Know Your Rights

Pelagic and Santa Maria Australis are chalk and cheese. By Wolf's own admission, SMA, with her carpets, upholstery and veneers, is too luxurious for purpose and surroundings, and certainly for the style and taste of her mountain climbing captain. Pelagic is chalk. She's a no frills, no shit, expedition boat, and enjoys a highly regarded twenty five-plus year history. She's mostly sailing with TV documentary crews and extreme adventurers for something around £1,500 per day. This isn't a tourist gig. The job for skipper, Chris, and crew, Jamie, Steve and I, is delivery of Pelagic to Piriapolis, where she'll sit out the winter.

http://www.pelagic.co.uk/fleet_pel.asp

To mix our experience, and lack thereof, I'm paired with fellow Londoner, Steve, for shifts. The shifts make up twenty-four hour watches. We're watching to keep from crashing into boats, rocks, and other unfriendly or sharp objects. We also watch wind speed & direction and adjust sails as necessary. Steve and I take the first nightshift at 2000h. We're relieved at midnight and will return at 0400h. Then we'll take the second of the two six hour day shifts.

At some point during the day, Chris is on deck, pulling or tieing or untieing some coloured rope, so I'm pressed to take a radio call from a Chilean base station. At request, I give details of our position and destination – choosing English over patchy, badly broken Spanish, for the set protocol of these communications – to which the Alcamar signs off with “Thank you, Captain. Out.” This tickles me greatly. Back in the office, I was occasionally called “Captain Pugwash”, after one afternoon, I had called in late, giving the reason that there was insufficient water to return to land.

"Hello Dan, Could you tell Alan that I'll be a couple of hours late this afternoon. There's not enough water. Er... I'll send you a picture"

Keeping the style of the yacht, pissing etiquette is simply to shoot off the back of the boat. I'm told that according to the law of the sea, as a Cape Hornier, I have the right to shoot in any direction I please, whereas others would be restricted to downwind. I tend to favour downwind in any case, but occasionally exercise my right. In noteworthy rough sea, nearby Staten Island, I find pissing off the back, sailing at a brisk 8 knots, to be most colourful. We're being chased by a three, maybe four – certainly higher than my pissing position - metre wave that is keeping pace with us. It almost looks to be offended by my action. Equally colourful, is the green hue of Jamie's face. He and Steve are competing for the glory of he who can throw up the most. Both are muscling through the illness, but are punctual to throw up on an hourly basis, and neither can muster an appetite. I, on the other hand, am having a lovely time and retain an appetite that is comparable to the opening few seconds of an game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. If I were even a half decent sailor, I would be of some use here, but that's yet to become the case. I've no idea what any of these ropes are attached to.

At night, we're restricted to minimal electricity. Only the kitchen and chart table are under dim red light, so the night watch is exactly as it sounds. Pelagic has Autohelm, so with the course set and steady wind, there's nothing needing doing. For our only entertainment, we have a single, also dimly lit monitor, with radar, an electronic chart, and a depth chart that looks like the Predator has fallen asleep with heat vision still on. Absolutely nothing is happening on any of these screens, nor out the window of the “dog house”, where we sit without great comfort. In the last half hour, staying awake and alert is all but impossible for both of us. Every minute, my eyes are heavy and my head dips before jerking back up.