Aegir Day 4

The Fall Out! (Warning: contains toilet humour!)

Toilets and boats, a match made in hell and something that has become a theme of ego disaster especially in my career of offshore racing, and this race has not disappointed in that department. So our water-maker is not working and we're racing a superyacht who's toilets rely on fresh water to electric flush out ones business. The fall out from this, when your water tank is empty and your water-maker is not working......well..... you get the picture!  It reminds me of a similar, yet different situation during the last Volvo Ocean Race when not enough poo bags had been packed for the leg, (this is a racing yacht with no flushing toilet, so you do your business in a bag and eject the paper bag out in the most dramatic or inconspicuous way, character dependent). The similarities are that both incidents require you to get ingenious with ways of going to the toilet and how to flush a non-co-operating specimen down the toilet.  The number of trips to the back of the boat to collect a bucket of seawater will generally scale the level of non-cooperation of said specimen.  But oh, the emotions, the stories, the humour, the jokes; they remain the same on any of the races I have completed involving toilet mishaps.  And the fact that we are on a plush, 4 toileted yacht with faux marble and veneer interiors, with air conditioning only ads to the bizarre predicament of the toilet misdemeanors!

Despite this, we are all still smiling and managing to see the funny side! 

Abby Ehler