Many of you know that, behind the very thin façade of a respectable gentleman (so thin that some of you may not even have noticed it!), I’m actually really just a very big 4-year old. As such, a small discovery can keep me enthralled for ages.

Now, as in the real world, there are 24 hours to fill out here. As you may have noticed, the life of an ocean rower is not exactly action-packed. My days normally go something like this:

05.40 Alarm goes off
05.42 I get fed up of the noise and reluctantly swing my arm round to hit snooze
05.50 The alarm goes off a second time - the snooze is once again struck
06.00 The alarm goes off once more

Now, the alarm/snooze rotation has been known to go on for any number of times. However, for the purposes of today, we’ll leave it at twice (which does happen sometimes, honest!).

06.00 I swing myself round, turn on the lights, and clamber into the outside world. I look at the GPS to see my progress, and either thank the wind for its help, or shake my head disapprovingly. After a quick drink and snack, I get ready for my first row of the day
06.10 Having faffed about for 10 minutes, I reluctantly persuade myself that I really can’t go back to bed, and start to row
08.00 As it starts to get light, I take my first break of the day. Breakfast is eaten, suncream is applied, and everything is set-up for the day ahead
09.00-15.00 During this period, I try to fit in 5 hours’ rowing, with one meal and several snacks along the way. Exactly how it works out depends on how I’m feeling and the weather
15.00 Lunch time. By now, the sun is at its strongest, so I take a longer break. It has been known, after stuffing my face full of food, to have a short snooze but, to be honest, it’s normally even hotter inside
16.30-20.00 I try to fit in 3 hours of rowing with a half-hour break, finishing just before the sun goes down
20.00 Prepare and eat my dinner, before tidying up the cabin and wedging myself in to write any emails I’ve got to write and, surprisingly, this - it doesn’t write itself you know!
22.00 After once again going over the argument of whether a bit of extra sleep or a couple of hours rowing would be more beneficial, I drag myself back outside for 2 hours of night-time rowing
00.00 Thankful that the day is over, I make sure everything is secure before collapsing through the hatch. After my various injuries have been attended to (a growing job), I lie back and fall asleep within seconds

Once you take out the 12 hours (ish) of rowing, 6 hours of sleep (flexi-time seems to occur quite regularly with these two), and cooking/eating (I can get from through the door to having dinner on the table, so to speak, in under 20 minutes - and that includes building the kitchen), it still leaves a bit of time to kill. One way to do that is to fix things, even if nothing needs fixing!

Today, I decided it would be a great idea to have a go at fixing my watch. Yes, the watch that had so frustrated me as I failed to fix it on the stability of dry land was going to be re-attacked on the least stable boat known to man. Obviously, a watch being a precision-engineered instrument, I would need delicate tools. Requiring a thin point, I immediately took out a knife, as I always do. Then, upon remembering that these events are also always accompanied by a blood-spattered dash to a finger bandage, I carefully put the knife to one side and retrieved far more suitable tools for the job: a wood drill bit and vise grip. After a bit of investigation, I concluded that a bit of brute force was all that was required, and with a bit of leverage in the right direction. Having put the watch back together, I couldn’t believe it: not only had I not made the situation worse; not only had I not lost any little fiddly bits; I had actually fixed it!

Buoyed by my success, I bounced outside to get rowing underway. A few minutes in, I was distracted by the most ludicrously cartoon-like rainbow I’d ever seen. Deciding it was worthy of a picture, I jumped back to get the camera and turned it on, only to discover that the rainbow had lost its impressiveness. Slightly dejected, I skulked back to my oars.

Then, a few moments later, I looked to the rainbow again, and it was back in all its glory! I was not going to miss it this time, so with even more haste I got out the camera, only for it to have gone again. Feeling fairly grumpy with the world, I got set for rowing once more. Then I made my discovery.

Sunglasses on. Amazing rainbow. Sunglasses off. Mundane rainbow. Sunglasses on. Amazing rainbow. Sunglasses off. Mundane rainbow. Now, this may seem like a fairly dull thing to have discovered, but out here, it was the highlight of the week - polarised sunglasses make rainbows look fantastic, or can even make them disappear if you tilt your head! I’d always known about this fascinating property they have - it did cause a bit of a problem when I couldn’t work out why my sideways-mounted VHF had a blank screen - but this was brilliant, and I proceeded to spend the next half hour (no, really!) peering at the rainbow through, and over, my sunglasses. I even tried taking a picture through them. Sadly that was to no avail, so you’re stuck with a boring rainbow picture I’m afraid.

Anyway, I’m off to suck my thumb for a while.

(Oh yeah, rowing was OK. Still going in the right direction, weather still a bit dull. It’s all a bit boring really. Playtime is where it’s at!)