Chagos to Seychelles - Day 5

Date: Saturday 8th August 2020
Local time: 15:00
Time Since Departure: 102 hours
Actual Speed: 4.5 knots
Average Speed for trip: 6.3 knots
Max Speed for trip: 11.5 knots
Distance Travelled so far: 644.5 miles
Distance to Destination: 438.7 miles
Time to destination: 99 hours
ETA: Wednesday 12th August, 6pm

So three good things happened today, all major milestones in their own way.

Overnight, we passed the half way mark, although paradoxically, our ETA has since moved out by two days as the forecasted light winds have arrived.

As a direct result of the light winds, we have our spinnaker up, the first time in the Indian Ocean, and something that was inconceivable 3 days ago in the heavy weather. But right now, there’s just 7 knots of wind and a gentle 1 metre, long-period swell, and we couldn’t resist getting Big Pink up.

In truth, the swell, small though it is, is sufficient in the light winds to be causing the sail to collapse on a regular basis, but still, it looks great, and 4.5 knots in 7 knots of wind is not to be sniffed at on a 32 tonne boat.

Even though the light winds are forecasted to remain all the way until the Seychelles, we’ll probably take the spinnaker down at sunset. It’s not an easy sail to handle by yourself, and near impossible if we get caught in a squall. At least in daylight we can see the squalls coming, and call the other person up on deck to help, but at night, it’s a whole different ball game.

We don’t actually expect any major squalls for the remainder of the trip based on the forecast, but neither of us fancy taking the chance. There’s no prizes for taking unnecessary risks in this game.

The third milestone is also related to the softening of the weather. After 4 days, I had my first bowel movement of the trip! Some of you have helpfully been suggesting I drink more water, or take Metamucil or an equivalent, but that’s not it at all.

The reality is that taking a crap at sea is difficult! There are three major barriers. The first is a break in your natural schedule and rhythm. Most people are fairly regular in terms of timing, so moving from your 6-8 hours sleep per night and three square meals at regular times, to a 4 hour on/off watch system plays havoc with your body’s natural rhythms.

The second is the physical challenges of relaxing enough to produce when you’re physically bracing yourself on the toilet, as the boat lurches up and down and rocks back and forth and the toilet lid repeatedly bangs you in your back. Calm seas are greatly helpful in this department.

And the third is time pressure. Either you’re on watch, in which case you don’t want to leave the cockpit for more than a few minutes at a time. Or you’re off watch, in which case you don’t want anything to eat into your precious sleeping time. Either way, once it’s been a few days, you know you need to just sit there for a while and wait for nature to take its course. But after 5 minutes of bracing, and squeezing, and checking your watch, you give up, and think “maybe another time”.

When we sailed for 10 days with John Kretschmer, one of the world’s most famous sailing authors and delivery skippers a few years ago, he highlighted getting regular as one of his top 3 priorities for his crew. It’s a lesson that’s always stuck with us. He didn’t have any fancy tricks, just that it was one of the most important things to focus on and typically took people some time.

So there you have it – everything you ever needed to know about my bowel movements but were too afraid to ask.