Message From nicole

I thought that it was about time that I explained properly a little about life on the boat. Sorry if this is all obvious or repeated, but i thought perhaps that I may have just presumed that you all know what it is like on board. The crew is split into two watches of 5-7 people (depending on the overall crew numbers- as on different legs of the race then we have more or less leggers). We then do 4 hours on, 4 hours off 24 hours a day - so yes it is a bit of a nightmare getting up in the middle of the night (the 4am watch is a shocker) and never getting more than 3 hours sleep at a time - though daytime napping is in no way frowned upon in this world! When we are on watch then we steer/helm the boat, trim the sails, and then do any sail changes ie change to a bigger sail when there is less wind, and a smaller one when the wind picks up. We also tend to talk a lot of shit during this time (the qingdao chat...) especially when there is not that much to do. When off watch then we eat, sleep (and read, email etc if you have any spare time). Every day, one person on each watch then drops out of the watch system to do the mother watch - where you do all of the cooking and cleaning for a day- which is a bit rubbish but can be a nice change +the bonus side is that you get to sleep all night for once! And thats pretty much it- in practice its a pretty simple life. x