Toddling to Tenerife

A Near-Perfect Passage

The voyage from Quinto do Lorde, Madeira to Santa Cruz de Tenerife was just brilliant! Perfect wind angle for a broad reach*, so on a single port tack we covered 266nm in 48 hours and 9 minutes (average of 5.5 knots, not bad for a weighty lady like Doris) – poetry in motion, the near-perfect passage. 

Yet, as I watched Dave stagger up the companionway,** clutching his lunch in a plastic bowl, then sway into his seat, automatically reaching out to brace his foot against the table, it occurred to me that our definition of ‘perfection’ isn't really normal adult behaviour. Being a sailor means living a bit like a toddler - see explanation below!

Non-sailor translations:

*Broad reach: wind coming from behind you so the boat stays level enough you don’t spill your G&T, but not so directly behind you that you risk an accidental gybe***

***Accidental gybe: when the wind coming from directly behind you catches the sail and sweeps it across to the other side of the boat. It wouldn’t be too bad, except it turns the heavy bit at the bottom of the sail (the boom) into a battering ram that smashes across the cockpit where you’re sitting, potentially doing significant damage like knocking the G&T out of your hand!

**Companionway: stairs from the inside of the boat to the outside – honestly, sailors are the only people I know who are worse than medics at complicated naming of everyday things!

10 reasons Sailors are just Toddlers in grown-up bodies

1. You cannot get anywhere on the boat whilst at sea without toddling! It’s true, and the worse the conditions, the more like a little person learning to walk you become. A wide-based gait develops to cope with the constant movement and you hold onto the furniture to get anywhere. When a surprise wave hits, you grab at anything – occasionally misjudging it and bringing everything you reached for down on top of you.

2. You eat your lunch from a plastic bowl with a spoon, often spilling it in the process. Occasionally, whilst going about your daily business, said lunch dramatically re-appears (hopefully downwind). You accept all this as completely normal.

3. You regularly wear a natty all-in-one waterproof outfit that zips up at the front (known as oilies) because you absolutely must go out in the sort of wet weather that keeps sensible adults in by the fire! 

4. You’re wide awake in the early hours of the morning playing with ropes and watching out for ‘big boats’ on the horizon. You then have to sleep for half the day to make up for it.

5. Getting dressed often turns into an exercise in stamina and endurance as if you have never done it before. I have been known to brace my head against the wall to just pull up my trousers.

6. Visiting the toilet can be traumatic and take way longer than is normal for a continent adult. And don’t get me started on the experience of sliding off the seat mid-process!

7. There are strict rules which must be obeyed whether you like them or not, such as not being outside without your lifejacket. You’re also not trusted to be out on your own after dark without being tied in - when we do night watches, we clip ourselves into the cockpit with a 3-point harness, effectively giant ‘baby reins’.  

8. You fall out of bed if you don’t have a special restraining mechanism on the side (lee cloths) to prevent it happening.

9. You have your own special language: the bathroom is called the “heads”, the kitchen the “galley”, and when you turn the boat through the wind it’s called a  “tack” during which you shout things like “helm a lee” and “lee ho”.

10. Most importantly, little things like a dolphin showing up to play in the bow wave makes you shout excitedly to everyone to “come look!” They do, and you share an inexplicably beautiful moment filled with pure, unadulterated joy, then go to bed that afternoon smiling. 

However, on arriving in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the crew of Doris celebrated in a very non-Toddler way – rum all round!