22-28 Aug

More truly frantic scrambling to be ready for our trip to the Med! It seems that no matter how much planning and organising I do, I’m always behind the ball. We found out this week that our life raft wouldn’t be ready in time for Friday, so we’ll be rowing next week without one of those. Don’t really think it’s a problem given the amount of boats that will probably be around, but irritating. Nevertheless, we were to be found down at the boat yard most nights, doing the little jobs that needed doing.

I still find it astonishing that boats take up so much time. I remember reading Ellen MacArthur’s autobiography, and being dumbfounded that she spent so much time working on her boats, generally right up to the start of the race, and then still found that things were usually not as good as they could be. I’m no longer dumbfounded. I think the reason is that no two are the same - even though our boat is “identical” to all the other boats in our race, I would bet that it’s not more than 80% the same as any of them. All the fittings and the placing of the equipment are down to the individual, and each person gets their boat to be how they want it. Having briefly tried one other boat, I know that I wouldn’t want to be crossing in anything other than my little boat - I’m getting really attached to it!

One of the major components of work that we managed this week was to install a foot-steering mechanism. Our boat has a pretty large rudder on the back, so that even if the wind is trying to blow you sideways, you can hopefully head in roughly the direction you want to. At least that’s the theory J In the early races, people just attached bits of rope to the rudder, pulled them one way or the other to set the desired direction, and tied them off. However, this is clearly not ideal for keeping a rowing rhythm - you don’t want to have to stop every 10 strokes to adjust the direction as the wind changes. So in common with other more recent rowers, we’ve installed a steering system operated by your feet.

It’s not rocket science - the heel of your foot is attached to a pivot, allowing your toes to move from side to side. A metal rod sticking out of the bottom of the foot plate then attaches to the rudder wires, allowing you to turn the rudder by twisting your foot. And importantly, to row while you do so. This is fairly useful for general rowing, but apparently really makes a difference when the wind creates a following swell - we’re told that in these conditions you can catch and “surf” the waves, using your foot-steering to keep you straight on the wave, and reach peak speeds of up to 10 knots. I can’t wait to try this, although anybody who saw me trying to surf when I was in Oz might question whether I’ll manage it!

We did make it away at the weekend, for the long drive through France down to Nice. We got an impressive number of odd looks as we towed the boat down the motorways, especially at the toll booths for some reason. One poor guy clearly couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing and brought the barrier back down too soon, onto the back of the boat. We were initially alarmed, but then very amused to see that instead of damaging the boat it had instead broken the (presumably flimsy) barrier clean off! We drove away pretty quickly…