madforsailing exclusive

The first of Neil McDonald's onboard reports from Assa Abloy.

In the first of a series of exclusive reports for madforsailing, Neal McDonald reports on life above and below decks aboard Assa Abloy as she pounds south.
Bashing my brains out on the wind, seemingly going nowhere in the Bay of Biscay is hardly what was in the brochure for round the world racing. What happened to the sun, the shorts and wild downwind kite rides? Five days in and we are hardly half way down the coast of Portugal. Slogging our guts out in a strong southerly system.

Leaping off waves and lurching around has not been with out its casualties. Early into the 'leaping lizard' motion, one crew member found himself flying around the front of the boat hanging onto the toilet bowl that had been ripped off the floor. After the initial sniggers died out we realised how inconvenient life without this piece of equipment could be. Fortunately, Jason - our on board Mr Fix It - came up with a plan and has lashed it all together in a usable fashion.

Next to come for me was a bash on the chin in the middle of the night - not a nice way to be woken up. Coming down with a crash after jumping an extra large wave, 90kgs of Jules in the bunk above me and rather more kilogrammes of my weight proved too much for the fittings hanging both our bunks. Needless to say, Jules landed on me in a heap only to be then thrown across the galley after the next roll of the boat. All in the pitch dark. Lucky neither of us were hurt.

Incidentally the racing has been rather close for us - the top four boats are all pretty close together so we have definitely got a race on - but please roll on those down wind rides.