Tahira - TAHIRA ARC BLOG D-Day 16 [05-Dec-23]

TAHIRA ARC BLOG
D-Day 16 [05-Dec-23]
Location: Open Seas - Atlantic
Lat: 13.55N Long: 47.16W

THE DAILY CYCLE

When 6 people are thrown together in a caravan and then thrown into the middle of the Atlantic it is important that they quickly form an effective team with clear leadership and a set of guidelines - these routines ensure our survival in a potentially hostile environment as we seek to achieve our goal of getting to St Lucia in 21 days.

Our daily meet up
Our routines revolve around a daily meetup led by our skipper - Chris. We meet up an hour before sunset each day for dinner, and this provides an opportunity to chat about the following 24 hours, assess any issues and to spend time together. You will be surprised to hear that the evening meal is hotly debated as we have several very competent chefs on board!

We also check in daily via our SSB radio with other boats, and pick up the daily weather forecast from the ARC team and from our very own Andrew Golding back in the UK.

Our watch system
In order to ensure the safety of the boat and crew we operate a watch system 24 hours a day. Over night we have 2 people on watch - working in 3 hour shifts and during the day we have 3 people on watch to keep the main cabin less crowded and deal with jobs such as: washing down the cockpit - you'd be amazed at the mess created by the night watch!, preparing meals, cleaning the galley, completing safety checks and of course, cleaning the heads :.

We need to ensure everybody has their fair share of duties and has an opportunity to work with everyone else and have time off for personal time. This is not an easy job to get right but planning the watches is something that Tony has taken on with relish - although it does appear that Bryan has been on the 3am to 6am watch every morning for the last week!

We have a lot of advanced navigational aids, but unlike many boats in the ARC, we do not use Tahira's auto-helm that can automatically steer the boat to a chosen bearing (more than most of us can do!) other than for our evening meal, as we feel this is part of the Atlantic challenge and give us all something to do!

Our Log Book
Entries are made in the paper-based log book every 90 minutes by the active Watch (when we remember of course...) covering our speed, direction, location and details of any events such as changes in wind direction.

Adjusting for time-zones
One complexity for our watch system is that our voyage is so large that we cross 4 time zones, and so we need to adapt our timings as we go. This manages to confuse most of us most of the time.

Personal space
The Watch system is designed to keep the boat sailing but also gives people time off. Personal space is very important when six people share just 42 feet and we need to allow people to catch up with personal jobs such as washing clothes, washing themselves!, catching up on sleep and even doing exercises - very carefully as the boat rocks back and forth.

Blog author: Andy Bruce