Against the Flow by Dee Caffari

Author:Dee Caffari
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2009-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Crossed Wires

Aviva and I made slow progress southwards. I was learning all the time but at a price. The weather was fickle, and as I reacted to every alteration in the wind I seemed to be making a sail change or adjustment of some sort every five minutes. I decided I couldn’t live this way and that it might, ultimately, be just as fast to set Aviva up for the averages and let her sail. So I backed off a bit and we began to make better progress despite the light winds. Once I had lightened my workload I tried to get to the bottom of my autopilot problems.

The shore team sent me a series of emails with instructions about the tests I should carry out. We knew that the alarms were going off because of aeration in the hydraulic system; we just didn’t know exactly where the air was getting in, or why it was affecting one autopilot ram and not the other. I was to bleed the system from top to bottom and carry out some response tests on the electronics. So I worked my way through the list, releasing various pipes and bleed screws, noting down the results and sending them back to the shore team. The autopilots seemed to work again afterwards. The alarms were silent and cautiously we all began to feel more optimistic.

Little by little I was leaving the Tropics. For now the weather was still hot with occasional tropical squalls. When a squall overtook us and torrential rain pelted down on Aviva I was able to stand on deck and enjoy the luxury of a long and cooling shower under the dark sky, and when the rain stopped I soothed my sunburnt skin with moisturiser. It is not always easy to keep dry and clean on an ocean voyage, and although I washed salt out of my clothes regularly there was so much sitting around in these steamy, sweaty, salty conditions that I had fallen victim to the dreaded gunwale bum, a painful and unpleasant skin rash. We had seen lots of it the year before on the Global Challenge. The remedy was not glamorous: fresh air and nappy cream.

Often the sailing was magical. Out at sea where the horizon is endless colours appear to develop a special intensity. The backdrop of blue sea and sky is somehow richer and more dramatic. Each sunset and sunrise is burnt with a vividness you seldom see on land, and the deep hues of amber and red made it seem as if Aviva and I were sailing into infinity. Every sunset looked as if it had been painted from a different palette, and every evening this glorious show changed with the sudden tropical nightfall into a black canvas spiked with diamonds. With no ambient light to poison them, the stars in the night sky were opulent, the planets and constellations dense and pin-sharp. In quiet moments I tried to identify the few I knew, always wishing that my knowledge of space was better.

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