And what did you eat?

What did we eat?

Lots!

For breakfast we did a "help yourself".

We would simply rig up something either before or when coming off watch at a time that suited yourself.

Breakfast would be oats or muesli, coffee or tea and if you wanted, some fruit juice.

During the morning we would snack away at whatever we laid our eyes on.

Lunchtime was an organised set meal. Tinned tuna, ham, cheese, pickles etc. Or a quick snack boil in a bag meal if it was cold weather. And crackers and spreads, rounded off with canned fruit and custard.

It is very hot in the Trades over noon and we have found from previous trips that lunches can be kept simple and small.

During the afternoon the sun would beat down heavily and the wind tended to drop in strength.

You then tended to drink vast amounts of water. We took onboard about 70 litres of bottled water and also some lime juice. Going onto an afternoon watch we would then rig up a litre of water and lime drink. And sip away at it. Keeping well hydrated was important and made life in the tropics a pleasure.

Come late afternoon we would aim for an early dinner and have the dishes cleaned away before sunset.

I wanted to take a beer a day for the race but Jeremy said it was going to make us lethargic. So I skipped the idea and just took a small container of white wine for sundowner/ dinner time.

Dinners. Tanya made us 4 pre-cooked dinners which she froze. These meals were individually packed and carefully wrapped in newspaper for added insulation. They were then transferred into a coolbox filled to the brim with iced bottles of drinking water.

We therefore had nice dinners for 4 of our 9 nights at sea.

Our routine was to get the meal out of the coolbox quickly and shut the lid. No other scratching inside the coolbox allowed. This kept the food frozen or very cold for five days.

Tanya's meals were beef stews, mexican food and curries. What I call nice boat food. The meal simply had to be heated and we would cook rice or a pasta to go with it.

For the remaining days we had tinned meats and veggies. Some of these meals were better than others.

The galley onboard Banjo is "compact". A single burner gas stove, a small s/s sink and plenty of lockers for the everyday stuff. Washing up was done in a plastic bowl in the cockpit.

We carefully rationed the fruitcake my Mom had given us. It just lasted the duration of the voyage. We took too much sugar, tea, milk and fruit juices.The rest of the stuff was just about polished by the time we crossed the finish line.

All in all it worked well.

One thing I learnt again is that you do not need a fancy boat to have a nice passage. Simple and functional and neat is all that you need. And the cabin must have no leaks.

Next time.......................

a bit about the heads arrangements.

Rewind

Before my memory of the trade winds, the open ocean and the starry nights fade................

Now that we're home,I have been asked a number of questions.

Firstly, how did you get back from St Helena and where is your boat?

We lowered the mast at St Helena. Thanks to Ian Smith and Hayden Daws from Swimlion who came over to assist Jeremy and Jamie and I, the process went smoothly despite the less than ideal conditions. The boat was then taken alongside the mailship RMS St Helena (RMS) and she was hoisted aboard and secured on the forward hatch as deck cargo. As the crane took the weight, we folded her up and thus reduced the overall beam from 7 meters to a mere 2.88 meters.

8 other boats were also loaded onboard for the passage back to Cape Town.

Tanya, James, Rosie and I and Jeremy came back onboard the ship with the majority of the competitors and their families. The trip back was a lot of fun and we celebrated Christmas onboard.

The race families going to St Helena onboard the ship and getting there just before us and then being able to spend about 10 days on the Island with the family is something unique about the Governors Cup.

Coming back with the other teams was also a nice way of really getting to know the others and their families.

Banjo is still standing at a warehouse yard in Table Bay docks. She will be coming home on a lowbed trailer in a weeks time. She is just a bit too wide to be trailed as "normal" i.e 300 mm. too wide.

Wider vehicles are only allowed back on the road after the 17th January.

Just as well we did not sail her back from Cape Town. It's been gale after gale ever since the ship first docked in Cape Town and I have had to get back to my business.

It has been 6 weeks since I first left town to sail down to the start with Jeremy.

Another question I get asked is about Banjo being referred to as a "state of the art racer" by a race commentator.

Well, the Banjo is not state of the art, and is not even a racer.

The boat is simply one of very clever design, very light and was in fact designed as a family cruising boat. It was also designed as a trailer sailor and the designer does not even encourage boats of her design to sail trans-Atlantic!

Banjo had no fancy high tech sails such as used by all hot racing boats. Our sails were all in Dacron as against the Kevlar sails of racing boats.

Banjo also had no electronic wind instruments onboard. This would be unheard of on a racing boat. One competitor referred to "a disaster onboard" when they just temporarily lost power and the use of their wind instruments and navigational aids. Compared to that (and them), the Banjo must have been in disaster mode for the entire race. But we were not, we just kept things simple.

The Banjo also had no specialised spinnakers for the race. No racing boat would ever contemplate sailing an ocean race without highly specialised spinnakers. We sailed with borrowed spinnakers. Not one of our spinnakers were cut according to the designers specs. They were all off boats of a totally different design and therefore really make do. But we are very grateful to the folk who lent us the sails.

So it was more a case of Banjo, a cruising boat giving the racers a run for their money.

In the end what matters most was that we were first boat over the line. Jeremy and I had a great sail, a grand time onboard, ate fantastic meals prepared under atrocious conditions and ate atrocious meals prepared under fantastic conditions. We made lots of friends and just simply, had a lekka time.

More bits and pieces later.