WE'RE five nautical miles off the coast of Newcastle and I've just emptied my stomach into the Pacific Ocean, narrowly missing our ice-cool English first mate, Angus.
It's fair to say I'm no sailor. As this land lover focuses on the horizon to stave off the waves of seasickness, it's impossible not to engender greater respect for the men and women who spend 11 months circumnavigating the globe in the name of adventure.
The 11 crews competing in the Clipper Round The World Race have been anchored at the Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club for the past week as part of their 40,000 nautical mile journey.
To gain an insight into the "world's toughest ocean race" local journalists and Tik-Tok and YouTube content creators have been invited aboard Yacht Club Punta del Este, skippered by Nano Antia Bernardez, who hails from the coastal Uruguayan city of Punta del Este.
Before boarding the 70-foot yacht we're warned, "this is no cruise" and that we'll be given the opportunity to help hoist the spinnaker, grind, steer and fold the sails.
The skies are overcast and the wind is gentle from the north-east, but as Nano likes to say, "as sailors we create our own wind."
With our sails hoisted we head windward out past the Nobbys breakwall followed by the yacht's trademark catch cry of, "vamos Punta!"
The Punta boasts one of the most diverse crews of the Clipper. Ages range from 21 to 71 across both sexes and 17 nationalities.
The constantly changing crew - sailors can sign up for different portions of the race - and the cramped conditions, mean people management skills are as vital as reading the wind.
It's Nano's third time around the world in the Clipper, but the 33-year-old's first as a skipper. He's also the first South American skipper in the Clipper's 28-year history.
"It's been harder," Nano says. "There is so much more human management and emotional management that falls on you.
"Before I was just focused on the sailing, the storms, the sails and fixing things, now my job has elevated into more people managing and expectations, conflict solving."
Punta's voyage in the 2023-24 Clipper has been as unpredictable as the seas they've sailed. The crew made a lightning start, finishing second in the opening leg along the Atlantic trade winds to the southern Spanish port of Puerto Sherry.
Nano and his 21-year-old first mate, Angus Whitehead, then led the crew to victory on the South Atlantic Challenge leg into their home port of Punta del Este.
There Nano was greeted like a conquering hero by supporters and the Uruguayan media.
Since then, the voyage has been harder. A broken sail on leaving Cape Town left Punta resigned to last place in the race to Fremantle. Then a series of "errors" and "complacency" sailing around the southern tip of Tasmania meant Punta was the last of the Clipper fleet to arrive into Newcastle last Friday.
The winning yacht Ha Long Bay Viet Nam reached Newcastle three days earlier.
The back-to-back last placings has seen Punta drop from first to fifth overall. However, Nano is confident his crew will bounce back and snatch a podium place by the time the Clipper sails across the finishing line in Scotland in July.
"That has been one of the hardest parts of my career because of the two last places, straight after the other," he says. "It makes you ask yourself, what's wrong?
"There's been a lot of introspection and now we're just going to commit to push harder. The crew always changes as well, so you need to figure out the team again."
One of the newest members of Punta's crew is German 33-year-old Florian Kubsch, who joined for the Australian leg at Fremantle.
Kubsch lives in Munich where he works for a German-speaking tour company. His love of exploring the world brought him to compete in his first open ocean race.
"It's good fun. I really like this leg as it's very versatile," Kubsch says. "Coming from Fremantle we had warm weather as it's obviously summer in Australia and we had good winds, but then we went down south quite a long way.
"We went 45 degrees south, so it was quite cold, big seas, lots of wind. I like the cold."
Kubsch says some crews find sailing long distances away from land to be lonely and claustrophobic, and Nano agrees.
"Being away from land, teaches you about yourself," Nano says. "You end up getting to know yourself better.
"It's such a unique experience to not see land for three or four weeks and not to have a ship come across your path, just birds and occasionally dolphins and that's your connection to the world."
Along the way Nano says he's seen nature at it's most beautiful and unspoiled, including whales and dolphins.
"The other day before coming here we saw a rainbow in the night with the moon," he says. "I wasn't even aware that could actually happen.
"On deep nights with no moon the stars reflect on the sea and you're sailing in an entire bowl of stars and you don't know where the sky finishes."
On Wednesday the entire Clipper fleet will begin their six-day race up the north coast to Airlie Beach, after a week of recharging batteries and refuelling supplies in Newcastle.
The Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club has already indicated a willingness to have the Clipper return in 2026-27 and Nano will certainly advocate for the city.
He describes the support shown by the Newcastle public for the race to be among the finest he's experienced in his three voyages in the Clipper.
