Clipper Race day 6

Sailing day 6, 7th place with 3109 mile to go: Saturday today so I’m adding a crew member blog on life aboard the Henri Lloyd.

"Cooking in the oven" 

The temperature below deck has been increasing for days, and with each day I was dreading my upcoming mother duty. It was getting so hot below that even sitting on deck in the direct blazing sunlight was a relief from the sauna below. When you are on mother duty, you physically are cooking alongside the food. If the mothers start with any clothes on, pretty much all end up nearly nude by the end of the day and completely drenched in sweat. My mother partner and I looked like we had just run a marathon at the end of our day, dripping sweat, shirtless and damn exhausted. But the one thing that kept us going all day was that we knew on mother duty, we were allowed a proper shower... something that was absolutely necessary by the end of our day. Morgen made the mistake of taking a shower before our job was completely done. After showering on the stern with our solar showers, he came back to realize that we still had to move sails in the forepeak to unearth our powdered milk supply. Within minutes, he was drenched in sweat again. I waited until I was absolutely done with my job, but it was hell getting to that point. I decided to make coconut almond muffins, which were great in theory, but I always forget how much effort it is to cook anything in our oven. The burners run against the back of the oven, with no fan to move the heat around. So essentially everything towards the back burns while the front barely cooks. Thus leaving me to sit in front of the oven for an hour flipping and rotating two racks of muffins every fifteen minutes, opening up the gates of hell to pour out even more heat as I struggle to juggle flimsy silicon muffin trays. But boy did that shower feel good once I finally got around to it. Luckily we were on a proper tack for me to shower down below. The reason why the tack matters is that on a port tack the water (and very likely you yourself) will fall onto the curtain and run into the saloon area. I opted out of the solar shower on the stern simply because I wanted, and needed, to strip nude and have a full rinse off. For the past week, we have been sitting in salty water and clothes, which our bums are not appreciating. I'd tell to you what happens when your bum lives in salt water, but maybe that's better left for another post or really not described at all.

Meg Riley, Round the world crew member