Brainstorm - Seamen hospitality at the courtesy of Godet

The first days on board the Rhapsodie have been tremendously fun and warm. The elaborate morning check-ins by both misses and mister Godet (how was your night, how do you feel, are you still ok about what happened, how do you think Menno is really doing?) have changed more to the regular festive: Bonjournee, how did you sleep, thee or caffee?! JJ keeps referring to us as his sons when younger, taking his boat, but stopped reminiscing how dreadful this must have been for Hans, ashore, when getting the nightmare call.

Instead we notice that the Godet’s and Philippe held themselves -and the Rhapsodie- back the first days. Yes we had some calms and squalls but the gears weren’t rocket out with the potential cock out. The same goes for the hidden treasures aboard, from story’s in mind as well as the physical guestbooks dating back to ‘71!

Guestbook story of the day, log date the 3rd of Oktober ‘75, Cabrera island dans Balearen. Back in the day there was not a lot of sailing going on over there and the island was actually patrolled or used as exercise grounds by the Spanish navy. Anchorage was forbidden which made it the perfect spot, JJ thought.. It didn’t take long for a small navy boat to arrive and board the Rhapsodie III. A sergeant told them to leave immediately but agreed to a cognac as JJ kept insisting before he explained why they were there. One drink turned into a couple as he explained they wanted to visit the little French graveyard on Cabrera, left by the military during their hasty retreat from Egypt -under Napoleon- with many deaths at sea. The sergeant agreed to their stay, but later returned with the general.. He was interested in the story as well but moreover in the quality of the cognac’s aboard in exchange for a prolonged stay. The night turned out to be a ball of a cognac tasting and storytelling, leaving some very poor yet interesting guest drawings with 2 barely readable Spanish notes.

Sailing story of the day: the fastnet race of ‘79. Philippe was captain of his Standvast with Jean Marie and JJ as part of the 9 headed crew. It was one of the most disastrous regatta’s in history as two storm systems met, 6 hours into the race around the rock. The swell is told to have been over 10 meters with eye cutting winds in between. As most participating yachts were bare boats (without side guard railings for the crew to hold or hold them in) and life vests weren’t in style yet it didn’t take long for the mayday, mayday’s to come in. 25 souls were lost that day, many of the Standvast crew never sailed again and Philippe never partook in another Fastnet. JJ on the other hand kept doing them and has the first prize of ‘13 to show for it. Hanging here in the living room of the Rhapsodie.

It goes to say we are in good company as well as good sailing hands here. As the trade winds finally seem to be picking up to the pace in the ARC flyer (putain la merde), so does the crew to their resume. Yesterday we stared with the butterfly (or scissors or milk maiden set-up) true Atlantic crossing style with the code-0 and jib on the pole. Followed by the gennaker, back to the code-0 and main sheet, the butterfly, gennaker and a risk adverse yet speedy night setup of the poled out jib and half main as we just had a squall after sunset.

At 1am I woke to an extremely happy Philippe; it was the first night he was able to wake me with his gentle touch. The nights before he always had to ask Menno to do this, so now I was asked to wake him as surprise. Just as I passed the radio there was an official call over the radio: Rhapsodie, Rhapsodie do you copy over? My heart skipped a beat as I looked Philippe in the eyes. You take it, might just be your friends, he said. A weird conversation followed; yes this is the Rhapsodie, over. Great this is Damien, are you happy with your course? No idea Damien: I’ve just woken. Ok well you guys are heading straight for us and we don’t have our top light on so please be aware. Ok well can you turn some lights on? Sure if you adjust course 5 degrees south. Ok Damien over and out. Still sleep drunk I told Jean Marie to adjust our course, geared up, woke Menno and got a happy handover from Jean Marie. 15 to 20 knots all shift with no rain: it must be the trade winds! (Running joke as “the flyer says you have down-winds from the Canaries to Cape Verde and then ditto from the trade winds to the Caraïben: we have had none..).

The shift that followed was exciting but strange. We were catching up with a certain Damien however they were going extremely slow. We hoped nothing was wrong and believed so otherwise they would have said something. Right? But it’s also strange to ask: why are doing so poor? At the end we passed them with just half a nautical mile in between: how can we keep ending up so close to other boats in an ocean crossing?!