on how
badly the boat is rocking. When you sleep you can hear everything in the boat
bang from one side to other as you roll in the waves. Earplugs are a must.
Here's a little video we took to give you an idea of how the boat rocks. Note how much Darv's body moves back and forth. Also note the spoon flying across the table at one point!
When you walk across the room you are constantly bracing
yourself with one hand holding onto something solid. We like to play a game
where you try and walk as far as you can without falling or holding onto
anything. An average score is about 10 steps.
Cooking on a rocking sailboat is a challenge. Thank goodness
for gimbaled stoves! When we plate dinner we usually end up taping the plates
to the counter top. We learned this trick the hard way after all of our bowls
of chicken went flying across the room.
Darv roped in while cooking
You have to deal with tight living quarters with very little
privacy. If you are a person who requires a lot of privacy you will have to buy
a very big boat! For most of the trip I slept right on the kitchen table settee.
The trick to sleeping is to wedge yourself into the smallest space you can find,
and then sleep there. This helps to prevent you from rolling around.
Asleep in the galley. Note earplugs
Me washing some clothes in a bowl
I don’t want to go into too much detail about luxurious bathrooms and toilets on sail boats. But just imagine if your bathroom at home was on a 30-degree angle and rocking back and forth. If you picture this, which I’m not encouraging, you might see how this causes some, umm, difficulty.
We have a shower on board, but it’s filled with provisions.
Showers on long passages take up way too much fresh water. A sailor’s shower
looks like baby wipes and a water bottle.
Mom and I after the 'Argo Spa'. Aka washing your hair
Finally there are the night watches. It can be dark, cold
and raining outside but you still have to wake up at 2:00am. On our boat we did
six-hour watches with two people on each watch. That meant you tried to sleep
on deck for 3 hours and the other 3 you were on duty. After about a week your
body adjusts to the alteration of your sleep pattern.
