The weather
We need your help! We’re fed up out here and we want to get home. The
waves are coming from the south and the wind from the south-south-
east, any way you look at it they’re both pushing us in the wrong
direction. We’ve been struggling for days just to stay in the same
spot and it’s doing nothing for our frown lines, except deepening
them.
We need a peg sacrifice on a very large scale and we need your help
to do it. Grab a wooden peg, and not the mankiest one either - pick
one you’re going to miss. Then find a suitable body of
water: a river, stream, lake or pond will do (a washing
machine will do at a push). At 7.00 pm on Tuesday we’ll
sacrifice our pegs together and this is what you need to say
as you toss it into the water: ‘Please grant Sally, Sarah,
Matt,
1
Richard, Henry and Moose a steady force five with
strong east-north-east winds to speed them to Barbados to
their much-missed family and friends. Thank you.’
If we all do it together maybe the clerk at the ocean
weather desk in the sky will do something about it!
Thanks,
Sally ‘Have we done our quota?’ and Sarah ‘What’re the
scores on the doors Miss Saggy Drawers?’ Kettle xx
1 Matt, Richard, Henry and Moose (so called because Luis Ginglo from
Sally with her Mum
Canadian had named his boat Moose on the Move) were all solo rowers. As a and Dad.
group we were the only ones still out at sea.
I DIDn’T EnVY DAD, as he was in a practically impossible we were in trouble and we’d pushed the button. In fact, the battery
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position: not only did he have to re-organise the hotel but had died and therefore the beacon had stopped transmitting and
he also had to try and estimate what date we’d be arriving with no outward sign of this predicament Mum and I had no idea
so he could book flights that would get him, my brother, sister and our beacon wasn’t bleeping any more.
nephew to Barbados in time. This was a difficulty all the families All the boats in the regatta had been given a second beacon just
were facing. Changes in the weather could delay rowers by weeks, in case the battery ran out or they experienced some unforeseen
so getting the timing just right was a logistical nightmare. There difficulties. They were only supposed to transmit for approximately
were tales of rowers arriving ‘early’ and so having to meet their eighty days but unfortunately ours just happened to fail a few
families at the airport, and of friends spending two glorious weeks in days shy, so poor Malcolm had understandably feared the worst,
Barbados but the rowers arriving the day after they had to fly home. especially as we’d been hit by bad weather and were now going
There were so many ways Dad could bugger it up. When he in the wrong direction. Having taken the call so late at night he and
first read our April Fool’s Day email he totally believed what we’d Jane must have been frantic. I know Dad was extremely grateful
written. I can just imagine the colour draining from his face with that they didn’t break the news to him until the next morning.
the thought of Mum wandering off across the Pacific by herself. Although Mum didn’t like the idea, I was still turning the phone
How would he cope? Gran told me later that on his visits he would on between 12.00 and 1.00 pm, as promised, and you can imagine
just sit and stare into space. my surprise when Malcolm rang just after 12.00 one afternoon
Which brings me to this point. Why is it that when a woman’s and, with audible relief, said: ‘Are you ok? Where have you been?
abandoned at home she’s pretty much left to get on with it, We’ve been worried! I’ve been trying to call you all morning.’
whereas deserted men practically have the community rallying ‘Why did you try calling this morning? You know we don’t have
around to support them? the phone on till twelve,’ I replied uncharitably. I was beginning
‘oh Steve, you must miss Sarah terribly, here, have this to think that we should have thrown the sat phone overboard. We
casserole!’ didn’t realise that the team at home was convinced we’d died at
‘oh Steve, you must be so lonely without Sarah, how about you sea, we thought they were overreacting, which in turn felt like
come round for dinner?’ a criticism of our ability to look after ourselves. Mum and I were
Dad’s diet had no chance whatsoever! quite selfishly thinking Dad and Malcolm needed to stop worrying
It didn’t help when Malcolm called Dad, saying we were ‘lost at about us – it was driving us crazy! Anyway, we had enough on our
sea’. Malcolm had received a call from Kenneth in the middle of plates. We were going backwards, and if we did eventually
the night saying our Argos beacon had ‘gone off’ and they couldn’t get across the likelihood of hitting Barbados was fairly slim.
get hold of us. I think he misinterpreted ‘gone off’ as being ‘set off’:
* * *
36 YACHTWORLD.COM MARCH 2009
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