Dorothy

Much time is spent discussing the "off button" during the race. The worst thing
about a boat/race such as this is there is no way to stop the game if for whatever
reason you aren't enjoying it. This is what makes it so tough for the Round the
World-ers to see the race out because every month or so when back ashore they have
the option to walk away from the race. We have so far lost 5 of our 9 Round the
World-ers and it's not difficult to see why. At the start of this leg I gave this
topic a name - the Dorothy Button - referencing of course Wizard of Oz. We each had
the option, once only, to press our Dorothy button which would instantly rerturn us
home. Home is an important feature - lots enquired as to whether the button could
bring you 2 days out from San Fran - the answer was a strict no - this is all or
nothing stuff - the Clipper adventure would be over. Not too surprisingly most of
the Round the World-ers were up for pressing it right away - most are battle weary
and are stubbornly hanging in simply to complete the race - for them the option to
be finshed would be quite a luxury. Incredibly, a couple of leggers would have used
the option in week 1 - why you'd spend the time/money getting here to wish it away
is beyond me. The rest of us have flirted with it on many occasions - usually when
life at 45 degrees becomes a little too much. The concept has taken on a life of its
own - we spend hours talking about what the button looks like, how close we've come
to pressing it and the first things we'd do once we were teleported home.

Yesterday I pressed the button.

I had been on mother watch which is never my favourite job - 24 hours down below
preparing meals and hot drinks for 15 people for the day. It's pretty dull at the
best of times and a particularly miserable sea-state made it even harder than
normal. Usually, the boat is at a fairly fixed angle one side or the other. On that
basis you stack up all the things likely to fly around on the lower side of the
galley safe in the knowledgte that they can't fall down. This makes life a little
easier. Yesteday we had rough seas swaying from one side to the other. This made for
most of the day being spent picking up things from the floor - like bread dough
while trying to make bread, like lamb stew while trying to serve it etc etc. This
really wasn't fun. I had also (schoolboy error) offered to try to make yorkshire
puddings to accompany said stew - depsite managing down expectations, there was
boat-wide disappointment when I couldn't manage the feat due to no cooking oil and
an oven that wouldn't stay lit. Meanwhile, above deck, our 3rd place feels like it
is starting to slip away to a relentless NY boat slowly closing us down. We hoisted
our spinnaker (largest sail) and within 5 minutes had wrapped it and torn it on the
way back down - this was a huge setback to our race. A couple of minutes later the
stew pot once again lunged at the floor. I turned away, opened the glass protective
box and pressed the Dorothy Button. I had had enough.

In the real world this was merely a lot of cursing followed by cleaning up the mess
again, grinning and bearing it until dinner was finshed and then going to bed. This
morning after a good sleep and great boat speeds overnight I'm back on track. As
I've said before, in rough conmditions the best job on the boat is helming so not
doing it for 36 hours really takes away the fun factoir. I'm back up on deck in a
couple of hours and itching to get going in favourable 50 knot winds (90kmph) with
huge boat speeds being recorded. We've about 7 days to go till San Fran and are
still for now holding off NY in the race for 3rd. It would be just lovely to see
them give up just a little ground and allow us to enjoy the run in but they seem
unwilling to cooperate. So it remains a tense few days where any serious mistake
will cost us our much coveted podium place.