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Saoirse - The SAOIRSE Diaries -15- Warts and all



So I want to keep the Saoirse Diaries real, to authentically record the experience for posterity. The highs and lows, no sugar coating, no filter. So here it is, the ugly truth, warts and all......

Today was rough. I thought about not writing until I felt inspired again, or until something really nice happened that I felt compelled to share but that’s not the real story is it? You can’t have the good without the bad, we here on board Saoirse are currently experiencing quite a spell of the bad.

After the heartbreak and disappointment of Day 6, losing our butterfly and realising the whole journey would take much longer, we took a day to wallow, chill, accept. Day 8 dawned and we had rallied, well that is to say I had, Wolf and Heiko were still in a funk coming out with ‘ach man we will never get there’ comments that, well, let’s be honest, are just not helpful. In any event I tried to stay cheery and positive, it’s about the journey not the destination right? That’s what we are always told anyway.

That is of course true, but which journey are we talking about here? The physical one or the mental and emotional one? The mental and emotional one is quite a deal harder than the physical one on a boat like Saoirse I can tell you. We have a water maker that makes 250 litres of water an hour. We have an 8KW generator. We can have a hot shower whenever we want. Our cockpit is large enough for all the crew to comfortably spend the day up top. We have electric winches and a self tacking jib and all lines come back to the cockpit. We are spoiled. So the real journey with which we have to battle is the mental and emotional one. In that respect we are currently struggling. When I say we, I mean Wolf, Heiko and myself. The kids are rockstars, but more on that another day.

So as I say, Day 8 and I was rallying and trying to get Wolf to snap out of his mood. I was certain today was the day we would catch another fish and our fortunes would change and sure enough not half an hour after we cast the line in the morning........FISH ALARM! The line flew out of the rod with lightening speed and Wolf came up to grab it and reel it in. There was fierce excitement all round and for a brief moment it seemed like everything was all right with the world again. This fish was a monster, the line just ticked and ticked off the reel, there was no way we could stop it, it was way too big and sure enough within seconds it had snapped the entire line off, all 300 meters of it, and it was away. With no spare line, that marks the end of our fishing exploits for the rest of the trip. 1 Yellow fin Tuna, 1 Barracuda and 1 poor fish swimming around with a hook in it’s mouth and 300 meters of line trailing out of it. Don’t fancy his chances do you? When it rains, it pours!

Speaking of, it did indeed rain, a quick but heavy enough shower which ordinarily would have been quite pleasant given the rising temperatures had it not been for the fact that the side windows in the salon were open with Wolf’s computer sitting on the sofa. Yes folks, you guessed it, computer gets wet and shuts down. No more movies for Cúisle for the rest of the trip, which is of course the least of our worries. Who knows if we will be able to recover all the work on there, not to mention how much it will cost to do so. You know that feeling don’t you? When you lose all your hard work on the computer? We have all been there at some point haven’t we, with everything else that had already broken our hearts just sank. We had to just close the computer and try not to think about it or it would send us over the edge. So there wasn’t much to get excited about on Day 8, until the positions came in. We had expected to be losing ground like mad given our reduced speed but it did seem that our strategy of going south to find the wind had paid off and we were in fact lying 16th. That went some way to softening the blow of everything else. That is until night fall came and we hit a hole.

There really is nothing worse than sailing in no wind. Well ok, there are lots and lots of things worse than sailing in no wind but when you are out sailing, especially when, as each day passes more and more stuff gets damaged, broken, falls apart, sailing into a hole is the worst. Sloshing about with the rig creaking and groaning and the sails flapping and banging and going nowhere is so demoralising I can’t begin to tell you. Getting the positions and realising that not everyone is going through the same hell, rather it seems you have sailed into your own private little mill pond whilst everyone else around you steams past in their little wind streams wears you down. We lost place after place.

Day 9 dawns and Wolf seems to be in better spirits, I however woke feeling fed up. Plain and simple. Like I knew the day was going to be a slog. Energy flows where attention goes as they say, self fulfilling prophecy and all the rest, sure enough Day 9 SUCKED. Wolf, desperate to try anything to try to get us moving again, attempted to goose wing out our self tacking jib with the whisker pole for the butterfly which is way too long, or the jib too small, whichever way you look at it, it was never going to work. He felt he had to do something though so up to the bow he went and struggled unsuccessfully, eventually admitting defeat when the batten pocket on the jib ripped from all the flapping about. Oh Man, let’s just try to get there without any more damage I say, rather than add more pressure to the whole currently fragile structure until we have no sails left eh? Yeah I know, I was being a B.I.T.C.H. What can I say? I have no defence.

Óisin decided to test our fortitude, patience and sanity by choosing today of all days to forgo his afternoon nap and then proceed to moan, cry and whinge his way through the day, which was hot and sticky so we were all already on the edge. Our boy can scream, let me tell you. His sister was never like that, but when Óisin is not happy about something everyone knows about it, everybody for miles around. He face goes blood red, his whole body stiffens, he makes little fists with his hands and screams and screams and screams, and screams and screams. When he is over tired he can do that for hours on end. So naturally when it came to bed time, with the rest of us barely holding on by a thread and willing him with all our might to just fall asleep. Please, please, please baby, just fall asleep. Fall asleep he did not, well not straight away anyway as you may have guessed. It took 3 hours of pretty much non-stop screaming to get him down, after which Wolf and I were truly spent and no doubt Heiko was wishing he had never signed up for the trip in the first place.

I came up at 3am for my shift to 5knots of wind with an SOG of under 3 knots. Right, executive decision, I am whacking on the motor. I don’t care if we have to motor for the next 24hours I am going to power us through this god damn hole and I mean that in every respect.

So that’s it for the Saoirse crew until the next time when I hope to be reporting a much improved mood.

Before I go though, I will just say, Flying Fish, they are awesome aren’t they? Especially at night when you see them glow as they dot about the water. Those I love, I will never tire of seeing those.

So stay tuned for the next instalment of up beat reporting and witty banter!

Saoirse crew out.


By Aisling Fenix

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