Tuesday 20th August 2013 – Day 4

Having been under motor since leaving Fremantle on Monday, the weather remains good, the swell low, and the seas slight. We set three sails earlier this morning and hope to set more in due course.

Today has been another first for Nellie in that another Cape has been crossed; Cape Leeuwin was uneventful as we passed from the Indian Ocean into the Southern Ocean.

With 192 nautical miles travelled, we are now on our way to Albany and hope to arrive at some point tomorrow.

With one of our favourite watch members on mess duty today, our crew is down one, but we welcome the fetching sight of him in a ladybug/flamenco apron throughout the day. In this case, Craig’s lack of eyesight plays to his advantage—he can’t see how funny he looks, although with his confidence, I am sure he doesn’t care!

Several of our fellow crew men have been down with seasickness throughout the day (I suspect a ruse to get out of Happy Hour cleaning…). Keeping our medical purser Liz very busy, our supply of ginger and seasickness pills dwindle as I type. And from our position on the bridge, we can see invalids lying prone on the decks below, hooked on to spare parts of the ship so as not to get swept overboard.

As we braced the yards, we adopted two of our maintainers to fill roles that our crew were unable to perform (thanks to Martin and Matt).

A proud team, we are determined to push through the sick and man the ship to the best of our ability. Manfully, we had one of our sufferers climb up to the second platform on the main mast as another two of us volunteered to help drop the topsail. Balls Deep! Being aloft while the ship sways back and forth is both exhilarating and challenging—quite different from when we were at port.

As competitive as we are, all of our jokes revolve around giving each other points for our hard work and exchanging high fives! On STW16, it’s every watch for themselves!

Forward Port Watch: Mummy Alli, Craig, Steph, BD Dave, Tara, Mark, Caitlin, and Baby B, (Brandt).

P.S. There has been another engagement on board, as Caitlin beat the others in her proposal to Cookie Dave—with the agreement that he bake his delicious homemade bread every day! On our lunch, we each enjoyed several slices of the fresh baked loaf, still warm from the oven and eagerly look forward to doing so again as soon as possible.