As two of sailing’s leading ladies, Dee Caffari and her co skipper Anna Corbella are the ones to watch in this year’s Barcelona World Race. While most people might think that sailing the world once is quite enough, this is not the British yachtswoman’s first taste of globetrotting – far from it.

As she puts her experience and passion to the test as a part of the only all-female crew in the around-the-world yacht race that spans three months and 25,000 miles, the 37-year-old record-breaker will be blogging exclusively for Sportsister – sharing the highs and lows of life at sea.

Read her second blog below and look out for her next gripping post in 2 weeks.You can find out more about Dee and the Barcelona World Race in our interview. Just click here ^[1].

8th February 2011

At five weeks into the Barcelona World Race we have only recently escaped the clutches of the South Atlantic and headed into the not so loving arms of the Southern Ocean. Although this is my fourth experience of the Southern Ocean as part of a round the world voyage, I am not sure the know-how I have gathered on previous races will be a great deal of help this time since the presence of ice has forced the race organisers to move the ice gates further north for safety reasons which has greatly altered the weather patterns we would normally encounter.

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Read related features:

Sailing: Dee Caffari’s exclusive Barcelona World Race blog ^[2] - part one

Sailing: Leading lady Caffari begins Catalan adventure ^[3]

Sailing: Caffari makes history ^[4]

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I do not think I have ever before sailed upwind in the Southern Ocean (heading in this direction anyway) and I can confirm that it sucks. The IMOCA Open 60’s we are sailing are built for speed and definitely not for comfort! With the winds reaching 30 knots and the deck continually under a deluge of spray and waves, it is uncomfortable, wet and pretty miserable as we huddle in the cold or crawl around the deck like giant babies. To add to our woes, poor Anna was pretty sea sick last week leaving her incapacitated and me sailing the boat alone at times. Sea sickness is an occupational hazard for anyone who spends time on the ocean and when it strikes can be extremely debilitating. Thankfully we are now into a downwind stretch so life onboard is less bumpy and violent and we can once again enjoy one of our few comforts….food!

When the conditions are harsh we do sneak in the odd extra treat to keep spirits up. Typically our food intake is made up of freeze dried meals and although these come in a surprisingly wide variety of flavours, our ‘just add water’ version of chicken curry is not quite as tasty as a cheeky little take away from your local Indian restaurant. We bolster these meals with regular snacks to keep our energy levels up and these are a bit more exciting…some of our particular favourites being chocolate filled pancakes, Haribo sweets and Spanish ham. We have some dried and pureed fruit which helps keep us regular, but not too regular as there is only so much the bucket onboard can take. We did have an extra special treat on my birthday a couple of weeks ago as someone had secreted two chocolate steam puddings in our food bag. Bliss!

Having a birthday at sea is quite a strange experience as you end up sharing the day with so many more people than you would normally. I had messages from all the other skippers in the race, supporters, friends, family and I even heard that a picture of me with my birthday card made the front page of one of the Sunday papers. Present wise it is probably not that easy to buy for someone who has limited space and time, so I am very easily pleased when it comes to birthday offerings. Clean pants are always a bonus for offshore sailors, however, my boyfriend came up trumps when he stashed an e reader onboard. Wow – how amazing are they? Perfect for offshore sailing when paper has a tendency to get a bit moist; smudged and curly pages are not a good look. I christened my new present by reading The Defector by Mark Chisnell, which was awesome.

Typically when reaching the Southern Ocean we would expect to ride the express train along the south and those in front have the potential to speed away from the rest of the pack. However, with the weather creating these stop start conditions it will create a concertina effect. Similar to some aspects of air travel; like when everyone leaps out of their seat the moment the seatbelt signs go off yet we all still have to wait for the plane doors to open to actually get off? Then there is the next mad rush for passport control only to join all the same faces at baggage reclaim while we all wait for our belongings to turn up….at pretty much the same time.

The positives for Anna and I are that it could give us an opportunity to close the gap on rivals which will make for interesting viewing for you and stressful sailing for us. It does mean that, for the entire fleet, this race is going to take longer than we anticipated and I am already counting down the days until I can see my boyfriend and dog again. Still – what a great incentive to push harder and get this boat going super fast all the way to the finish.

Reader question: What has been your scariest experience whilst out at sea?

“My scariest experience was when I was on the Aviva Challenge sailing around the world against the winds and currents. I had a pretty tough time in the Southern Ocean encountering some terrible weather systems and it was at the end of a week of bad storms when Aviva’s (my yacht) mast was struck by lightning, damaging my wind instruments. I thought that the storm had subdued enough for me to climb the mast and, being that I suffer vertigo anyway; I psyched myself up for the climb.

“At about 60 ft I realised that the swell was too great for me to carry out any repairs so I decided to call it a day and come back down. My climbing gear had jammed and I could not change from ascending to descending so I ended up being stuck up there for an hour and a half, being thrown around like a rag doll as the sea state became increasingly violent. That was probably one of the most frightening moments – looking down at the boat from way up there and realising that if I couldn’t get myself down, there really was no one else to help me and there was no way I could even let anyone know I was in trouble. I kept trying to free myself and eventually I managed to un jam the gear and get down to the deck. I was bruised, battered and shaken but have lived to tell the tale!”

Dee Caffari, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine

You can follow Dee and Anna’s progress on-board GAES Centros Auditivos at www.barcelonaworldrace.org ^[5] or find out more about Dee at www.deecaffari.co.uk ^[6]