IT has to rate as one of the weirdest and coldest ways an athlete has been woken up from a deep sleep.
Tonnes of icy Southern Ocean water landing on top of you as you lie prone in a narrow bunk on a round the world racing yacht being bucked crazily by wind and waves.
But it was the rude awakening Australian sailor Liz Wardley had aboard the Dee Caffari skippered Turn the Tide on Plastic in the Cape Town to Melbourne leg of the Volvo round the world race.
In an eventful 24 hours in one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet, one of Wardley’s teammates, Italian Francesca Clapcich, was slammed by waves of water so hard as she went on deck her life jacket deployed, activating a man overboard beacon.
The yacht later nosedived sailing downwind and almost spun completely out of control with Wardley the victim of an unexpected firehosing while laying in her bunk.
“The cockpit filled with water and then the water came flying down the hatch because we were heeling over and it went flying over my bunk,” said Wardley, the boat captain.
Skipper Caffari said she and her team were lucky the yacht had not Chinese gybed, an out of control manoeuvre which would have seen the boat spun sideways and over and its mast lying on top of the water.
“In these conditions if we were to Chinese gybe it would be catastrophic,” she said.
While racing downwind at high speed the fleet still has around 3000 nautical miles to sail to the finish in Melbourne.
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