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Moonflower 3 - Life on the Atlantic



Normal play is slowly resuming after a few scorching days without progress. We’re very much in the end game right now, with 700 miles to go, fairer winds are behind us. We’re recovering from a few days of lethargy and heat stroke, but there isn’t much to update. So, it seems like a suitable time to give a little more colour for the picture we’re painting for our readers. What does a typical day for us on the Atlantic look like?

There are 7 of us here on Moonflower: Skipper and owner, Chloe, who is leading the team. 3 Yacht Masters: Emma, Carrie and Kate, who each have over 10,000 miles sailing experience. And then 3 enthusiastic novices: Jake, James and Alex. Jake has spent a few years working in guest relations on yachts in the Mediterranean, so has some experience living on boats – but in a very different capacity. James and Alex have now sailed 2,100 miles each, but every one of those miles has been since leaving Gran Canaria 16 days ago. No surprises that they were the first to get sea sick.

Living on a 44 ft boat for close to a month with 7 people is challenging to say the least. Every 4 hours, day or night, we rotate of team of 2 (1 of the girls and 1 of the boys) to be on watch at the helm and steer the course.

The nature of this rota and the limited sleeping space, combined with the heat, constant rocking and noise, makes sleeping very challenging. As a result, everyone is on scattered cycles of sleep, meal times and watch duties. It’s surprisingly rare that we’re all up on deck together.

The exception is the evenings; our cooking rota has meticulous provisioning, meaning there is always a hot, delicious dinner on deck around sunset, not to mention frequent tea and cake parties in the late afternoon.

Aside from these duties, however we are at liberty, there’s been a lot of reading (14 books so far for Kate), cloud watching, star gazing, and existential conversations that only arrive after long periods of reflection, such as: ‘Would you rather have hands as feet or feet as hands?’. In fact, a big part of some for the crew (James and Alex), has been this absence of activity and learning to unwind.

I’m sure we’ll post a comprehensive match report of sorts when we reach St Lucia. For now, we hope this gives a little flavour of day-to-day life on the sea.

See you tomorrow,

Your Moonflowers

xxxxxxx

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