Dripping in the Doldrums

Emily Little reports from the BT Global Challenge on board second placed Team Compaq

The water is desalinated from the 86 degree water in the sea and sits in the warm and toasty water tanks. It tastes great but cold it is not. On average this crew of 18 is getting through 220 litres of water a day. Compare that with 180 litres of water a day used in freezing cold Southern Ocean legs. Also worth pointing out terms of water consumption, those 220 litres are consumed ie used for drinking and cooking. There is minimal washing with water on this boat. We are allowed about a litre once a week. And to be frank when you are sweating this much, that litre doesn't make an awful lot of difference. Still, I've said it before and I'll say it
again, baby wipes are wonderful things!

Doing anything below decks other than lying very still is hard work. Cooking and spinnaker packing would have to rank as the worst. Yesterday, on the hottest day I've had so far, I found myself below decks with Glenda packing the 3/4oz spinnaker (or Penelope as she is fondly known??) - I don't know how to put this more delicately - but we were both dripping. Our clothes were wet. We got half way through the pack and had to swop over with those on deck. The amount of fluid you loose is phenomenal. The human memory works in curious ways. I am sure it wasn't this hot last time.

Cooking in this heat is also testing. Not only do are you running two or three gas rings in this heat but for safety reasons, we where our foul weather bottoms
while cooking. Hot it maybe but a boiling water burn from not wearing protective clothing would extract zero sympathy.

Life is made slightly sweeter by the individual fans we have wired up to our light sockets in our banks. One of our new 'leggers' who sails this part of the race with us earned serious brownie points in Cape Town by sourcing fans of the correct voltage and leading a team of people to wire them up. As I make my way around the boat, it interesting to see the different methods each have used to secure their fan and how people get the best out of them. Again, how on earth we did leg 2 without them, I don't know!

We are about 80 miles off the coast of Guinea at the moment working our way up to the 'corner' of Africa, Dakar in Senegal. Getting round the corner is the next big challenge so watch this space.