Tin Tin's Sailing Calendar

Sunday 25 July 2010

Going into labour at sea

I took a party of colleagues out for a day sail from Portsmouth, anchoring off Osborne House beach for a swim and picnic lunch. On board we had late additions of Claudia, heavily pregnant with just 2 weeks to go, and her husband Steve. Her choice, and since the weather was mild, wind was moderate, and I had already experienced 4 births, I agreed that she could come.

Somewhat to my surprise she enthusiastically joined in the swimming.... The water was lovely and refreshing - not too cold.

After lunch we snoozed in the sun, and then motored up for a view of Cowes, before setting sail and heading back down the Solent on a run, in 15 - 20 knots of wind.

At this point Claudia announced that her waters had broken after lunch, and she was having contractions every 15 minutes!! Not much I could do at this point except sail as fast we could back to port, where they made haste to drive back to Guildford. I did consider a "pan pan medico" call and potential helicopter lift off, but Claudia seemed calm enough.

Now awaiting news of safe delivery.

Whale, I'll be..............!!!!!!

Here's a link to photos of whale breaching and crushing a yacht!

http://www.mby.com/news/492554/yacht-skipper-we-didn-t-provoke-whale-photos-are-real


We were lucky that this didn't happen to us, when an angry whale breached astern of us as we raced towards St. Lucia on the final day of the 2005 ARC. Justin just caught it on video.