Supply, demand, and a melting candy

During our first Cape to Rio race, our watermaker, the machine that turns salt water into fresh water, stopped keeping up. Eight of us on board, and suddenly it couldn't produce enough. That meant rationing, water first, but food followed close behind, because everything on a yacht mid-ocean has to last until the other side, and you don't know exactly how long that will take.

What I didn't expect was how naturally people started looking out for each other once things got scarce. Within a day or two, small trades were happening around the boat. Someone with a bit of extra food would offer it to someone who needed more water. Someone would slip you their last biscuit because they'd noticed you hadn't eaten much that day. Nobody organised it, nobody announced it, it just appeared, the way people take care of each other when something starts running low. There was nothing sharp or calculated about it. If anything it brought the crew closer, everyone keeping an eye on everyone else's ration without making it awkward.

I was on the wheel one night, tired in the way you only get on a long ocean leg, digging through my pocket for my torch, when my fingers found something small and wrapped instead. I had no idea what it was until I felt it properly, a candy, strawberry flavoured, the kind you'd normally not think twice about. I put it in my mouth and it was, without exaggeration, one of the best things I have ever tasted. Not because it was special. Because everything around it had become so restricted that something this small could still deliver that much.

I think about that candy more than I think about the water shortage itself. It wasn't the biggest crisis I've faced at sea, we made it to Rio fine, nobody was in real danger. But it stuck with me, how little it takes to feel rich again once you've had almost nothing for a while. A bottle of water is worth nothing at home and everything mid-ocean. A cheap candy is worth nothing on a normal day and feels like the best food in the world when your options have narrowed enough.

I still think about that crossing sometimes, not because of the shortage, but because of how easily we looked after each other through it. Maybe that's the part worth remembering, not what became scarce, but how naturally everyone adjusted to make sure nobody went without.