Level 2 - staying on the boat day & Night

Our skipper Oli, who at this point was just a training skipper, but who later was chosen to be one of the skippers on the 2025/26 race

For Level 2 training, we lived aboard the boat full-time—day and night—so we could get used to the reality of eating, sleeping, and brushing our teeth in something that vaguely resembles a moving broom closet. It was all about learning how to function in that environment, with its constant creaks, limited space, and the ever-present awareness that someone, somewhere, is always wearing wet socks.

The team

Luckily, we had a great crew. Our watch was a group of five—James, Jane, Jason, Peter, and Petra—which made roll call feel like we were auditioning for a pop group. JPJPJ. It was a solid team, and Peter and I quickly discovered we had more than just names in common: he was born on November 9th, I’m the 10th. We took this as a sign of either cosmic alignment or just an above-average coincidence, depending on the wind.

Jane and Byron preparing lunch

Cooking on board was... educational. I’d lived in New York City long enough to be intimately familiar with kitchens the size of filing cabinets—no dishwasher, barely a sink—but at least they had the decency to stay level. Boat kitchens (or galleys, if you're trying to sound like you know what you’re doing) add the fun challenge of everything tilting at a 45-degree angle, so making pasta becomes a core workout. That said, we were blessed—or cursed—with very little wind during our L2, so the boat remained pretty steady. If anything, it was more like camping on a floating Airbnb that occasionally moved.

Still, I know it won’t be like that on the actual race. There will be heel, there will be motion, and there will probably be lentils flying across the galley. But for now, it was a gentle introduction—and not a single person got food poisoning, which I consider a solid win.

Peter and Petra on the helm - the almost twins