Sun drenched first week allows compost to ferment

Solo sailing artist Lia Ditton describes the first quarter of her central London OSTAR re-enactment

Frozen in framed activity, the trimaran ProVu could be a 21st Century Arc awaiting a prophesised flood. Poised to reach out of the courtyard of Chelsea College of Art & Design in Westminster, she flies a hull. She is the sole remaining competitor in a virtual singlehanded trans-Atlantic race, where I am her skipper - living onboard for the same 28 day time span as it took me to race the Faraday Mill OSTAR in 2005. True to life, nothing may come aboard and I am unable to get off. Without the need for satellite navigation, I am piloting ProVu to virtual America in a great stretch of imagination.

With the main hull in suspension, the boat shudders as a gust whips around the College building or funnels down Atterbury Street. The replica sails in exhibition mesh must similarly be reefed and trimmed, the boat otherwise jibing and tacking to a jerky dance of unpredictable wind shifts and fluctuations in strength. Water bottles, cartons and silver foil packets - the plastic waste of instant meals, is transformed into kinetic sculpture and dangled off the back rail. To the ocean-voyager, it is an eco-message in itself. Pigeons potter and peck beneath the port float, unknowing that the float at sea rises and falls with sudden lift and deceleration. They are the fish of my concrete sea.

While 864.22 nautical miles have so far rushed under the virtual keel, my race log could not be more contrasting. In London, one long heat wave continues to turn the silver decks by day into a hot plate, its skipper sourcing shelter from the scorching mid-day sun, in the shadow of the fake sails. Exchange a bottle of Hawaiian Tropical factor 30 for a tube of E45 cream - week one in the Atlantic was lived in salty dampness - a pool of water sloshed on the cabin sole, topped up by a perpetual trickle from a leaky hatch. The dull and patchy grey of the courtyard ground is a barren and inanimate hue compared to the mid Atlantic Ocean waters which churned greens and blues and whitish greens and whitish blues, past my window in a ‘continuous rinse and spin.’ The boat, whose mast can be seen from the brow of Vauxhall Bridge, is here high and dry and firmly aground. Not a drop hurtles through the trampoline nets in a furore of spray.

The food I ate crossing the Atlantic and the food I am eating during my virtual Atlantic voyage, is the same brand. I can hear the guy in the packaging department beginning to chuckle! This time when he saw the instruction ‘random selection, 84 meals’ he picked out four flavours on a theme; chicken Dopiaza, Chilli con carne, Beans and Sausage and Beans and Bacon in tomato sauce. Now, what do the last three have in common? That factor would be beans.

To avoid creating a bio-hazard in Westminster, a sizeable ‘composting toilet’ replaces the usual ‘bucket and chuck it’ concept, in development of an own-brand of fertiliser! Fortunately the above mentioned organic toilet comes with an enormous vent chimney which snakes its way out of the main hull by connected ‘dryer hose.’ My sailing Marigolds, used as a second skin against the freezing spray of the North Atlantic, have since been put to good use, as gardening gloves! I shall say no more.

‘There are events which occur in our lives which from a humble age we cannot possibly have foreseen…’ I wrote. ‘Now if you had asked me at 14 what I envisaged myself doing aged 25, up a mast on a Monday morning, with a screw driver would not have been it…’ I continued to narrate five days into the race. Now sitting in the cabin of a racing multihull, in my College grounds, re-enacting that trans-Atlantic race, [I would like to point out,] would not have been it either!



On this day in history, a total of 15 competitors had already retired, including both of the other female skippers - one from autopilot failure and the other with a twisted knee. In my race, I was lamenting the fact that in the first spiralling depression, I had shipped a wave down both boots and with Gore-Tex leather- ‘…ultimately there arrives the realisation that despite all efforts, to stew or steam, the boot will never be dry!’ ‘…They really should make Zip-lock bags in a Ladies 7-8, because the ones I have to hand come a little short of the heal!’ You will be pleased to hear that I have no such problems with new neoprene Yacht Boots except for minor toe overheating in the current weather! I wear them to climb the mast around sunset.

Between an intellectual conversation on the nature of boats as a medium and inspiration for art and the shifting light of dusk on the pickle, Westminster Abbey or ribbon of cars over Vauxhall Bridge, lies the highlight of my June ’06 virtual racing days.

I may have exchanged the Atlantic Ocean for a flood of quizzical people, but there is little immediacy - to avert danger or survive in an ever-changing hostile environment. My nautical juggernaut, ProVu, is out of gas - stalled within the art context of Chelsea College and the Tate Britain, desperate with every sail-filling gust to make its return to open water. The experience of a trimaran ripping through the surf as if on rails [no matter how much water she throws out of her way] is an irresistible thing and when I lie at night on the floor of the forepeak staring up at the mast and the shadows of night, I want to fill in the gush of water tearing past and the rocking motion that at times even exhaustion, excitement and fear can’t surpass in causing the solo sailor to slide into sleep.

To read more about Lia Ditton's Absolute Solitude: One Woman One Boat project - click here .

To see the video of ProVu being transported from Thames to Courtyard on its side - click here

The Absolute Solitude: One Woman One Boat exhibit can be seen in the courtyard to Chelsea College of Art, Atterbury St, London SW1