New Year in the Volvo Ocean Race

by Richard Clarke, illbruck on 1 Jan 2002 The theme of our leg so far continued last night when my carefully laid
New year plans when astray. It seems like we are never quite in sync this
leg as the weather does not always do what we think and our boat has
developed a bit a dysfunctional disorder. Last night was no different...

Being in charge of the food, I have the ability to sneak on a few extras
into the food bags. For crew birthday's partners often give me goodies for
Loved ones on their special day (remember the 30's Emily) and for New Year
I thought I'd treat the crew to a celebration to bring in the New Year.
Now weight still is an issue so Champaign and caviar were out but
sparklers and cigars were in. The plan was to dash down below just before
midnight light some sparklers and burst through the hatch shouting happy
New year, pass out a few cigars light them up and talk about resolutions
we wont keep this year.

It was all looking good at about 11 pm moderate breeze, code zero up,
pretty cruisy conditions. Sure enough 11:15 wind goes from 15 to
18..20...22..24..25 all of a sudden we have a fair bit on. Time to peel to
the spinnaker, peel to the kite just before midnight (I'll get to those
sparklers just after the hoist I think) and the wind goes from 25 to 30
and we are in the thick of it for the rest of my watch. At one point just
after midnight I look at Cheese and said 'Happy Bloody New Year (I used a
different word than bloody) at least this year is coming in with a bang.

So all I could do was at the end of my watch slip out the back hatch with
two sparklers and one cigar and quietly tried to light them up. But would
you have guessed it they wouldn't light. Eventually after almost blowing
up the boat and using up most of the butane in the galley lighter I got
one sparkler to light. We passed around what turned out to be a rather
nasty cigar and I sulked into my bunk.

On a positive note all seems to be going better today. We are back tight
reaching in big breeze which is never that comfortable, but we seem to be
doing nicely on News Corp and Tyco. We have had the right sails up when
needed and might be getting into a bit of a groove. It is nice to start
feeling more like the windshield and less like the bug.

For all of us on illbruck we wish you all a safe and happy new year. To
my wife Andria, next year I promise....