"A bit tricky"

Team Russia's media crewman for legs one and two, Mark Covell comes to terms with being out of the Volvo bubble

For leg 3 Markov Covellski has subbed out the Team Russia media spot to a real Russian, Sergey Bogdanov. I spent the stop over teaching him how to use the equipment and send the media off the boat. I stayed to watch the start of leg 3 and then boarded a big iron bird and flew home from India to spend Christmas with my young family in the UK.

How uncanny that my taxi picking me up from Heathrow was a dark blue Volvo V70, quite uncommon in the taxi world, but the driver's Ford Mondeo had hit an object in the road and was off games. My driver was a chatty man called Dave, with a pleasant smile and a cautious tone.

“You been on business?” Dave asked politely with a heavy Pompy accent. “Yes and no” I answered hesitantly. “I have been away for almost three months sailing in the Volvo Ocean Race.”

“Did it all go well? It’s just that I know that sailing can be a bit tricky” I smiled, still finding the transition from Volvo bubble to the real world very hard. Coming from India to England is already a bit of a shock let alone stepping out of the hermetically sealed sailing world that is life on board. The words “a bit tricky” seemed to sum everything up. The simple words smashed through the complexity of describing the race. Yes, the first leg from Alicante was a bit tricky as we bailed hard, to stop us sinking after splitting the rubber seals round the keel ram. And yes it was a bit tricky charging through the Southern Ocean rollercoaster, deep into the rowing forties, getting colder and colder, winder and winder and then finally spinning out as we ploughed down a wave the size of a house, ending up on our side thousands of miles from land.

Yes it was all very tricky! The under statement of it all seamed refreshing. I had hit the ground with a bump. As soon as I could get back to the reality of real life, normal living, what ever that means, the better. I started thinking about Christmas and all the baggage that comes with it, shopping, mince pies, tinsel and bright lights, endless family pleasantries. I know the lads on the boat won't have to deal with all that. They have left on a leg that may mean they are still racing on Christmas day. It was now very obvious that I was going to find life outside the race bubble much harder than I had predicted. I had come from a hazardous world of near death experiences, thrills and spills. I was going back to the seemingly dull world of normality.

Just then the driver swerved hard to miss a large plank of wood lying in the fast lane. I was nodding off with my chin on my chest; I took a sharp intake of breath and looked up from my jet-lagged haze. Un fazed Dave calmly said, “That’s the second time that’s happened, last week I almost wrote off my Ford.” My heart rate jumped up a beat.

“That was a bit tricky,” he said, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head. Just then the penny dropped, I realised that we are all in a race of survival. We are all dealing with difficult winds and huge waves that come from nowhere. The high speed side swerve that my driver just made is no different to the action and reaction we deal with every day on the water. The aquatic dance steps we make on the boat are mirrored on land as in real life, from stock markets to the school run, from a crunching rugby tackle to a mother giving birth. Course and effect, risk and response, maybe navigating through real life isn’t so dissimilar to the race.

“It’s all a bit tricky”