30 November 2005
Shore team commentary Andrew Roberts
Wednesday 30 November 2005 08:50 The first few days at sea of a long single-handed voyage are invariably difficult for any skipper, whether it’s transatlantic or round the world non-stop.
Invariably, self-doubt creeps in, as do lingering concerns about the reliability of the yacht or specialist equipment. For most, the prospect of being alone and totally self reliant for two or three weeks is daunting enough, never mind for a full six months.
For those ashore, whether they are relatives, followers or members of the shore team it seems, at times, almost as difficult as for the lone sailor. For the team that prepared the yacht, the confidence of having done the best possible job is occasionally and inevitably tinged with concern for Dee being out there alone.
Despite Dee’s huge amount of sailing experience in this yacht, she has faced a very steep learning curve and whilst her previous knowledge has instilled enormous confidence in Aviva, some of the new equipment is still relatively unknown. Modern communications and rapid response times from the Technical Team makes it easier to offer advice which can help overcome any difficulties, but ultimately Dee must use her own resourcefulness to solve problems.
Since Dee started this amazing challenge just over a week ago, she has achieved a great deal and this has raised everyone’s confidence. Dee’s ability and determination have never been in any doubt but to make so many miles, early on in the voyage and without damage, is an achievement in itself.
Dee’s log posted on the 29th November describes getting the indexsail down in sixty knots of “breeze” which makes it sound remarkably simple. However, if you imagine being driven in a car at 60 miles per hour, without a windscreen, over a series of humpback bridges, in the rain, on a black night, without headlights it could create the atmosphere! Now you can begin to imagine the extremely hard physical difficulty of hauling down a sail much bigger than the living room in most houses (35sq metres or 375 sq feet). The power of that flogging sail in those conditions and the noise it would make is difficult to imagine, but consider how tired you would be after ninety minutes of dragging it down inch by inch.
Unsurprisingly, Dee was very pleased not to have damaged the indexsail and her confidence in her own ability to deal with difficult situations on her own will have increased dramatically. Equally, for one person to been able to handle the yacht safely in those conditions illustrates that the modifications made to Aviva have been effective.
Andrew Roberts
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