Day 7: Kids at play during doldrums

We had a gorgeous ‘apero’ last night with a beautiful sunset and clouds that reminded me of the paintings of the Dutch masters (apero is the French nickname for aperitif). See the photos and the videos below where you can hear Seb tell tales about his father in law. All this was followed by a glass of Sancerre, some brisket with cuscus. What more can we ask?

We had a calm night. The crew says it was perhaps too calm. When you compare with the others, no doubt! We flew the spinnaker all night and everything was smooth for a change. Then at 6am, we hit ‘petole’, the French word for doldrums. No wind. Not a single breadth. And what do kids when they’re stuck? They jump in the water, see the videos and photos below. It is quite something to be in the water in the middle of the pacific with 16,000 feet of water below. And when you look down, something amazing happens. You see a deep blue I had never seen before. It’s all around you. It’s amazing and beautiful.

I even took the chance to do a bit of swimming so that I do not loose too much fitness when I get back to training with Tim Edmonds 🙂 In case you ask, Tim is our wonderful coach at Stanford Masters Swimming.

After the swimming, I took upon myself to clean the toilet and the tiny bathroom we have. People who know me will not believe this. But I can bring witnesses. Others did their laundry. Others went fishing. Fred took Proust out of the bag. He told us he would read ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ but we are still waiting for him to read the first page.

At 2PM, the wind started to pick up again and launched the `asym’ — see the last blog for what this is — and we started to gain speed again. We have had good speed for the last four hours.

We are nearing the middle of course. We have reached the tread winds and the landscape has changed entirely — if I may say so. Whereas the early days felt like we were in the middle of the North Sea (thanks Isabelle for the hint), it feels now that we are definitely in the Mediterranean sea. Except that there is no one. We do not see a single boat all day. So we must be in the Pacific Ocean, quite South, the place to be.

We are preparing for another gorgeous end of day. All is well.