Lisa Blair - The coldest night of her solo Round Antarctic voyage

by Lisa Blair on 20 Mar 2017 Round Antarctic sailor, Lisa Blair (AUS) reports on the coldest experience so far in her attempt to become the first woman to sail solo around the Southern Continent, sailing an Open 50 - now on Day 57..

Last night was by far the coldest of the trip to date... Burr... It was so cold that when I went to bite into a mini mars bar I almost broke my teeth as it was rock solid. The honey is frozen and I managed to give myself brain freeze from drinking the water too quickly out of my water bottle...

When I went to go to bed after writing the blog I was so cold that I didn’t think I would be able to get warm even in bed, so I heated up another hot water bottle and added some extra layers. I ended up sleeping in my Antarctica grade sleeping bag wearing my base layer, 2 sets of Marino wool thermals, a fleece vest and a set of the zhik midlayers which is a full body suit and a jacket. It almost makes me feel like I am walking around in a fitted sleeping bag, they are warm though. On top of this I had a beanie on, neck warmer, fleece gloves and 2 pairs of socks. Once the hot water bottle was ready I ended up unzipping my layers back until I could put the water bottle in between my thermals and my fleece vest under most of my layers. Oh, is was so gloriously warm and after a few minutes I almost felt like I was cocooned in a heater... I fell into a much-needed deep sleep for 3 hours...

When I woke up the winds had dropped out completely and I was no in a variable 5 knots of wind. The swell was still 3 meters from the SE so it would rock the boat and push the wind out of the sails... I re-trimmed as much as I could. Once there was nothing else for me to do I went back to bed for another 3 hours. When I got up the second time not much had changed. Climate Action Now was making the rapid speed of 1.5 knots but at least it was in the right direction.

As I knew today was also my day to tackle the aft locker I got up and had a big serve of porridge to keep me going for a while. I was still feeling tired and not looking forward to the hours of bailing and sorting the rubbish out of the back locker so I also had a pick me up. A Fizz stick made by Arrbone. The Fizz sticks are a healthy booster to your day. This is the first one I have had all trip, mainly because they have a small amount of caffeine in them and I was unsure if this would prevent me from sleeping later on. I have to say, they made such a difference. Within 15 minutes I was perky and ready to tackle the day. My energy didn’t start lagging until hours later. I also didn’t experience the crash that I would normally get from something like a coffee or V drink.

So fortified, I gathered up my empty bin. This is a bucket that we used to cast the main sheet winch in, so it has a hole drilled in the bottom. I also gathered a pillow case, normal bailing bucket, my baler and an empty dry bag. Given that the entire of the back compartment has flooded I will no longer be storing my rubbish there. I will keep it in the empty dry bags and put them in the sail locker instead.

So armed and ready, I was also now on the right tack, putting the access point on the high side. I put the pillow case in the bucket and tied the top in so it won’t fall down when I am pouring water in. I then opened the hatch to take a look at the challenge... Yesterday when I looked the access hatch was on the low side so it looked like the compartment was about half full, not great, but when I opened that hatch this morning it was full to the brim... That’s over 2 tons of water in one compartment.

For the rest of this story and others in Lisa's blog click here