I'M ALIVE!!!! It has been a long trip, 29 days at sea and a category 2 hurricane, we finally made it. I cannot explain how weird it is to go for a month without seeing land, and only once did we see another boat. We're in Suva, Fiji, until next tuesday before sailing to Port Vila, Vanuatu. We have a lot of work to do to get us ready, our steering is shot and we need sails repaired, plus buying enough food for the trip! Tomorrow I'm renting a car to drive around the island. Can't wait to explore!

Sailing is incredible, everything I hoped it would be. I absolutely LOVE it! We had 2 beautiful days sailing up the coast of NZ, from the west coast, through Cooks Pass, and then up the east coast. We had dolphins swimming on our bow for the first 2 days, which was completely magical! In the evening of the 2nd day we hit a small gale, the seas got pretty rough and I got seasick. I spent the next 3 days in my bunk, I was so sick that my only relief was to lay flat on my back. If I sat up, I puked. I tried to come up on deck but I would invariably end up laying on the bench with my head on someone's lap. It was terrible staying in my bunk for days on end, too much like being in a coffin. I barely even noticed the storm, I was so wrapped up in my own suffering. I ate almost nothing for 4 days, and drank very little water. On Saturday, the 4th day, Kat, my watch captain, flung the curtains to my bunk open at dawn and announced "Lisa, girl! You are going to eat this muesli, all of it, and you are going to stay in your bunk for 4 hours, until you have digested it. Understand?" Now, Kat is great. She has a great sense of humour, she knows everything about sailing, but she is also a very stern young German. East German, if you ask her. Anyway, I did as I was told, and spent the next 2 hours attempting to eat and the next 4 laying, digesting my food.

By the time I came out of my bunk the gale had passed, and I was so weak from the seasickness that I could barely get up the ladder onto the deck, and could only stand for a few minutes at a time before I was completely exhausted. But the seasickness passed and I felt fine for the rest of the trip! By this time we were out of sight of land, and wouldn't see it for over 3 weeks again until we were a day away from Fiji. Saturday I spent eating and resting. I brushed my teeth for the first time in 4 days.

The next day I was on watch at 8am. The seas got rough again, the wind had picked up. That days weather said a low pressure system from Antarctica was coming up from the south. I put on another layer of clothes and my foul weather gear. The weather got really bad really fast. The winds were up to 50+ knots, and the waves were 5-6 metres, and breaking over the rail onto the deck. We were standing knee-deep in water for minutes at a time. THe raim was blowing so hard into our faces that it hurt. The ship was rocking way over, back and forth, dipping the rails into the water on each side. Still quite weat, it was all I could do to keep myself seated on the bench, with my left arm hooked around the hand rail and my right hand grasping my right wrist. Kat was having the time of her life at the helm, a death-grip on the wheel, a huge smile on her face and eyes gleaming. When Evan, the skipper, came up on deck at 11:30, he immediately told us to heave-to (lock the steering). We were swinging around wildly, and the winds were even stronger. We locked down all the hatches and staggered below. Kat stayed on deck with Evan and Jared, our 1st mate. Shortly thereafter we were all told to stay below, not to come on deck for any reason. The boat was leaing over on a 45 degree angle. The deck was continuously under water and there was a real danger of being swept overboard. We sat in the galley and watched the waves break over the galley windows, 15 feet above the water line. THe storm that had hit us was actually 3 low pressure systems that had converged directly over us. Winds were up to 90 knots.

The 4 experienced sailors, Evan, Kat, Jared and Sean, stayed up on deck. The rest of us found different ways to deal with our fear. Sharky played his mandolin in his mandolin. Robert prayed on his knees for hours in his cabin, one hand folded in prayer and the other clutching his bunk for balance. 5 of us sat together in the salon, huddled on the settee eating jard of peanut butter and nutella with spoons, watching the water cascade back and forth across the skylights in the deck above us. At about 4:30pm the boat heeled way over so that we were now standing upright on the walls of the ship. Everybody froze and held their breath as the ship paused, laying at 90 degrees in the water. A very long several seconds later she heeled back to port. It was a total relief! We all knew that she could have kept going over and we would have capsized. We found out after the storm that at that moment, more than half the deck was underwater, including the base of the masts.

Minutes later Jared came crashing through the galley hatch and down the steps into the salon, hollered "Is everybody here? Good! Grab a lifejacket and stand by to abandon ship!" and ran back up on deck. We all launched across the salon, grabbed life jackets, then settled back on the settee, and waited, but we never got the order to abandon the ship. After dark when Kat shouted that Evan wanted to have a meeting with all of us. Evan looked concerned. He told us that this was one of the 3 worst storms he had seen in 30 + years of sailing. He said we should be okay, as long as we don't loose a mast. We rehearsed the emergency proceedures we had learned our first day out. Then he told us that the toilet for the duration of the storm was a bucket lashed to the bench in the tool room. Because we couldn't go up on deck, and the head is only accessible from deck, we had been using the engine room bilge as our urinal for most of the day. Our new toilet bucket was in full view of the salon, engine room and chart room, until the 3rd day when someone put a sheet up to shield it. We were to stay below, said Evan, and stay safe while the other 4 took turs on deck.

No one slept that night. The rocking of the ship, violent during the height of the storm, rolled us from one side of our bunks to the other. The only way to stay still was to wedge myself up against the steel wall of my bunk with all my clothes, blanket and pillow. During one violent lurch, 3 people were flung clear out of their bunks. Tom was ejected out of his top bunk, hit the salon table, rolled off it onto the floor, hitting the bench on his way down, and then slid across the floor to the opposite side of the boat. He's lucky he didn't break anything!

I was the only person not suffering from seasickness during the storm (apparently I had gotten it out of my system!) so the duty to cook for everyone fell on me, and Kat helped when she wasn't on deck. Cooking in the galley when the ship is rocking back and forth is incredibly difficult. The floors are varnished wood, which becomes very slippery when wet. To top it off, a bottle of peanut butter burst open and leaked oil all over the floor, turning it into an oil slick. The only way to stay put was to open a drawer on each side of my hips, wedge myself in between them, and lean on the counter to keep my balance. To get across the galley from the sink on the port side to the stove on the starboard side, it was impossible to walk. So I would hang onto the sink, wait for the boat to roll to starboard, then let go, slide across until I hit the wall, and quickly wedge myself behind the stove. Kat became an expert on the slide-and-wedge technique, and could do it with a huge pot of soup without spilling a drop. She would shout "Incoming!" at me, then slide over while I scrambled out of the way.

Chopping veggies was also a challenge, because as soon as I chopped them they would roll off the cutting board and dissapear somewhere on the floor. So veggies had to be chopped directly over the pot, knife in hand, hips wedged between drawers, then slid over to the sink to add water, then to the stove to cook them. And just to make things things very interesting, tins and jars found ways to escape their very secure storage places and become projectiles when I wasn't looking. While cooking dinner and listening to Sharky play his mandolin, a stainless-steel thermos broke free of its holder and launched itself like a missile right at Sharky's head. Sharky ducked and the thermos bonged off the wall behind him, and he never even missed a note of his song. I collapsed on the floor laughing hysterically for several minutes, sliding back and forth on the peanut-oil covered floor, completely unhinged by the stress and fear.

On the third day the storm finally dissipated enough for us to come up on deck. That morning showed us how lucky we really were. We had lost 5 sails. The inner-jib was in 3 pieces, the stay sail was missing entirely. The fore and main gaff sails were damaged but repairable. We had lost hundreds of metres of line. Ropes were all over the deck tangled together and around everything. The steering was broken, and the netting under the bowsprit was shredded. Everything below decks was soaked, including my bunk. Bilge water had splashed up the sides and soaked everything. Food was everywhere in the galley and the salon. A container full of trail mix had opened and scattered over all the ship. About a dozen milk containers were everywhere. A bottle of white vinegar had open and spilled directly into the 1st mates bunk. And of course, there was peanut oil all over everything in the galley. Evan did manage to repair the steering enough for us to get moving, and we untangled the lines, re-led line through the rigging, and took down the sails .

It took us 2 days to repair everything enough for us to continue, though we had been actually heading north during the storm, which had blown us sideways at 6.5 knots. We were all a mass of bruises and cuts, but luckily there were no really serious injuries. We found out later that the storm had been classified as a category 2 hurricane and that it had claimed the lives of 2 families on a smaller yacht 60 miles from us. If the crew hadn't been as experienced as they were we would not have made it out of the storm alive.

So that was my introduction to the life of sailing deep sea!!! The rest of the trip was great, after the storm the weather got better and we could stop the boat and swim in the warm blue sea! And during watch, late at night, Kat and I would pick out constellations in the sky and look at the milky way. I started learning the guitar, as well as all the things I need to know to sail.

Must sign off, running out of time. Tomorrow I'm renting a car with another crew member and driving around the island, very excited to go exploring! We leave in 5 days. I will try to get my pics onto the internet by then!

Ciao!