Quartermaster Olivier Rouvillois is in a groove
“Every morning, after a fantastic breakfast, I flip through my cookbooks, think about what we’re going to eat that day, stick some Post-it notes on the day’s recipes, and then I head down into the hold where we store the food. I always start with fruits and vegetables. It’s pitch black, I’m crawling around with my headlamp on, and I have to check over the produce and pick out the good stuff. Then everything has to be cleaned, and I separate out what we’re going to use that day. Part of my job is helping the chef out by prepping the ingredients for the two meals we cook every day.
Fruit and vegetable on board
Today was our Engineer Martin Gavériaux’s turn to cook. I marked the recipes for him, and then he got to work. He whipped up a wonderful crisp salad and a mouth-watering sauté: we all pronounced it worthy of a gourmet restaurant!”
Martin, top chef of the day and his guests
After two weeks at sea, we check in with Mate Anne Le Chantoux
“Sometimes I dream that I’m on land. I guess that subconsciously, I miss it, but at the same time it’s amazing to be surrounded by blue water. Crossing the Atlantic is such a great opportunity, maybe once in a lifetime, so I’m trying to make the most of every day!”
The sea
“Our sense of time seems to be changing too. It’s already been two weeks since we left Funchal, Madeira and set our course for Bermuda. But it feels a lot longer. Crossing the Atlantic on Race for Water is a slow process, but I knew that before we left. But I’m realizing that you can’t really conceptualize how long an expedition will take until it’s already underway. Annelore (First Mate Annelore Le Duff) told me that she felt the same way when she went to Australia. When you look at it on a map, of course you see that the ocean is huge. But the reality doesn’t sink in until you start traveling for miles and miles at a relatively slow pace.
Pascal, captain of the ship and Martin, engineer in the light of night
Then there’s the feeling of being totally alone. We’ve seen maybe four or five ships since we left Funchal, and I was really expecting that we’d see more. Sometimes dolphins swim up alongside the hulls and keep us company for a while, and we’ve had a few flying fish land on the solar panels (unfortunately they have a hard time taking off again).
Solar panels
On board Race for Water, our schedule is pretty similar to when we were in port, getting the boat ready to leave…just in slow motion. We have a list of everyone’s chores, we have to keep things in order on the ship, and we have a chart where we rotate jobs to keep “family” life going on board. Morale is good; we’re happy and we keep each other motivated.
I’ve been working a lot with Olivier (Quartermaster Olivier Rouvillois) on getting things organized and making the most of our space. We’ve set up shelving so that we can store the kites and pods, and we’ve worked on the lab so that the scientists can make the most of the space that we have for them. And we’ve worked on lots of other things too!”
Another sunset