We hit Force 9 a day in and it was on the nose. I could never have imagined such awful conditions. I wanted to die and prayed that the boat would sink. The 9m waves looked like mountains, from the tops of their peaks to the bottoms of their valleys. It was 2 hours on and 4 hours off for the 3 of us 24 hrs/day. I got drenched roughly every 30 seconds and never thought I would be warm again. I could not hold-down drinking water. Seeing Bent, a member of the Norwegian national sailing crew, eat a plain biscuit made me sick again. 

I learned on that trip how to be sick properly and next time to have good water-proofs, if ever there was going to be a next time. 

We had our sails repaired in Ibiza and continued. 

Then, GPS was relatively new. We would get a fix every couple of hours or so. If one satellite missed, double that. Sometimes, tacking every few hours into a F9 (when all three of us were awake), we would have made only sideways progress according to the GPS. The other two blamed me, as the inexperienced crew member. The atmosphere soured. 

When we made landfall at Sardinia, a long way short of the target, My crewmates left to be replaced by British and German ex-mercenary alcoholics. I increased my watch to all hours I could manage to make progress towards the next land – Gallipoli, Italy, where I left with my life.

That was my first sailing education – suicidal at the time but everything since has been far, far better!