12 42.791n 44 03.781w
What on earth do you do all day?
Sun Nov 26 2023
Imagine 5 people on a reasonable sized farm trailer (normally used for shifting broccoli or bales of hay) being towed up to London (behind Prescott’s little red International) along the A30, up the 303, then a bit of M3, into to Central London around the roundabout at Piccadilly Circus then back out of the City, back down the M3, turn off to A303, (past the KFC at Soltice Services - but no stopping )- then A30 back down to Falmouth…….5 times. Yep, 5 times. Nope, up and back isn’t 2 times, it’s once. Up and back 5 times.
But furthermore, the tractor towing them isn’t capable of than more than 6 miles an hour. Walking is somewhere between 3 and 4 miles an hour so 6 miles an hour is the sort of speed you might get up to in the last 5 metres before a lift door closes in front of you. Not a run by any means, but a brisk and purposeful walk in which you still try to look calm and collected.
Here are some trailer rules. The trailer never stops so you are unable to get off at any point. Not stopping means you can’t stop and pick up a snack from the M&S food service station just outside Launceston. You have to take everything you want to eat with you. And yes you have to drive past the KFC takeaway at Solstice Services 10 times, and not one of them are you allowed to nip inside for a mega family bucket of the golden chicken. (Boooo!) All the food you want you have, you have to take with you. Crisps, biscuits, lettuce, eggs but no pasties. Absolutely no pasties!
The driver. There isn’t strictly a driver the whole thing works on some sort of autopilot but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to look where you are going. One of you is responsible for keeping (at least) one eye open all the while you are moving. Day and night. Night and day. And not just looking in front of you. You have to look all around you, particularly behind you in case a nasty drop of weather creeps up on you and you all get drenched.
How comfortable is the trailer? Reasonably comfortable except for the fact that the axle is bent and the wheels are (independently) an irregular shape. That ultimately means that all the while the wheels and axles are rotating the trailer constantly rocks forwards, backwards and side to side. And every so often when there is a particularly wangy part of the axle coinciding with a huge lump on one wheel and crevice on the other you get an almighty lurch and you have to hold on to everything around you to avoid you, your cup of tea, and the book you are reading getting heaved over the side.
Although (in this analogy….you’ve worked out it’s an analogy, right?) it’s quite warm, so warm in fact you’d happily sit up all night in a pair of ‘Billy Grundies’ and nothing else, you have to be mindful that on some rare occasion someone might take it upon themselves to heave an enormous bucket of water right at you. Strangely though not whilst you’re sitting bolt upright watching where you are going, but whilst you are asleep. It happens. Trust me.
The analogy about the trailer is to help get your head around life on a boat. Partially it’s about space. You have very little space to freely move around; distance, it’s unusual to travel anywhere non-stop for more than a few hours; speed, this journey will be somewhere between 350 and 400 hours.
So what do you do all day? For the fourteen to sixteen days it might take you? It might sound odd, but because you can’t sleep you often sleep a lot. The constant movement makes sleeping deeply and soundly quite challenging. And whilst you try to get a large part of it done at night, your nights are constantly interrupted by lurches, loud noises and getting up and looking where you are going ( for at least 2 hours every night). Therefore taking one, two or three ‘Nana naps’ is a great way to use your time.
Sailing. On occasions you can spend an awful lot of time sailing. And by that I mean, obtaining forecasts, planning your route, navigating, dealing with sail configuration to get both the safest and most efficient combination of sails to suit the conditions. Some people hoist sails and don’t touch them for several days. So far we’ve found it necessary to alter the configuration at least once ever 24 hours, sometimes several times in one day.
Maintenance (and prevention) is a big part of what I do all of the time. There is constantly another job on the list. Today, for example, a large part was spent trying to understand why the solar was not working. That meant creating a harness to connect to the stanchions (that hold the Bimini up) so that you didn’t get flung over the side whilst pulling apart connections, taking volt readings and holding on for dear life - an absolute minimum of 6 arms is required. Then there is investigating a knocking sound, which often means taking something apart. But there is absolutely not one second when I’m rubbing my chin thinking ‘oh, I wonder what I can do next?’
The other guys are into reading, doing some odd form of exercise, searching through cupboards, hours and hours spent performing Astro navigation calculations, checking for fluff in belly buttons etc etc. And we all take turns to make tea and prep meals.
Days absolutely fly by. They seem incredibly short and no two days are ever the slightest bit similar. It’s an unusual, but exceptionally privileged existence. It can be challenging, terrifying, exhausting and exhilarating all in the same day.
But one thing it isn’t is boring.