Skipper Hannah has handed over the blog reigns to me - novice crew member Stickney - for a quick snapshot of sailing life through the eyes of an enthusiastic beginner!

Day 5. It’s a very lumpy bumpy start to the day. Crew members are lurching around the boat like zombie drunkards. Up on deck we currently have 4 sails up; Front, Next Front, Middle (sometimes called the Main) and Back. All sails are in the Triangular Shape for optimum sailing in today’s bumpy conditions!

Skipper Hannah has put the boat on AutoPilot (again!) which she says is for ease, but if I’m honest I feel there may be some deeper trust issues going on. I‘ve noticed that other than a bit of fiddling with the sails and moving the steering wheel, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to sailing this boat. I could understand her caution if we were navigating our way through city traffic, but we haven’t seen another boat since we left the Marina on Tuesday! I think it’s time she she learned to hand over control a bit - I mean it’s not like we’d go into a gybe or anything… (Hannah - this almost happened the other day)

One thing I do like on this boat is the Safety First approach. ‘It’s tether weather!’ says Skip which means that anything over 12 knots of wind (or any knots, I note!) and we have to have at least 3 points of contact with the boat when we’re moving around outside. When it’s bumpy like today, I like to take this a step further and tether up when moving around inside too. Tethering to furniture, other people and best hack I’ve found; the toilet pan, can really ease the strain of the boat’s excessive movement.

No idea why it’s so bumpy today. Yesterday was so smooth by comparison (does auto pilot really always know best??) It was sunny, warm and calm - so to inject a bit of fun into the afternoon, we decided on some Inflatable Play. Launching a life raft is a fantastic bit of quick fun! 2 mins from woe to go and we were biscuiting off the back of the boat like we were in Bali! Skipper came on deck and I have no idea what got into her (she’s normally so chill!), but long and short of it, our inflatable fun ended pretty quickly. Trap for new sailors ahoy, because it was totally impossible to get the life raft back into it’s box and now it’s taking up all of the back deck… making it impossible to get in to change the sails, so they are set for the rest of the journey. Saves a job, I guess!

Suzanne - Crew Member 12 - Te Kaihōpara

PS: Suzanne’s rendition of the day has varying degrees of truthfulness. Hannah