SUNDAY 1 DECEMBER 2019
at 3.10 pm local time.
Yesterday we changed the time on board, still an hour behind helped by the sextant that gave us noon exactly at 13.03 on our clocks.
Miles traveled by Mindelo 1640, missing in S. Lucia 447
A two-day event marked by meteorological turbulence linked to the tail of a tropical wave that destabilised the trade wind. We managed it with frequent sail changes, passing from the SPi to the mainsail with two hands and staysail, or from 12 knots in the stern to 30 knots in the beam; today it started as a wonderful day, with a very blue sky and a few wads, a recovery of wind not yet returned from the NE trade wind, still belonging to the tropical waves family, therefore from the SE, but good and generous: then passing the hours the sky has resumed clouding and turning gray and the wind becoming more nervous and unstable; but Ariel does not run and runs like a hare. We are inveiled with genoa tangonato on the left, all mainsail to starboard, adequately held by Waldemor (considered new and diabolical) and by the Baby (considered historical), while I had the idea,finding a glimpse of the boat where a sail could have been useful, to infer also the staysail, on port tack: Ideona. More stable bow, less roll and a dry half knot gained. Moreover, with this nervousness of air and sea, it is better to have many small sails than one very large. Much more manageable in the event of sudden increases in strength.
We fight in this regatta with boats bigger than us, winning without effort, while a crew of young Germans with a smaller but faster boat, do not give us respite, we can not distance them more than 20/25 miles, we take 2 a day. They are very very good! On the other hand, we are first at sea in our class, with a gap of over 140 miles on top competitors (such as ours)!
Today press blackout, the race committee did not send the positions, I do not know if it is because it is Sunday or due to a defect in the system, which already yesterday and the day before yesterday had given signs of traffic jam, in fact, emails of clarification from the ARC Control. In any case, today we don’t know anything about who is chasing us, but we know that we are reaching a 20-meter boat called La Rebeldia de Ulysses, a North Wind 68 (wonderful) Spanish to the core, captained by Juan Josè Garcia-Egocheaga ( I figure it out with a bandana and a suitably brightened raven hair), then I’ll tell you. However we are taking them, even if they are not in our class.
Last night at dinner despite the chef of the Taverna sull’oceano had done his utmost to produce a casero-style omelette, with Castelluccio lentils and to finish the last clove of Parmigiano Reggiano, we understood that we drank better than we ate, moreover a bit disturbed by the restlessness of the ocean, but in the end it left us alone, and we finished with pineapple and a Cava di Murcia (a not bad Spanish Brut), all to give breath to our long chats and to celebrate the Meridiana calculations with the sextant, which are more and more precise (today 15 ° 04 ′ the GPS and 15 ° 05 ′ the resultant of my calculations), but apart from that it is dreams and rhythms that we talked about last night.
Because when you are sailing in the ocean to an apparent fatigue and great subversion of the normal terrestrial rhythms that strike you like a whip for the first two days and require calm and patience, slow and measured movements, a poor and balanced diet, but then, at the progressive adaptation, a constant state of well-being takes over, which consolidates over the days, even without fully understanding the reasons. If we start from the concept of rhythm, navigating is rhythmic in itself, so we enter a “rhythmic dance” that is perceived by all our senses, especially sight: just observing the liquid mass that moves and moves us, has relaxing and hypnotic effect.
Bernard Moitessier in the long route (one and a half times around the world without a stopover solo) tells and analyzes in a very precise way the responses of his body to just sailing, leaving out storms or potentially stressful situations, and comes to the conclusion that the equilibrium physiological that every apparatus reaches comes to have therapeutic purposes .
The first rhythm that is hit by surfing is sleep-wake. You don’t go to bed in the evening, you get up in the morning, you take turns of a few hours of sleep alternating with as many waking breaks. Surprisingly, after one or two days for veterans and three for newbies, it happens that in moments of “sleep”, one immediately falls into a deep sleep, to immediately reach Rem phases, and therefore largely restorative and generator of a progressive energy upon awakening. On the other hand Fabrizio tells us how Leonardo Da Vinci used to sleep several times and for a maximum of two or three hours. If I think of other navigators, like Tabarly or Slocum, the common denominator of the equilibrium that is reached by sailing starts from giving our organism the opportunity to fall asleep several times during the day, totaling more or less the same number of hours as at home, but fragmented.
This fragmentation leads to deeper and therefore more regenerating sleeps, and with them a greater and more lively dream production. On a boat you dream more and better.Perhaps it is a return to distant origins of life, but in fact after a few days at sea the faces are more relaxed, the physiological functions are spontaneously regularized, the mind is clear and fresh; the only variant of the body system is that we have to include a series of body exercises for stretching and maintaining muscle tone in daily activities. Today, for example, the chef on duty for lunch has exaggerated with the onion, not from Tropea, but from Mindelo, which I don’t know why, but I found in the pantry a sufficient quantity, perhaps for the whole world; and on the one hand in order not to throw them away, or perhaps for fear of incurring thrombosis (given the known antithrombotic effects of the food), we collided with a salad we say “important” which undermined the digestive balance that we had perfectly preserved,for two of us he is slightly in difficulty so it is true that the rhythm of the ocean helps and repairs, but in certain circumstances perhaps it is not enough … our lunch chef, not to mention names Maurizio, had the courage to say that tomorrow there cooked propina !!!
I don’t think so.
See you tomorrow from Ariel Team
