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Log Updates
Sitrep: 2215hrs 19 Feb 2005 UTC 45’30”S 123’44”W Map Ref 71
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Sitrep: 0015hrs 19 Feb 2005 UTC 45’49”S 126’30”W Map Ref 70
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Sitrep: 0353hrs 18 Feb 2005 UTC 45’25”S 127’32”W Map Ref 69
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Sitrep: 0200hrs 18 Feb 2005 UTC 45’25”S 127’35”W Map Ref 68
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Sitrep: 0141hrs 17 Feb 2005 UTC 45’35”S 128’63”W Map Ref 67
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Sitrep: 0325hrs 16 Feb 2005 UTC 46’19”S 131’43”W Map Ref 66
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Sitrep: 1317hrs 15 Feb 2005 UTC 46’29”S 133’29”W Map Ref 65
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Sitrep: 0125hrs 15 Feb 2005 UTC 46’12”S 135’14”W Map Ref 64
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Sitrep: 0627hrs 14 Feb 2005 UTC 45’58”S 137’48”W Map Ref 63
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Sitrep: 0243hrs 14 Feb 2005 UTC 45’49”S 138’10”W Map Ref 62
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Sitrep: 0339hrs 13 Feb 2005 UTC 45’36”S 140’07”W Map Ref 61
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Sitrep: 0734hrs 12 Feb 2005 UTC 45’48”S 142’20”W Map Ref 60
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Sitrep: 0054hrs 12 Feb 2005 UTC 45’35”S 143’15”W Map Ref 59
3129nm
Now past half way in all
distance categories - Sydney and Hobart.
Still about 1600 miles and a lot of water and time before we get to the
Pacific high off the Chilean coast and can dive south to the Horn. I'm pulling in Playa Ancha Met Centre at
Special request - would all
of you that are using our sailmail address (....@sailmail.com) to email us
direct please stop doing so immediately and use the website email facility
instead. Really important. Every individual message requires a separate
handshake between Berri's HF radio and the sailmail computer at each end of the
message. These handshakes often take
several minutes and are completely wasted as far as our 10 minute station
allocation goes. We are always
critically close to our limit and I live for the next warning that says no
more. We are currently limited to one
communication per day each way with Steve plus our grib weather calls. Also, there is the real possibility of spam
if our address is in your email address book and you get a virus so please
delete it - if you don't know how to do this, please find out - Steve might be
able to advise, via an email to berri...
Spam would close us down more or less instantly. Things should improve as we close the Chilean
coast and if anyone is interested, I can leave the satphone turned on for an
hour a day as well.
Batch 3 of the bread - this
time with onion flakes - gets easier each time except for the corkscrew effect
- and wearing latex gloves for the kneading bit makes it easier still. Takes about 2 hours for the loaves to cook
on not quite dead low heat. Next time
won't open the lids for the full 2 hours: the one I opened a couple of times
took about 15 minutes longer.
We have just changed the
membrane in the watermaker - results so far seem promising, with no apparent
trace of salt. Us'll see. The system sometimes gets air in the line
when the boat does a big roll and won't always self prime - don't know why, and
very frustrating. So, some hints for
plumbing the watermaker: make sure that the through-the-hull intake valve is
far enough below the waterline so that it doesn't get air in the line when the
boat rolls (that's much lower than you might think - I thought we were
ok..)and, if you have a sensitive disposition and low tolerance to things
effluential, might be a good idea to set it up so that said intake is not
directly aft of the outlet plumbing for the head (loo). One generally needs something to do while
the watermaker goes about its business and a contemplative going about one's
own seems to spring to mind every time.
However, this may not be an option for aforesaid sensitive souls. I
shall not explore this any further but there are some dreadful puns lurking
around the edges.
And I think I should endorse
Pete's fashion statement of a couple of days ago. The daggy draggy monkey suit look is
definitely the go. Skin tight thermals
in contact with the pointy bits of the cheeks (basically, the pressure points
under the hip joints when you sit down) together with even the smallest hint of
salt water are an instant recipe for torture so acute that only liberal
applications of The Doctor, sufficient to cause anaesthesia and administered
prone will suffice. And as soon as one
comes round, it's all on again. I always
wear what we used to call a woolly bull when we were survey flying at 25k feet
with outside air @ about -60 - its a sleeveless neck to ankle loose overall,
slightly padded with long pile fleece on the inside next to the skin. I think in the more genteel world of
grenouillage, they are called salopettes.
They get a bit niffy inside after a couple of weeks but never any hint
of gunwale bum. I have an aged, grossly
daggy set that has been to
Life's little mystery,
continued - the turbine has a stainless shaft but the hub and blades are rather
rough cast aluminium fixed to the end of the shaft. It looks as if the paint job has been
skimped and has bubbles in various places,including presumably, along the
leading edges of the blades, and these have been popped by the water
pressure. Really hard to see that it
could be caused by anything else.
Wildlife
- they are all super graceful, but one that stands out is a medium sized bird
with very white beak, brown tops to wings with lighter brown outer ends - about
30% of wing area - there were three of them yesterday doing aerobatics around
eachother and us. Painted birds,
painted ships, painted ocean...and for a bit of obscure word association, I'm
reading Stella Rimington's book - for the second time. I need the cryptic crossword - Araucaria,
where are you?
Here I am inside this
plastic tube - about Tarago sized, to pursue the old metaphor - with irregular
shaped hazards and knobbly bits all around the inside walls and a sort of
central aisle that is just high enough to stand upright. It's the only part of the interior that
is. I can put myself anywhere in this
space and reach out and find at least two handles, grabrails, or strongpoints
to hang on to each of which can support my entire weight. This is a good thing because there is no other
frame of reference and it's dark with a very dim glow from the LEDs in the
instrument panel . And very noisy, but
not all the time, although there is a sustained roar from outside the frame
somewhere. Sometimes the
front-of-orchestra noise is a gentle swish, at other times it is a crashing
blast that shakes the tube and dies off with the sound of rushing water. This seems to be - and is - only a few
centimetres from my face and I can sometimes feel the walls of the tube flexing
with the impact. The tube is clearly
moving but I have no way of predicting the movement or of knowing how or in
which dimension it will move. The
movement is often violent and were it not for those handles I would be airborne
or smashed into a knobbly bit every few seconds. Sitting at the computer, I have both knees
braced against the underside of the nav table and my shoulder against one or
other side of the space. This has the
useful effect of transmitting various kinds of vibration through my bones and I
can feel and assess how the boat is going.
Every boat has a unique language - syntax and grammar similar but
vocabulary subtly different. And then
sometimes it is still for a few moments and other noises become apparent -
squeaks from the steering lines, a whirring whine as the generator line unwinds
its built up torque and the bearings take the strain, Pete snoring gently,
diesel sloshing around in the tank under the floor, the engine box creaking as
the hull flexes around it, the desalinator motor's irregular purr. Sometimes the whole tiny world is shaken
heavily as a wave throws Kevvo off his line for a few seconds and one or both
the headsails in turn feather and flog, transmitted and amplified by the long
lever that is the mast. The sustained
roar is the wind in the rig, mostly at the top and amplified as the boat rolls
and pitches. The wind lower down is
turbulent and nonlaminar because of the interference from the waves and it is
this wind that is driving the twin headsails which are small, high footed,
narrow and pointy and reach only about two thirds up the forestay, so keeping
the centre of pressure down where it is manageable. Hard downwind running in 35-40 knots and big
seas at night is sometimes a thrill but always a bit tense and I can never relax
or stop listening to Berrimilla talking to me while I am on watch and often
when I'm supposed to be asleep.
Can
any genius out there tell me how I can get the Guardian Weekly cryptic
crossword out here? Will a data
satphone handle jpeg files? Can we send a diplomatic mission to
This looks like being a
trivia update. We're sticking to the
strategy and following the tops of the lows across the ocean at somewhere
between 45 & 50S whichn keeps us in manageable wind strength and waves most
of the time but we lose a bit of distance as we sawtooth up and down the
latitudes. It's relatively easy to do
with the amount of weather data we are able to pull in from the various sources
(SatcomC: free text downloads of text weather forecasts and warnings; VMC
Charleville, NZ Metservice and Chilean weather faxes and Grib via sailmail) all
of which complement eachother. We can
also listen to Taupo Maritime Radio NZ scheduled weather broadcasts in
desperation - they require a tape recorder and very fast pencil work and then
some assiduous plotting but they are there as a backup. Just received a nice fax from the Armada de
Chile Servicio Meteorologico showing a reasonably clear satellite image of the
quarter of the southern hemisphere that includes the Chilean coast and most of
the south pacific. And us. Just receiving their Carta Prognosticada -
the isobaric forecast for 1200 UTC.
Looks as if it is hand drawn - much nicer that the computer generated
ones.
We are averaging about 120 miles/day
overall - rather slow, but on that basis, all going more or less the same, wood
touched and all other relevant superstitious practices observed, looks possible
that we could be at the Horn around March 4.
As in a marathon, from here is the hardest bit mentally. Half way in distance only; half way in the
mind/body/stamina stakes in a marathon comes at about 36k (out of 42.2, for the
deskbound) and the 15 or so k in between are where one just has to keep the
mind firmly in neutral, or try and do what the coaches call constructive
visualisation - imagine the finish line, the medal, all that jazz, stay
positive and just headbang away at every metre, every k till it's in the
bag. And at 36 k, the second half
starts. Downhill all the way, Don? I reckon
36k for us will come in about two weeks time.
Meantime, think hot shower, cold beer, flat water, sunshine, women,
We have the storm trisail up
for the first time since we modified it in
Lunch was fresh bread and a
tin of oysters in olive oil - this little bit of triv only because it lets me
tell you that the left over oil in the tin was poured down the loo and pumped
through to lubricate the pump cylinder and the piston. Works a treat, as does sardine tin oil,
tuna, or just s spoonful of cooking oil.
Malcom,
thanks for the suggestions re turbine - we'd considered corrosion and
electrolysis, an idea supported by the discovery today that 4 bolts securing
the backplate of the casing of the alternator are live. They ought not be. Perhaps there's a current flowing down the
towline, although the shaft doesn't seem to be zappy. And vulcanising tape to fortify the towline
is a great idea, as long as we can get it to work on a wet line. We've got lots. Led me to consider electrical shrinkwrap as
an alternative. Got lots of that too. Watch this space - turbine extraction
scheduled for tomorrow.
We are sitting under the
ridge that has been chasing us for the last couple of days. Not much wind, from the south, full main and
#1, rolling and slatting a bit but some forward progress. Wind should come round to the west
later. There's a huge swell rolling in
from the south, as big as I've ever seen, presumably from the low that went
through yesterday. The grib was
forecasting 40-50 at 50S.
So we got stuck into the
backlog of little jobs - Pete fixed one of the clamps on the stormboard with
epoxy and screws and reinforced all the others using our 12v portable battery
drill modified to run from a cigarette lighter socket or directly off the boat's
battery terminals. Which leads to
another little gem that has worked superbly: our 12v auxiliary portable battery
pack designed for jump-starting cars and pumping tyres and rubber duckies. It
has 2 cig. lighter sockets, two heavy duty terminal clamps and a little air
compressor built in - and we can run the drill from it without dropping the
main battery charge, and then recharge it when we have a bit of speed to drive
our generator. And if all else fails,
it should have enough to start the engine or run the laptop and the HF for a
day or so. Needs to be kept where it is
least likely to get wet and well waterproofed. Every boat should have one. Ours came from Whitworths but they are
widely available.
And I did a bit of analysis
of the desalinator problem we have been having, including reading the
instructions. It has only produced water
intermittently and I have always assumed that this was because it was getting
air in the intake line when the boat rolled the intake valve out of the
water. I checked all the lines using
the big dolphin torch to monitor bubbles and water flow through them (there are
three lines - sea water intake, concentrated brine output and drinking water
output plus a bit of extra plumbing to allow the use of biocide and cleaning
agents when doing maintenance) and I found that we had a lot of air bubbles
moving along the intake line so more likely a significant air leak rather than
or at least as well as periodic ingestion through the intake valve. Much headbanging later, when every joint had
been checked and clamped and the Doctor consulted, we switched it on again and
the bubbles in the intake line seem to have been eliminated and the thing
produced 6 litres without complaint. And the new membrane produces water that
tastes much better than our tank water. Big whoopeee and a further consultation
to celebrate. And we pulled in the
turbine - duct tape seems to have worked and the towline was not chafed - nor
was there any damage to the turbine, whether caused by cavitation (thanks Don)
or electrolysis or corrosion. Will give
it another few days before trying self vulcanising rubber tape if
necessary.
Am about to go out and
insulate the four 'live' bolts on the generator. Which having been attempted, isn't going to
be as easy as I thought. Normal
insulating tape won't adhere and geometry prevents wrapping. Blobs of sikaflex perhaps?
Wildlife report - there are
what look like baby bluebottles or portugese men o' war all over the
ocean. Small transparent bubble sails
with almost no colour in the underside.
We found a full sized fully coloured one washed up on deck a few days
ago. I had always thought that they are
warm water dwellers.
Milestones - we finished
Hilary's S2H cake today and we're about to unwrap the Doyles' home product
version - watch this space. And
tomorrow some time we should pass the half way point between NZ and the
Horn. All sailmail now going through
Jeanne, please pass on best
wishes to Bob and Eugenie. Just cant
leave some people on their own...
Gerry, did you tell the
Pelagic mob that we're on our way? I
think Catherine Hew is following us anyway, and we'll give them a call in a
week or so. And please send co-ordinates
for the anchorage down near the Horn, in case we feel like stopping or need to
duck in for shelter. We are reading the 1200UTC 8164 sked quite clearly now
too.
Doug and Stephen, I've just
realised that the sailmail propagation application updates itself with sunspot
and solar flux data every time we connect to the sailmail computer. Clever.
Berri is quiet tonight -
unlike a couple of nights ago. We're twin
poling in about 15 knots dead downwind and the water is just rustling past the
hull. A bit of gentle roll, all the
usual background noise of squeaks and sloshes and creaks, but muted and
tranquil. Pleasant feeling. Just waiting until I can log into sailmail
to pick up the day's mailcall - about two
hours to go. Something to look
forward to. You may have noticed that
we seem to have reached the transition point from which we are now looking
ahead as much as behind - Chile and Cape Horn are now much closer than
Australia and we're very much facing forwards and it probably comes through in
these emails. Seems that until now we
haven't really been able to believe that it's got some chance of actually happening.
A frivolous reflection: the
South Pacific is a big ocean, at a guess about an eighth of the world's surface
and it's almost landless and uninhabited.
Since about 1800, it has carried a large proportion of the world's
shipping, mostly along a couple of major routes - say an average of 5000
crossings per year. Before that, the
Pacific Islanders sailed around its northern fringe and as far as
Enough. Stop all this soppy talk and do something
useful.
More idle speculation: how good a mixer is the world's climate
system? Here we plod, in one of the
most remote spots on the planet, with a bit of water around us. What, for instance, is the broad statistical probability that there's a water
molecule in the 6 litres squeezed out of the desalinator yesterday, that I have
met before in the last 60+ years, whether in a glass of beer, the '61 Fastnet,
a swimming pool, the gobby stuff the camel spat at me in 1962, a mosquito bite,
Bondi, Bass Strait, any old where? And if you think there may be one, come out
here and show me which one. If it's the
gobby one, I want it out.
And to Kris, Steve and Malcolm, the three geniuses co-operating across
the world who actually managed to get me a Guardian Weekly cryptic via
sailmail, cool and froody, guys - thanks.
I'm still stunned. Steve, no, he doesn't have an account but that might
work. I've had to hand copy the
crossword because my printer has gone on strike. And Croo, water is generally
transubstantiated into a clue butnant I ain't got yet. Jeanne and Hilary, thanks for the lovely
Valentine roses. Really uplifting
gesture and we do appreciate them. You
should have received some virtual watercress from our herbaceous loo garden and
we ate your chocolates too.
For James and the BOG, as you would realise, a lot of this stuff is
specific to a particular boat - Berri, for instance, doesn't have the full teak
fitout and is more open than most other Brolgas. Anyway, before we left
And if you plan to go anywhere remotely iffy, put in some really BIG
cockpit drains. Berri has 4, one in
each corner, and they are still inadequate.
We have filled the cockpit to the coaming several times now and it's
somewhat nailbiting waiting for a couple of tonnes of water to trickle out of
the back, especially if you happen to be down below and watching it trying to
get past the stormboards into your bunk.
Don't assume it will be ok with the single drain most Brolgas come
with. It won't. For the same reason, insulate and waterproof
the engine controls, autopilot socket, ventilators and any other vital goodies
in the cockpit.
Hope that helps.
Reflections on a month at
sea part 2:
The big event was the roll
so lets talk about that. After about a
week from
Next morning the skies had
cleared the wind had settled to a steady 35-40kts the seas still big we decided
to set the storm jib on the inner forestay and head east again Alex was at the
mast having just set the jib i was in the cockpit adjusting the sheet the boat
was self steering, both harnessed to the boat, all openings sealed I was watching the big seas coming
through. I was watching this really big
one come up to us, the boat lifted to it and it slid away from us. I casually looked behind there was a big
void where the back of the wave should have been. immediately behind was another wave it had
been slowed down by the one in front and was now sucking back and hollowed out.
i yelled to alex to hold on he was sitting on the coachroof at the shrouds he
later said that he looked up when i called and saw the wave just about to break
above the first set of spreaders the sun was shining through it and it had that
eerie ice blue colour.
Meanwhile in the cockpit i
was glad i'd recently changed into my brown corduroy trousers. i knew we would be hit and i tried to
disengage the self steering. i felt the boat start to roll so i crossed my legs
around the base of the tiller and held on to the top. this was completely instinctive i have often
thought that if a really big one came into the cockpit you would be thrown onto
the winches. the roll was gentle the
wave didn't hit me i just rode the tiller through the inversion. while under water having expected havoc it
was all quiet and gentle I thought well that wasn't too bad I think i had a
smile on my face then we were back upright in a bathtub full to the cockpit
coaming. the whole event from sighting
trouble to back upright was perhaps 30 seconds its very hard to tell. time becomes very elastic. alex had been thrown overboard in the
initial tip, holding on to the shrouds.
he remembers being violently tossed around in white water but not for
long. he was dragged back to the boat
still holding on and his chest hitting a stanchion and bending it badly. he managed to scramble back on board. I got up from the cockpit and saw alex
standing by the shrouds he asked if i was ok and returned to the cockpit still
full of water but down to the seats. it
was then he told me he thought he may have broken some ribs. pert 3 to follow. Cheers Pete.
I've been asked what the
weather is like down here. We are in
the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) where warm moist air out of the highs
to the north mixes with much colder air coming from the lows down south - where
the tropics meet the westerlies just above the roaring forties. This means cloud all the time, mist most of
the time, light rain occasionally and everything always damp and dripping. Not really very pleasant and we haven't seen
the full sun for days although, as now, it is sometimes visible up there behind
a layer of cloud and Pete is out trying to get a sight. Water temp about 12 deg, outside air temp at
a guess about 17. Mild and pleasant
today, but probably won't last long. If
we were to go further south, it would be colder, the wind would be generally
much stronger, the seas would be much bigger and we might still not see the
sun. There is another CZ circling the
tropics where the cyclones occur and the Antarctic CZ at about 55 south. The
ACZ is where cold polar water meets the warmer current from the north, and warm
and cold airstreams mix to give much more pronounced effects than here. We may meet this one down near the Horn in a
couple of weeks, along with some ice, perhaps.
The continuous damp
semi-gloom is a bit depressing and we look forward to those glimpses of the
sun. I'm sure the Devoncroo would
understand. It's important, too, to
manage the physical effects that go with the conditions; for instance my
fingers go white and soft and start to peel, particularly around the nails,
every time they get wet because they never get a chance to dry out completely.
I wear gloves on deck and change into polyprop glove liners below to try to
keep the fingers warm and to wick the damp out of them and it helps, as does
the occasional dose of industrial grade lanolin that we use to lubricate
shackles and other equipment. And I always wear latex gloves to sponge out the
bilge, which is generally a bit talkative. The alternative to all this is nasty
cracks around the nails which become infected very easily. Same deal with feet- I always wear boots on
deck with a set of thick sox inside, sometimes with the waterproof Sealskinz
sox on top and keep a pair of woolly norwegian ski sox below to wear with my
Blundstone sandals (which insulate the feet from clammy deck) and to sleep
in. Very important to keep the sleeping
kit scrupulously dry too. We have sleeping
bags inside lightweight waterproof bivvy bags and a set of dry clothes to sleep
in. The whole lot gets zipped into the
bivvy bag when not in use. All
relatively easy to do here because we aren't being bashed so our deck gear
stays reasonably dry and there is little chance of water getting inside. And the wet weather gear dries very quickly
too when it does get wet.
Timezones are tricky. We are continuously moving east so never in
a constant relationship with youse all out there. We are about 3.5 hours ahead of the dateline
here, so about 6.5 hours ahead of east coast
Gerry, thanks for info -
yes, do have a chart. Hi Nick and Penny
- missed you a week or so ago, and I think Keith would have approved. Michael, think about the hassle of getting
eyedrops in - great fun, and I'm getting to be quite good at picking the moment
to let go with both hands and squeeze the bottle while I hold a light so that I
can see it.
I made a silly mistake requesting
grib files yesterday and well and truly exceeded my daily connect time so this
will be a shortie. Also had a minor
laptop crash - dont know what happened but discovered after rebooting that
Airmail, the sailmail application, seems to have lost all my saved messages
from its 'saved' folders. Beware, youse
all and save stuff to USB memory or cd or the hard drive - not to Airmail
folders. So I have lost everything more
than about a week old - I hope Steve has backups but he won't have the early
messages sent direct to and from individuals.
Damn.
We did a sailchange at about
4am local time - I was off watch and had to climb out of nice warm bag - think
hellfire and roses, this is hard, guys - then think again about what the people
out here in square riggers and especially Cook's crew at 71 south had to go
through and decide that it's really soft and cushy by comparison and get just
on with it. Laurie Lawrence on pain,
perhaps, for a different motivational image. Gordon Liddy even? Anyway, the usual dark and clammy night out
there, did sailchange and sat in the cockpit to feel the elements a bit while
Pete got out of his party gear below and - behold, a little patch of stars
directly above and the gentle glow of what must have been the setting moon
lighting the rim of soft cloud to the south.
Like sitting in a grey fluffy bowl - piled misty grey darkness all
around, black to the north and luminous ceiling. Then think 35 kts blowing across the top
with noise and spray and you get close. Worth all the aggravation of getting into
party gear and I sat up there till the cloud closed in again. Was then a great excuse to visit Dr Cooper.
Now in 40-50 knots
again. Poo. But the sun is out, which may mean we have
moved out of the CZ, which in turn may be bad news.
Mike
F, where did you spring from and thanks heaps for the crossword - I've never
started out with an empty grid before and it makes for a nice diversion. Have it mostly worked and most of the
answers I think, but need the final breakhrough. Using some laminated graphpaper prepared for
sextant sight reduction and non perm felt pen for trial and error grid
construction. Will take photo if I get
it finished. Kris - don't know whether
I've got all your emails - was looking for the last one when I discovered
result of crash. Keep em coming tho -
don't think there's any chance of getting the password from here. Doyles - great cake - thanks - just got to it
in time and ate it rather quickly and drank your collective health with every
slice. H, E, K & V, G'day - hope all's well and lotsa.
Small drama last night. We have
not been changing the plastic aerofoil on the self steering unit from large to
small as often as perhaps we should (Kevin Fleming recommends whenever the
apparent wind hits 20 kts) and we have had the big one on since we left
Dunedin. Slack and negligent, but it was
working fine. Anyway, there was a crash
in the middle of my watch in the blackest part of the night and I jumped into
my party gear - nimble as always and it only took about 15 minutes and it
always reminds me of Mr Bean changing in his Mini as he drives to work - and
took out the stormboard and uncoiled through the hole to investigate. The boat had gybed and was heading for
It's getting cold out there, especially in the middle of the night with
a bit of spray and the wind from the south.
Looks as if the weather is about to get worse too - we're now in the top
of the lows rather than the bottom of the big high that has been with us since
NZ.
Very tedious day so far. wind
all over the place @ 1 - 2 kt so generator wont turn and solar panel in cloudy
light only does about 1.5 - 2 amps, half what we need, and we're going
nowhere. My lunch has just been cheese
on vita wheat with cress from the vegie garden topped off with Bev's mango
pickle from far off Rocky. Yummy. Haven't been paying the boot ferals much
attention recently and they've been thriving.
Some interesting new colonies, talkative as ever. Giving them an outing
now in the dismal excuse for sunlight - most of them scream a lot and hide but
there's one set of mutants in one small area of insole that seem to be able to
make chlorophyll - well, they are green and they grow towards the light - so
maybe with some selective breeding we have a new vegie garden and a killer
patent.
Michael G, thanks for offer of co-ordination and by all means display as
long as we don't have to clean up our act; original photos at home: if you need
one, contact Hilary. This must be the
true measure of fame - in competition with National Geographic. Did you check
the Adastra site? Olivia, Hi - and
yuk! Kim - just what I need, another
useless bit of gear please consign 4000 sterile once-onlies to
Short of battery - gotta go.
A day of chasing zephyrs -
going nowhere, rolling around, getting little jobs done and now it's evening
and we've dropped the sails and we're going to get some serious sleep. The silence, the almost indigo blue of the
water, an albatross and a petrel swishing past, long menacing line of cloud
that turned into puffy rain, still hasn't reached us. When it does, it won't arrive, it'll just
muffle us in feathery mist. The water is so clear and it seems to impart its
own glow to anything in it - the towline looks silvery - I dropped a roll of
tape as I was re-tying it and I could see it glowing for ever as it sank. Hard to believe - I must have only read the
stories of the storms and never looked beyond.
I'm making bread, the cabin
is warm, smells like a bakery, Pete is writing his journal and then we'll make
dinner and switch off until the noise starts again. We're due for a front tomorrow and it will actually be nice to be moving
again. Looks like my early estimate of
March 4 at the Horn has gone overboard.
Will send this when I pull in the mail call from Steve later.
Pete
has part three to put in as well. Maybe
later. Bread just out - hot slice with
butter - yay!
And so it came to pass. Calm windless silence that pounds your ears,
then fluffy darkness, muffled rain, slight roll, plus all the usual little
noises in Berri's vocab, mostly irritants like a Sikaflex tube rolling in its
shelf and banging irregularly against the side - impossible to sleep through
and essential to get up, identify and fix.
But sleep we did, punctuated by the periodic satcom urgency alarm when a
couple of hurricane warnings about TC Olaf up north arrived and no alternative
but to get up and cancel the beep and read the messages. The beep must have been designed to be
impossible to ignore - really malevolent noise.
Never ever happens in co-ordination with the demands of the bladder
either, just to get one on one's toes a bit more often.
And I heard the moan of
breeze in the rig just as the coachroof hatch showed its outline in the dim
grey light at about 3am. Coffee, set the
poles, sails up and we're away again.
Calm sea, bright sunlight, 5 kts direct for the Horn. And last night's bread for breakfast. Beats queuing for a bus, but we did miss out
on about 100 miles of easting.
Right now we are possibly
the most isolated people on the planet, but it's all relative. We have been looking at the logistics of
getting some minor spares from the
For, I think, only the
second time since
The expected front should
arrive later today, with the wind backing round to the south and increasing to
about 30kt. Not too serious and we
should continue to make progress. The
sea is just starting to rise and the rolling has increased. No main, so no slatting and banging and the
twins and Kevvo are doing a mighty job. Lunch about to happen - basmati rice
with the very last of the
Mung
Beans - an enterprise not without its downside. Ok if they all sprout evenly, but this lot
at least haven't done so and I've chipped all the leading edge fillings off my
front teeth on the little rocky ones that didn't germinate. Essential to eat them very carefully. Filed off the sharper bits and its back to
the hacksaw smile. Another job for Julita.
The cress is thriving and I now have a rotating system where one half of
the tray gets eaten as the other half sprouts and grows. Fenugreek still to be tried. The simple pleasures of extended
isolation. And Alan Bennet's Talking
Heads on a BBC CD - done Alan on 'A chip in the sugar' and about to listen to
Patricia Routledge as A Woman of Letters.
When did I ever have time for such idle dissipation in the real
world? In the aggravation a couple of
days ago, I lost Mike's crossword grid I'd been working on - it got wet and ran
off the laminate - so that's out there to be reworked too.
Alex: What a dreadful night,
punctuated by a series of little tragedies all related to the loss of precious
liquids. The front duly arrived, as
usual at dinner time and, again as usual, the grib had the wind direction
pretty much spot on but once again as usual, underestimated the strength by
100% so instead of 20 gusting 25, we get 40 going on 50. Two sail changes during the night as it
increased, each requiring one of us to surface from warm bunk and dreams of
Ingrid (was that her name, Kees?) and go through the Mr Bean routine and get
wet and cold as well. Tragedy no. one has been developing since NZ - we felt it
time to broach our last 3ltr box of Sir James' plonk for dinner only to find
the box wet and mouldy with salt water and spilt plonk. The inner skin had chafed a biggish pinhole
through itself and the wine tastes of the mould. We have coped with worse recently and just
added a bit of imaginary mould to the chilli beans to balance things up. However, tragedy no 2 - we needed plastic
bottles to decant our new vintage mould into and we emptied two bottles of
desalinated water into the main desal reservoir. Except that, as we discovered later one of
them was a quarter full of carefully conserved tonic water, so - down on tonic
and up on quinine and iodine in the desal.
Goes well with tea. So to
tragedy no 3, from which I'm just recovering.
Pete woke me at 1200 UTC, about 0400 local, still black and noisy and I
made myself a cup of tea with attitude - big mug, 2 bags, 3 sugar lumps - as a
sort of compensation for the night's
nasties. We usually keep an empty pot
on the stove with a cloth over the inside base to put cups of tea etc into so
that the stove gimbals help to keep them from spilling but we had some
leftovers from the mouldy chilli beans so the pot was otherwise occupied and I
put the cup in the sink while I disengaged myself from the strap that makes
cooking of any sort possible and I'm sure you can guess what happened on the next
big roll. I'd been so looking forward
to dunking a few biscuits. But as I
cast my eyes into the outer darkness, ready to weep copious tears of grief and
rage, I saw a little pink glimmer of dawn light between the southern horizon
and the clouds so perhaps not quite a silver lining but uplifting anyway.
Night for me is always that
little bit more tense than daytime because, I suppose, it's easier to judge
what is likely to become a problem if you can actually look at the source of
the concern - rather than relying on the quality and feel of the vibration or
whatever to decide whether to be scared or not. Also something to do with knowing the boat
so intimately and being very conscious of her weaknesses and discounting her
strength. And everything always seems
more violent, faster, noisier and nastier in the cold gyrating darkness,
especially in the hour or so before dawn.
I am always that bit more alert and it's hard to sleep. This is a very fragile enterprise we've got
going here and it needs constant vigilance.
The forces acting on us are potentially overwhelming and we have to
optimise and minimise all the time.
There's nothing sentient out there trying to destroy us, as some early
sailors believed, but the force is just there, all the time and we have to
accommodate it incrementally with all the gear and experience we've got with
us. Often better to be in the cockpit
than below, although the grammar and vocab are better enunciated and much less
fuzzy inside our little drum.
Pulled in the VMC MSLP
analysis for the south pacific last night on the weather fax - rather distorted
because of the range but still quite readable and it looks as if the highs to
the north are gradually dispersing and the lows are moving up. We're in the top of one now and there's
another rather fierce one a couple of hundred miles behind it. Not a pleasant
prospect - still 2200 miles to the Horn, or abut 17 days at our present
rate. Brian and Jen, we have just
clicked over 3000 miles from
Devoncroo - we drank an
appropriate toast on the 17th. Please
pass on if ok so to do.
Pete:
Hello to all
out there.
Is there anyone out there
still using celestial navigation? 30
years ago I used it almost daily for about 7 months at sea. It was part of the boat routine, a couple of
sun sights during the day, worked and plotted late afternoon with a shared
libation to celebrate the days run. If
closing land, then star sights would be used at morning and evening twilight to
confirm things. At 45 - 50 south,
twilight and stars are not a couple. You
get the sun at times during the day but generally the horizon is misty so you
basically guess the sight.
Yesterday was different we
took the sails down the night before as there was no wind and slept. This was the first sleep longer than 2.5
hours in the last 3 weeks. I woke to a
calm sea and a clear sky. it was time for a sight. This was the first time I
could hold the sun in the telescope and not have it disappear in a second as
the boat lurched from another wave. I took 2 good sights and averaged them,
later about noon I got another, not as good as the seas by now were getting
large and oh joy another late afternoon 3 sights in one day unbelievable. Last
night I did the calculations and plotted the results. It looks like a classic textbook example. a
small triangle of the position lines with the GPS position of the boat at the
time of the first sight right in the
centre of the triangle. I moved the
later sights'lines of position back to the first sight allowing for course and
distance travelled because I considered the first sight the most reliable.
When crossing the Pacific
all those years ago there was a reef marked on the chart between
Anyway, this result was very
pleasing and I'm hooked - cant wait for the next calm sunny day. Cheers Pete.
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