Official Jessica Watson Blog

It took a round of hot drinks first thing this morning to get any work happening, I’ll never say that it doesn’t get cold on the Sunshine Coast again. Before the sun got high enough, the shed acted as a giant fridge, a cold one too at 2 degrees! Talking of cold, keeping me warm while I’m down south has been a big smoko conversation topic lately. While I’ll not be experiencing severe below freezing conditions because I’ll be rounding Cape Horn (my most southerly point) in the height of summer, cold is a pretty huge issue. Statistics point out that teenagers and females are the first to suffer from exposure.

Believe it or not I’m also not completely crazy and enjoy a bit of comfort. So insulation, sleeping bags, clothing, heating, staying dry and protection from the weather are all important things to be organized. Every sailor knows that not letting yourself get too cold is extremely important because if you do get cold there’s no hot shower in warm up in, nothing heroic about toughing it out, maybe being a softy will come in handy yet?!

We had a bit of disappointing news today when we received the results of the x-ray and testing carried out on the rudder by Pearl Street Testing and Inspection Dad announced the bad news that the rudder shaft was badly corroded with a fracture in the weld and just to top it off, it was full of close to 5L of sea water . Definitely not a rudder that’s ready to take on the world! Our first reactions were dam, another job that needs doing. Then it started sinking in, imagine if I’d set off with the rudder in this condition! Apparently left as it was, the corrosion would have gone crazy while I sailed through the tropics, not leaving me in very good shape for the southern ocean. Certainty nice to know now on dry land and it really showed us again why we’re putting all this effort into the refit. “That’s why we’re here” as Bruce said.

While all the hands-on work to the refit is practically 24/7 another thing that is extremely time consuming is researching, tracking down, making decisions on and organizing all the equipment needed, down to every nut and bolt. Today alone for the little time I spent getting my hands dirty I’m not proud to say that I went through quite a number of knife blades meaning that if I kept going at this rate I’d need to dedicate half the boat to storing blades! Can you imagine planning out every single thing that you’ll need for 230 days and fitting it into a 34ft yacht?

I couldn’t imagine having got through today alone without Mums sandwiches, Dads persistence (he’s determined to turn the boat into a battle ship) Rods attitude problem , Suzanne, Hayden and Murray’s hard work, Andrew for straightening out everything I seem to mess up, Bruce’s total dedication and that’s just to name a very few, there’s a million other people putting in some hard work. Some solo voyage, thanks team!!

Everyday there’s a million ups and downs (maybe that’s just part of being a teenager??)It’s certainly a challenge, I’m constantly telling myself that this isn’t meant to be easy but 10 minutes later and from another angle nothing ever looks so bad.

There’s lots more hard work planned so you can be sure that I’ll be excusing myself to blog more often!

Jessica