I left you last night with a mat of cloud over head, moonshine illuminating through the thinner patches. When the moon was obscured, Sirius, the brightest star in the galaxy was moon lighting! While the moon was eclipsed behind a mass of cloud, Sirius’ star beam twinkled on the water like a mini moon. The moonshine made glittery jewelry of the water’s surface, pathing a way to the boat. My description doesn’t do it justice. It was mesmeric to watch.
We rowed into another day with every type of cloud in the sky. Packed in to the west were Cumulus clouds with flat bottoms, stacking up like a series of mounds of whipped cream. Slightly off to the south was a larger, darker grey smudge- a cloud mass that had been air-brushed until it had no definitive edges. Directly above, wisps of cloud hung like smoke caught in suspension and then off to the east there were rows of steam train puffs, semi-joined balls of cotton wool. What spaces were left in between were filled with pure, uncontrasting colour- a perfect sector of pale cyan or my Italian Fresco blue, where the animator had clicked with his paintbrush and then pressed ‘fill.’ Underneath this blanket I rowed on a monochrome sea. For my entire 3 hour watch, the sea moved with barely a whisper. When I paused to drink, the only sound was the occasional plop or splash of water against the side of ‘Dream Maker’s’ hull- sounds which you can experience by sticking your head under the bath water. Then the ‘Andy Pilot’ would bring me back to my senses, grating away like some 90’s bubble jet printer inking every word in turn and off we would row again.
One squall got me this morning. It was desperately hot and I had nothing on to take off, so I was quite looking forward to being soaked. Little pin pricks of cold water were sprinkled first, which was a weird sensation like very slight pins and needles. The spits were so light that they weren’t even registering on the water’s surface. Then larger droplets arrived and they were marking the water’s surface, but even then the droplets weren’t wet and sloppy. Like a scorching hot frying pan, maybe they were just evaporating off my skin! Anyway, the rain was really cold and a light chilly breeze accompanied it and in the end I had to reach for a jacket!
Today was another day of quiet creative musing on the finger-front. I am determined to be unbeaten by this problem and pretty keen to rid myself of the discomfort and pain without having to resort to a month’s prescription of drugs. During my first session of the day on the oars, I concluded that leaving on the scouring part of the sponge (between the glove and the neoprene layer) was detrimental and that I ought to revert back to glove-sponge-neoprene with the scouring layer ripped off. The additional bulk of the scouring layer was causing pain while rowing and more than usual. Of course when I pulled the stitches out of the neoprene to replace the sponge, I found that a section of the sponge was rock hard! I had first tried to glue the sponge on before resorting to stitches, but what had happened was that the sponge had stuck itself to itself. No wonder the nerves in my third finger were going mental last night!
During my second session of the day on the oars, I decided that like Niall McCann’s rowing partner James, I simply needed to remove the fingers from the rowing equation, if only for a short time so that they can heal. Before my last session on the oars, I rummaged through the first aid boxes and found a Sam Splint. Then I retrieved my wrist support from my dry bag of ‘clothes I am unlikely to wear before returning to England.’ I then cut a length of Sam Splint, took out the metal backbone from the wrist support and laid the Sam Splint there instead. Then I strapped the support to my wrist, wrapped the Sam Splint end round the oar and began to row… By the end of my 3 hour session of floppy-flag conditions on a glassy sea, I was so pleased that I cut another length of Sam Splint from the remains of the roll and test-attached it to my left forearm using an elasticated ankle support sock to hold it in place. I have yet to field test the two together, but I’m hoping that Sam is the super splint!
Like John Milborne (Mick’s Osteopath), I have also been contemplating why me? Why this? And why now? Rowers like to call themselves ‘rowers’ and sailors like to call themselves ’sailors.’ How many times you have to go sailing in order to be classed a ’sailor’ I don’t know, but on these vague terms, I am a ’sailor’ and not a ‘rower.’ I can imagine some of the members of Mick’s rowing club tutting. ‘Well, you know. It’s because she’s not a rower!’ And they’re right on one hand- I don’t row every week and on the other hand, normal rowing is really nothing like trying to propel a 23ft mobile home with a 150 liters of water ballast and a sleeping 15 stone rugby player onboard, down wind and waves. My theories are these:
1. I am not uncurling my fingers sufficiently between strokes. (This is true and caught in the vicious circle of ‘I can’t because they are swollen’ or ‘I don’t want to because it hurts.’)
2. I am manually attacking the water and not allowing the oars to drop into the water by themselves.
3. My hands are over-sensitized from ten years of professional sailing (highly likely, as well as probably a bit of the above). For one, I partially severed the top of my RH 4th finger in 2002 which wreaked havoc for some months with the nerve path all the way up my right arm. While tidying up after shaking out a reef, 18 days out from North America, 2 days away from England, a crewmember came on deck and without looking power winched in the mainsheet. The main sheet coming across knocked me off balance and in my fall I inadvertently grabbed the mainsheet. Two fingers were sheeted into the Harken block…
Colour of the day- Pineapple jelly yellow, seas 0ft. This afternoon, Indigo, seas 0ft.
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19.45 GMT
Barometer 1016
Wind SE 0-5kts
