Team SCA in the Volvo Ocean Race - Day 20 - A monumental day

Three weeks ago it was the eve of the start my friends took me for one last ice cream and I couldn’t figure out if I was nervous or not nervous. I felt calm, and it felt like I shouldn’t be calm—I felt like I should be really nervous, that my butterflies should be massive but the reality was I didn’t even have them.   I asked my boss if I should be nervous. “No, you are prepared. Tomorrow you should have little butterflies, but that’s it.” And she was right—I was packed and prepared , there was nothing left to do but go.

 

BIG nerves, the kind you lose sleep over, stem from lack of preparedness—boxes left unchecked and lists unfinished. But as a team we had checked all the boxes, weighed all the bags, and looked at everything twice. We were ready we just had to go. We reached the point of needing to go because there had been so much build up, so much hype, so much talk about leaving, that we just needed to go race. We didn’t need that figurative “one more day.” We just needed October 11.

Twenty days ago, the idea of being at sea for twenty days was a bit daunting. Twenty days without a shower, twenty days without a run, twenty days with only a few changes of clothes. Twenty days without ice cream, steak, nor spinach.

“Here we are twenty days into it. On day 3 it was really like holy cow, we still have a long way to go, but now it’s 20 days. It helps really being in the moment, one day at a time,” Sally said.

Sally is right. Out here, it really is one day at a time. It’s one “sked” (aka position report) at a time. It’s sailing with the conditions you have, and doing the ultimate best with them. It’s not thinking about day 26 and preparing the sails and boat for day 26 because then you’ll be slow. Our here, you have to deal with today.

In the next few days, the race could become anyone’s race again. We could get handed some luck (finally) with the wind Gods. The boats in front could not catch on to the Low pressure in the Southern Ocean they are hoping for. The ice gates race control has put into place could change the whole race in the last five days. We are not kidding when we say: it still is anyone’s race.