Saturday 22 November 2008 19:02
Delta Lloyd – Matt Gregory (Navigator)
“Where am I? I went through the wrong door of the time machine. Beam me up Scottie.” Gerd Jan ‘Johnnie’ Poortman said as he emerged from the companion way onto deck.
A lot of things changed during his four-hour slumber in the bunk.
Sun, warm, nice smoooooth waves, 15 knots of wind. The boat was silently - gently brushing aside a bow wave as we glided along at 14 knots of boat speed.
Fortunately, for me, I’ve had an action-packed day. I’ve been moving the boat through a wind transition zone, like a queen attacking the king on a chess board.
If it weren’t for my busy day I might have been nominated to clean up the ‘super fund’ toxic waste site onboard the Delta Lloyd. Fortunately, I can tell the story in the third person and not the first.
Our boat, for safety reasons is divided up into four sections, each separated by a water tight bulk head. On all of the bulk heads is a door that allows passage from one compartment into the other.
We live in the middle two. There is an aft area that contains all of the steering mechanisms. The forward section, the super fund site, is a completely empty section in the front 20 feet of the bow.
The door from our living compartment into the bow compartment is only two feet square; just big enough for a person to climb into. We use this area for storing trash.
Two days ago, I was sitting in my nav station, holding on for dear life because of the violent motions of the boat, when I noticed two guys making a tremendous commotion in the front of the boat. When I looked up, they said “Hey Matt, get up here. You have to see this”. They were laughing in amusement over something.
When I crawled up to the front of the boat they instructed me to look into the forward compartment and handed me a flashlight. I grabbed the flashlight and poked my arm and my head through the doorway. The sight that I saw was horrible. I lurched back into the living compartment.
My team-mates were laughing hysterically at my reaction. “Oh ... that’s not good ... not good at all,” I said with a chuckle.
The three trash bags that we stored in the bow from the first five days of Leg 2 exploded in the bow of the boat. I’d use a word more dynamic than exploded if I knew of one, because ‘exploded’ does not even come close to being descriptive enough.
Left over food, empty freeze dry packages, tea bags, toilet paper, and candy wrappers were plastered to the walls and ceiling of the bow.
The rest of the trash was floating in a cauldron of cist. Sea water that penetrated the compartment was making the entire scene complete.
From the extreme motion of the boat, this concoction had been shaken around in the front of the boat for three days. The smell was bad. Real bad. We shut the door and decided that it was a problem for a calm day.
Since Scottie beamed us into a parallel universe of calm seas and gentle sailing today, we decided that today was ‘the day’ to clean the bow compartment.
In a couple more days we will be in 100+ degree heat. This is a project that we could not put off until India. ‘Dutch’ Ed and ‘Media Man’ Sander were the brave souls that volunteered to clean it up.
When they went through the two foot by two foot hatch I wasn’t sure that they would ever come back. While they were cleaning, and the door was open.
Going anywhere near the opening in the bulkhead made me choke ... I ran away before I either passed out or vomited. The smell was like nothing I’ve ever smelled before ... It was horrendous.
90 minutes later Sander and Ed emerged from the door in the bow compartment bulk head. Neither seem to be telling many details from their experience up there. I assume that both will suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome for the remainder of the race.
The door to the forward compartment remains shut. I assume that the slurry of sludge has been rebagged into new garbage bags and that ‘all is well’ up there. But I’m also sure that the stench remains.
We’ll keep the door shut until we get to India. I’m sure that seven days of sailing in tropical conditions will turn what ever is still up there into a biology experiment. I’m also sure that I’m going to pretend that that part of the boat does not exist.
Received 19:02 GMT