Perham looking forward to downwind conditions
Sailing schoolboy Mike Perham, 16, is off the coast of Brazil and heading south for the ‘the running conditions that Totallymoney.com and I excel in’ .
In his latest blog he gave a flavour of life on board the Open 50 he is sailing solo, hoping to become the youngest non-stop circumnavigator:
‘I started the day with my routine through check of the boat. This consists of checking over every piece of deck equipment, walking to the bow and back on both sides of Totallymoney.com, checking all the rigging. This is followed with a careful look inside, checking the aft compartment and the forward sail locker.
Every couple of days I venture into both the watertight compartments forward of the sail locker, looking for cracks in any of the carbon for anything that shouldn’t be there!
Today, all was clear and I came back and started having a good tidy and organised the inside of Totallymoney.com with the stereo on. Typical teenager’s bedroom some might say! A towel and clothes were draped over the chart table seat, a few bags were running around on the floor and the rubbish bin was packed to the brim.
I’m pleased to report all of this has now been tidied away in their respective places on board, and there’s a nice new and clean feel about the boat. I had the chance this afternoon to sit outside on the beanbag where I spent a long time eating lunch; it stays hot for ages inside the freeze-dried packets so I can even leave it for half an hour and then come back to it.
Also today I’ve rigged up a new way of holding the laptop I use for my routing firmly in place and have made a foam cushion for it. This means that if I gybe unexpectedly then the laptop isn’t going to go flying across to the cabin to a not so pleasant death!
Progress south has been good and steady which I’m pleased about, and we seem to be making good time for the upwind conditions.
I pressed a button on the autopilot today and the damn thing switched off and reset itself again. Maybe I just won’t touch it from now on and will somehow sail around the world 50-55degrees off the wind! Somehow I don’t think this will happen though!
Apart from that, Totallymoney.com and I totally in the swing of things now and we’re both more happy and relaxed than we’ve ever been on our adventure so far.’