How long was I going to be submerged in the water ? ... gone off on a strop!

These past few days have been eventful and so much has happened. Every watch we have been working hard, wrestling sails down when the wind builds suddenly and helming in difficult conditions. The other day the wind built over the morning and we had to hoist our storm jib and later our Yankee 3, it was incredibly cold and the sea state was progressively getting larger with waves washing over the side every few minutes, hail and snow squalls passing over regularly. We decided to split our watches into two teams of three and swap out in half hour rotations; The off going three sitting below deck to warm up and the other three sailing the boat through the rough conditions. By the evening the weather had reached its peak with waves around 9 meters high and wind strength between 50-60 knots.

My watch was reaching the end of its shift and I was handing over the helm to Stephen. I was attached to a helming strop which is attached to the high side of the boat while Stephen was tethered by his safety line to a jackstay between the two helms. All of a sudden the sheet of the Yankee snapped and then somehow the boat rounded up due to being hit by a large wave; The high side where I was standing then became the low side and became inverted in the water, before I could grab hold of anything the waves washed me over the side and I was hanging from the strop off the back end of the boat, my first thoughts were how long was I going to be submerged in the water and when the boat returned back to its original side and I was out of the water I tried to climb back inboard before it went back in again. The time from when I went over to the time when Claire and Matt were able to reach me seemed to take for ages but they managed to pull me in within half a minute. Apart from being a bit shocked and cold I was fine. I was taken downstairs while all hands on deck was called, the rest of the crew spent the next hour pulling down the Yankee 3 as the clew that the sheets had been attached to had ripped off, thankfully everyone returned safely and successfully.

Not long afterwards I heard about the MOB on Derry~Londonderry~Doire, and it made me realise how incredibly lucky I was, the crew member was in the water for an hour and a half while his crew searched for him. What was going through his head, the crew's and skipper's head at the time is hard to think about, but they did an amazing job retrieving him under the difficult conditions. I was still attached to the boat but that short time over the side made me realise how important it is to clip on, I was very lucky and everyone is relieved that the crew member of Derry~Londonderry~Doire is recovering well.

Now it's back to normal racing, we are taking what the weather is throwing at us and hopefully it will around 8 days before we arrive in to San Francisco, we just hope to get back the miles we lost on the fleet and race.