Black and white

Life onboard a Volvo 70 is very different from day to day, everything depends on the weather and winds.

As a media crewmember, it is more black and white than for the sailors. When it’s windy you are full on. That is the best time to take stills and video and, at the same time, you need to pump the bilge out every hour. That is also the time when the crew really appreciates help with all that, and it includes food and drinks. It is also the most important time to send media material, since everyone on land wants to know how the boats and crews are coping with the heavy conditions.

When it’s calm weather everything is more calm. You still need to take pics and video, but everything is easier and takes less energy since the boat is not rocking like it was an earthquake.  It’s also time to catch up with everything you couldn’t do when it was windy.

But now, this early in the race when I don’t have a massive amount of material from before to deal with, and without the possibility to send video due to the satellites being unavailable, I am pretty much living in luxury. I still take photos and do video and editing, to have material to send when the satellites gets back in business on the 24th. But there is no stress.

This morning was really a luxury one. We had around 16 knots of wind and almost flat water. The boat was behaving calm and controlled and there was no water to bilge out.

I had a six hour nice sleep. Woke up at five and made porridge for the guys, as usual. Then I indulged myself with some muesli with pieces of fresh orange and pear. We still have some fruit onboard and it is a fantastic fresh contrast to the freeze-dried stuff. After that I ‘worked from home’ a couple of hours, which means I was sitting in my bunk with the laptop in my lap.

Quite a contrast to the days before when the boat was rocking constantly doing between 20 and 36 knots in up to 40 knots of winds. You really have to enjoy the luxury moments when you get the opportunity.

Gustav Morin - MCM