Mireille Day

Of being not moving forward, of being depressed, of being in the one place all the time.

And it was probably around that time that the ship was breaking up.

We were already travelling with a wounded ship.

Breaking up?

What do you mean?

What was happening to the ship?

We were travelling against the winds and the currents and the catamaran doesn't fare well in those conditions, as we found out.

Because it's got that area between the hulls that is somewhat more sensitive, it's above the water, but it kept getting thwacked by waves and the storms and all of this led to the boat starting to break up.

Sometimes you could actually see the seams were starting to part and you could actually see the sea down below.

Oh, my goodness.

The water was coming in the windows as well.

And we kind of got along with it.

You know, when the storm had passed, we would just... The boat was upright.

It never...

never was submerged at any point.

And we just acclimatised ourselves to these gradual deteriorating conditions.

Were you bucketing out water?

That was something we had to do each day, was to empty the bilges and bucketing out water by hand.

We had a pipe as well to do it, but ended up doing that.

It was quite back-breaking work, only to have, you know, like Sisyphus, it all fill up completely.