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Log Updates
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DB: 24hr:127, total 1290/1320 sched = -30 so we're getting back
into it.
In deep mourning for friendly little phone and the big chunk of
my life's database that went with it. Bereft, I am. And stupid. It will be
sitting there on the edge of the shelf west of
Lots to write about, but boring stuff - are you all bored stiff
already? Seems as if you are, from the wheelbarrow loads of mail we've been
getting. it's difficult in these conditions to get time to write because of the
need to be on deck almost constantly with the assy up and rolling swell and
seas. Or asleep. Will try - and I
suppose we can always crank up our stone age version of flight simulator in the
bus shelter to spice up the news.
Malcom, thanks for the Ninja. Hugh, we passed a grey bearded old
Turtle - Michaelangelo? Methuselah? - who asked if we knew 'those Tacit people'
- promised him we'd pass on his regards.
Some questions, to see who's out there: *For a friend in the
*Is there an airport on
*How did square rigged ships ever get into Funchal? Must have
been difficult - big wind shadow - Cook's Journal might have at least one
answer. Perhaps they only visited Porto Santo.
* Port was originally red wine shipped out of
The Flea spent all of yesterday hiking towards this big chunk of
craggy gravel and dried mud rising over the curvature of the elephant's bum,
then in the evening passing its western end in the flat pink sunlight with tiny
silver and gold serrated clouds right down low on the western horizon below the
main cloud layer. Then most of the night watching its fairy lights disappear
astern. Do dung beetles glow in the dark?
Would have been nice to drop in to Madeira. It's about the same
size and shape as the
31/1130: Unable to hold the assy and any
sort of course - now twin poled, heading directly down the course making 4-5.
Got really sweaty doing the complete sail change - drop the assy, fold the #1
and put it away, hook on the 2 and pole it out and raise it, hook on the
cutdown 1, pole it out and raise it, drop the main, furl and tie it down, take
off all the kite lines and coil them and put them away, put away the jockey
pole, tidy up the spaghetti of halyards, sheets, downhauls etc in the cockpit,
trim the headsails and Consult - having done all that, between us, I thought I
should change out of the gear we left Fmth in. Now very hot, we have the
cockpit awning rigged for shade.
[ed: some time
later
..]
It's time to apply the fudge factor to
the Daily Bull. Distance covered directly towards a destination is called
Distance Made Good or DMG. The distance measured by a GPS is distance covered
over the ground, which is almost never the same as DMG, because the boat's
track over the ground wanders around a bit. It is easy to program a GPS to give
DMG if it knows where the destination or at least the next waypoint is but in
the game we are playing here, all that it rather too vague - we don't know
where we are going, exactly, but we could program a theoretical shortest route
into the instrument. Or I could get out a chart and do it with pencil, plotter
and ruler. Both rather tedious and probably futile, so we will apply a fudge
factor of 5% for the time being. I will
modify this daily based on my assessment of the previous day's run.
The fudge factor assumes that the GPS is
reading a greater distance over the ground that the actual DMG by 5%. For this
morning's Daily Bull, the GPS total was 1290 miles. Multiplying this by 0.95,
we get 1225.5 which becomes our estimated DMG.
Subtracting this from the required DMG of 1320, we get 95 (ignoring the
.5). On this basis, we are nearly a day (120 miles) behind schedule. This seems
to me to be about right, given the last few days' windless stinkpotting, but
not a big problem - we should start eating into any deficit as soon as we get a
steady wind with a bit of strength.
We are getting to the end of our fresh
provisions. The bread got mouldy and has been tossed, some of the fruit went
the same way. Carrots, zooks, eggplant all getting a bit wrinkly. Bacon still
fine, eggs too and spuds. Cheese is looking very oily -may not last the
distance. We wrap it in tissue when we open the pack to soak up the oil - the
cheese goes a bit crumbly but still tastes ok. We will start making bread and
soaking the dried fruit and getting into all the other dried goodies over the
next few days.
For the curious, we left with 132 cans
of The Doctor's medicinal sauce, 80 Dr White Smoothies, 12 litres of gin, 42
litres of tonic, 24 litres of wine and 12 litres of cider, plus certain
unspecified brown plastic bottles for special occasions. Do the numbers - it's
a relatively small medicine chest for 2 people over 110 days - one Consultation
with the Dublin Doctor or his English colleague each per day, a G&T, and
half a plastic mug of wine or cider.
We are actually further from Hobart here
than we were at Falmouth, by about 200 miles. We have sailed nearly 20 degrees
westwards to allow us to get around Africa, and we will need to go a lot
further to get behind the south atlantic high once we cross the equator.
However, the DB says: 24 hrs = 130,
total 1420/1440 off the GPS but applying the fudge factor, say 125 for the days
run, added to the Estimated DMG from last nights email gives 1225+125=
1350/1440 = -90, so we've regained 5 miles. That's the fudge factor method. Or
I could plot it all on a chart.
Or I could use my Merlin calculator
(remember them? - wonderful bit of kit) to calculate the rhumb line and gt.
circle distances between 0900 fixes - which I've done and it gives me 124 miles
rounded, so fudge was not bad, but we've only regained 4 miles. I will use the
Merlin from here and assume that we have 12000 miles to go. The new Daily Bull
will have the days run between fixes and distance to go, so:
DB: 124, 12000 Still not quite an accurate rendition of DMG
but a reasonable approximation. You can work out for yourselves what the run
rate needs to be to get us home by Dec 11 as we progress. Why should I do all
the work?
Still twin poled,relatively easy
sailing, Kevvo in charge and we just look out for ships and do the chores. Have
transferred fuel from the cockpit to the main tank and we have 160 litres left
within measurement tolerances. And as we eat stuff and Consult, space appears
and we can repack things and even find long lost underpants and books and other
goodies. I'm still working on crossword no 2 - Think I'm stuck but there's
plenty of time. Pete is reading Morse - all those Colin Dexter quotes from the
way up to Falmouth.
There was a tiny white crawly insect on
the laptop screen last night and I found it or another on my crossword this
morning. Baby cockroaches? Mutated boot ferals - wonder how they are doing -
elephant fleas? little dung beetles looking for nourishment? Will investigate
with magnifying glass if I find another.
Ann G thanks twice and sorry about your
question - don't remember seeing it, but actually in my opinion much hairier -
less phat - going that way than the way we are going, but for different reasons
- we should post the replies - I like the bike manufacturer and I'd worked out
a possible acronym that was close - mine was pretty hot and terrific. Tempting
is much better.
Tori too - thanks all y'all.
Ed: Anns phat
reply:
Phat is a bicycle manufacturer in California - elevated handle
bars. Tres cool!
Phat is also a program used in a Windows platform to help
install LINUX platform on PCs.
Phat is also a slang word to describe something 'cool'
Phat also means 'pretty hot and tempting'.
and Toris:
"phat" means cool, a bit like "sick" which means
awesome.
Used mostly by the skateboardy snowboardy 14 to 25 set.
Used by the young kids in Ozzie a lot these days.
This mother has been known to use it too just to annoy the kids!!!
We seem to be in the Trades at last - uncomfortable rolling
downwind ride twin poled but hooning along. Cape Verdes next, then probably
some more stinkpotting in the ITCZ.
DB:139,11861 (GPS run was 140) so not a bad
day. The wind has dropped and veered and we're back to #1 and main in very
lumpy sea. Otherwise, would be the assy. Another sweaty sail change before
Breakfast. Kind of grey but with a hint of dust in the air.
I thought we had hooked into the Trades
but the Examiner came flouncing in this morning in pink hotpants and leathers
with SM kit at the high port to tell us differently. Pottering along in about
10 knots from the east - heavy sky, haze, maybe dust, cloud, heat. Sea almost
indigo. Not enough wind to fill either kite and, for all the required effort to
get one up, probably futile to try, so we're sitting back waiting for the sun
to dip below the spreaders in the murky sky and signal the necessity for
refreshment. It is difficult for an old stick-at-home like me to come to terms
with the proximity of Africa - about 400 miles to the coast of Western Sahara,
Cape Blanc in Mauretania way out there on the port bow. It's Friday, RANSA
twilights (Hi everyone - have a good one) and I'm used to thinking of Berri in
the pond at CYC - or chatting up Frank to get a berth on the pontoons somewhere
for the weekend and this Africa stuff is not reality - yet nor is it a dream.
Just not plausible somehow. What are we doing here? How did we come to be here?
We are on a well travelled bit of ocean
- direct route for all the early sailors going south then either east or west
about from Europe and now the milk run for yachts from Europe and the Med
heading for the Cape verdes and the departure point for the transatlantic
passage to the West Indies. We are about a month ahead of the big rush,
although given the hurricane nastiness, there may be a lot fewer this year.
Yachting Monthly and Yachting World come
out in the UK next week, so they should be in the Australian shops by the end
of the month if they fly them out, or in about 6 - 8 weeks if shipped. Hugh
Marriott, who wrote the YM article, has kindly allowed us to put his pre-edited
original on the website once YM hits the streets -Thanks Hugh - I think it's
much better that the edited version, which tends to emphasise the sensational
and misses Hugh's message. All y'all can judge for yourselves. Hugh has also
written a terrific book called 'The Selfish Pig's Guide to Caring' which I hope
will make him rich and famous.
I haven't seen Jo Cackett's article for
Yachting World - a pleasure for the future, Jo. Any chance of a soft copy to
Stephen at berri@berrimilla.com? Well
done in your Fastnet - 3rd in class is huge. I think the honours are about even
on that one and I'm looking forward to exchanging a pot or two next time. What
next for you?
Stephen and Mal, could you please crank
up your South Atlantic weather sites and start watching the S.A. high - we will
probably have to go to the west of it, but the more tightly we can cut the
corner, the better, so it would be useful to get some idea as we close in on it
about the wind towards its centre and west. But a long way to go yet.
Thanks, Dorothy, for the photos - we
remember that send off rather well! And James, good to hear your news. Along
the same lines, I've been offered the loan of a Figaro for the 2 handed Round
Britain race - me, in a Beneteau??- which is tempting, but rather too distant
for anything more than an expression of interest at the mo. David and Is, Ta,
Woc, g'day.
DB: 130, 11731 (gps 131) so there's been
some progress.
A little bit of idle comparison: I ran
the Falklands marathon in approximately 4.75 hours, in other words at a speed
of about 4.85 knots - more or less what we must average out here. Walking pace,
really. My best ever marathon was at 8.86 knots(approx 2.6 hrs) - I don't think
we are likely to get close to that here except in very short bursts. Which, of
course, proves nothing - comparisons being invidious, according to Dr Johnson.
What does invidious mean anyway? I think the context was that the Great Man
expressed disapproval of something (London, perhaps??) and someone asked him
how he could disapprove of something God had made - at which the GM grunted and
said 'My dear Sir, comparisons are invidious, but God also made Scotland'
Collapse of stout party and audience in general. To take the comparison a bit
further, Paula Radcliffe, my heroine and also the world's fastest woman over a
marathon course, ran hers in about 2.25 hours or about 10.25 kts and would have
beaten Emil Zatopek to his Olympic gold medal by about a mile. Not sure of my
facts but I think the fastest man ran about 2.08 hours or 11.1 kts. Both
absolutely mind boggling to this old dinosaur. I will contemplate these
achievements over Breakfast and The Other Doctor.
David, thanks - if there's a Eureka, see
if you can follow the bulge for September from the equator southwards and
describe the line it takes - probably goes towards NE Brazil, then curves
across towards Cape Town from about 30S. This would have taken them behind the
high. Malcom, don't let it happen! Coopers is an institution and we don't want
some faceless marketer changing the product to appeal to today's youth or
something. Beer must have sludge it it...
DB: 130,11601 (GPS 137) so another
goodish day.
Really soupy haze - sun came up white, first
sighting about an hour after sunrise, through the murk. Looks like convergence
zone conditions but we're not there yet. Looking at the grib, there's a low
forming over the Cape Verdes about 500 miles ahead - this is where the
hurricanes are born, as big thunderstorms, which then set off west across the
Atlantic and get bigger. There's a photo on the website of Isabelle when it was
just a big nasty thundercloud.
Looks as if the inter tropical
convergence zone (the doldrums) is just south of the Cape Verdes and the SE
trades at the equator are mostly SSE, so we'll have to go west towards Brazil
to make progress from there. But a long way ahead and it can all change in a
day.
I'm now able to look ahead towards the rest
of my life - there's still this big black hole we've got to negotiate, but it
does seem to have an opposite side, as it were. And I'm in trouble - I've been
reminded that I promised last year's S2H crew that they are all invited for
this year's if we get there in time so I shouldn't have asked anyone else.
Sorry, Steve and Fenwick and Katherine. So, Ross, James, Johnny G, Malcolm -
are you on? Katherine first reserve, Jeanne second.
Made naan bread yesterday - fried the
dough in very hot pan - worked really well and much quicker that long slow oven
- think I'll try to fry the next conventional bread mix as well. Will report
later.
Back in the Tropics - we crossed the
Tropic of Cancer yesterday. Funny old day - warm and humid with very thick haze
and the sun only visible as a white disc - so not dust, or it would have been
bronze or reddish. We're sailing very conservatively - keeping the boat above 5
knots but not pushing for maximum speed. Yesterday was poled out 5 and cutdown
1 for 6 - 7 knots dead downwind - uncomfortable, could have gone faster but no
need. The turbine line is just the wrong length for the following sea as well
and the turbine kept jumping out of the water and flailing around - it makes a
giant farting noise - disconcerting.
Pete woke me from a deep sleep at 0300
to get that rig off and go back to main and cutdown. Very hard to get the body
into gear - till I thought about the crews of the square riggers who had to
wake up and climb the rig as well. Easy for us. It seems from the grib that the
ITCZ is at the Cape Verdes - there's a little low forming down there now and we
will probably go through the back of it if the wind holds. More with the 0900
fix.
05/0915 DB: 132, 11469 (GPS 135) not
bad. Straight line back to Falmouth is 1900 which is a reasonable approximation
of DMG and we should be at 1920, so even that one is looking reasonable.
The strategy from here: first we have to
get through the ITCZ around the Cape Verdes - this may be tricky, with
thunderstorms, fluky wind or none, or it could be relatively easy. Won't know
till we get there. Then we will try to head SSE towards the equator to give us
a better angle on the SE Trades, and across wherever that puts us, but aiming
for about the mid point. Then we have to get around the South Atlantic high.
More on this later.
The S. Atlantic high is likely to be
centred somewhere close to 23S 015W with a soft ridge extending west towards
the S. American coast. Winds round a southern hemisphere high are anticlockwise
so going to the west of the centre looks the better bet, and this is supported
by the existence of the Benguela Current flowing NW up the African coast. The critical
decision is how far west? Cutting the corner is a good idea as long as we have
enough wind to keep moving or fuel to drive through the holes and the horse
latitudes to the south of the high. We may have to stay close to S. America all
the way down to 40S. We will have to wait until we get much closer and then
assess the status of the ridge and the local winds. If I'm still able to keep
sailmail running (by no means certain) then the grib will give us enough to go
on. Rhumb line distances around westabout are very close to my Daily Bull DTG.
Watch this space.
Flying fish everywhere - one tiny one
and one almost worth eating on deck this morning. I wonder what they can see
when they are out of the water - they seem to be able to direct their flight
around wave tops and along the troughs, but this may just be a feel for the
updrafts - and they mostly miss us during the day, only arriving on board at
night. Do they have specially adapted eyes? Humans can only see blurry outlines
under water because of the different refractive index - is it the same in
reverse for fish? And what about at night?
Heavy, humid and sweaty. Not pleasant.
No major breakdowns so far - apart from this intensely frustrating problem with
the USB-Serial port gizmo which is irritatingly and unpredictably unstable and
a nightmare to bring back up when it crashes. Takes several goes sometimes, and
at least an hour of tense frustration. And I never know if it will work
whenever I try to transmit. Not sure whether it loses power somehow (it is
powered by the laptop through the USB cable) or is attacked by HF energy and
gets switched off by the laptop trying to turn it into a serial mouse even
though I've deleted the serial and HID mice. But I desperately and sincerely
wish it wouldn't. I hope Microsoft have a fix by the time we get back. I have
reset the AIS port from 38400 baud to 4800 and disconnected all the AIS stuff
in case that was affecting it, but doesn't seem to have fixed it. spbf.
I've put some target waypoints on the
chart for your greater fascination - one at 26W on the Equator, the next at 23S
023W, where I hope we can turn towards home, one at Tristan da Cunha at 3704S
01217W which I hope we'll pass to the north of, and one at 40S 020E directly
below Cape Town. That's the plan. Execution is in a different Kettle but
exciting to have some blobs to aim at.
The water temp rose about 3 degrees to
nearly 27 deg in the last 12 hours - and, sure enough, we're headbutting about
a knot of warm current.
All the forecasts predict severe
thundersqualls ahead of us - for me the scariest part of sailing, probably
irrationally - and I can see lightning flashes over the horizon. If we
disappear from the airwaves without warning, don't panic - probably just the
electronics fried by static. A strike or near miss could take out every
computer chip in the boat. That would certainly fix the USB problem. We have a
metal box to protect the satphone and a handheld GPS but we haven't tested it
and it may not work. Highly unlikely, but if it does happen, it is possible
that we could be out of touch for a couple of months unless we can talk to a
ship.
Malcom, I have a tiny short wave radio
(Chinese, of course) and I can sometimes get the BBC and sometimes other more
exotic english speaking programs - was listening to Star Radio News from
Monrovia, Liberia earlier this evening, and then got the BBC for a bit.
Isabella sends us news summaries as well, so we do know about Katrina. But
please keep us posted about Coopers and anything else you think we might be
hanging out for news of...
Hrungecomely Blurbleflunket Gra! 2 @ 60 in
one week is overdoing things a bit. And 1 @ 63 on Thursday too. A week of
birthdays.
2049 02516 06/0900 -3
DB: 116, 11353 (GPS 120) slow day. Lightning
seems to have moved westwards. We should pass close enough to see Santo Antao
Island, the westernmost of the Cape Verdes, on Thursday morning if the wind
holds.
Although where we are, local time is
nearly 2 hours behind UTC. Very slow day - tooling along with the assy just
filling and collapsing as the boat rolls. No fun - and hot, sticky, humid and
hazy as well. The weather forecast says thundersqualls ahead south of the Cape Verdes and, ominously, has
changed it's terminology from 'severe' to 'violent' gusts. We'll be down to the
#5 and probably the engine if we get close to one of those.
But we're still chiselling away at the
old uncarved block - or, in a mirror concept, watching the road not travelled
disappearing out of reach over the horizon. We've knocked off over 2000 miles
from about 13 which is a decent chunk.
The satphone will be on on Friday from
say 0600 UTC all day (Oz evening) so you can talk to the birthday old geezer.
It will cost you about $15 per minute, so you'd better work out what you want
to say and then say it - no time for trivia!. The only possible showstopper
might be those thundersqualls, in which case the satphone will be firmly tucked
away in its box. Don't leave messages - if we don't answer, try again in a
couple of minutes then give up. + 881 621 440078
Well Gra has joined the OGC whilst we, a
nanospot upon the vast pachydermal curve, spent the day drenched in sweat
battling for every metre - one down now is one less later. P,P,P & P with
Pee the colour of best Darjeeling and a widdly dribble at that. There's a tiny
African moth running around on the screen as I write - Senegalese or Gambian
perhaps. Spends its time running up the screen, flying to the bottom and
running up again - Sisyphus the Moff? Or was it someone else condemned to roll
a peanut up a slope with his nose?
Was thinking, if that's the word, about
the Tao and uncarved blocks - Michaelangelo said that he released his figures
from their blocks of marble and there's an unfinished work in Florence where
the figure is - amazingly - emerging from the surrounding marble. Stunning
Renaissance magic, but the Taoist scholar might have asked 'But, lao Mike, why
that figure? Why did you choose that one from the infinite millions that were
in the block before you started to mess with it? Wouldn't it have been better
to have left them all there?' The yin and the yang approaches - the classical
and the romantic, the road not travelled. Why do I foist this twaddle upon you
all?
I have carefully collected a sample of
what it probably Mauretania - there was a film of dust on the solar panel and I
have it in a bag - looks like mud, rather than the red dust that lives under
the eyelids in remoter Oz.
We have the engine going again - sultry
hazy night, still drenched in sweat, dripping into my lap as i sit here slaving
away. Fenwick, I was really worried there for a moment - thought you really
cared - ah well. Sorry to hear Gordo misbehaved yet again.
Two more USB crashes today - have worked
out a slightly more effective procedure for rebuilding the thing - at least, I
think I have. But desperately, screamingly, ragingly infuriatingly frustrating
- and having to insert the bloody dongle every time to get CMap up seems so
unnecessary and just another device to give it the yips. As it does. All y'all
should be proud of my forbearance and tolerance - the temptation to hit it with
my metaphorical rifle butt is very strong.
From Pete:
Hello out there,
It's about 2,am the the engine has stopped and were now sailing
goose-winged with about 8-10 kts from the north.
To the right across the pond you can hear
the steel band playing outside the "Admiral's Inn", you can smell the
rum as its poured over the ice in a long tall glass, the ice cracks as the warm
rum hits it.....AAAAAHH....the tropics again. During the day the air is hazy,
heavy, humid and hot but tonight we have a beautiful warm breeze helping the
Berri slide along at a steady 3.5 - 4 knots. Not much has happened since we
left Falmouth no disasters very little wind the engine rattling away sucking up
the limited diesel supply so early in the trip. About 160 miles south and
slightly to the left are the Cape Verde Islands further left on the African
coast lies Senegal. We passed the Canary Islands a while back but were not
close enough to see anything, before that though we sailed close to Medeira.
Now that island looks interesting. We
had a good view of the NW W and S sides passing the island during the late
afternoon and night. The NW and W sides of the island have sheer cliffs
dropping vertically to the water with deep valleys and faults breaking the line
of this flat surface. Set on the very top of these cliffs were small villages
connected by a road and joining the main road which was sited close to a sharp
toothed ridge running east west along the island's major axis. The S side of
the island was not steep to, it was a more gentle slope with houses running
down to the water's edge. On the chart Medeira looked about 30 by 15 miles and
egg shaped. Looking back at it later in the night the orange lights of the
villages strung together by the house lights along the roads gave the
impression of a gold necklace adorning the island.
The Fastnet race how good was that result. I can only say it's a great
feeling to wake up after that, lie back and think " How sweet it is
". We only missed out on the fairytale finish the top spot on the podium
by 26 mins. not bad after nearly five and half days of racing. Berri's 11th.
out of 264 I think who finished in IRC division was a huge result, especially
when you consider that over 90% of the boats we beat were fully crewed. Thanks
for living the dream Alex.
A while ago I had asked my youngest daughter Tessa if she could send me
some cds for the trip home, when they arrived I noted that included amongst
them was Pink Floyd's The Wall. On the morning of the race I had a listen to
it.
The opening track starts with a lilting
acoustic guitar solo that I could barely hear so I upped the volume, a voice
came in......"Hey you...... out there in the cold getting lonely getting
old ..can you feel me..." the first stanza finished with .."Don't
give in without a fight..". Then the full volume hit me blasting the brain
with soaring electric guitar riffs and mega bass drums. This was operatic
stuff, this would lead us into battle,
this was Berri's anthem.
I finished listening to the cd, had
faint idea what it was all about and took from it what I needed, I was pumped
up, feeling 20 years younger and hot to trot. This feeling continued throughout
the race especially on the kite ride home, it seemed we were always in this one
right from the start. Now to other
business. In a couple of days time on the ninth of September I turn 60.
Everybody is invited to the party, space and access on the Berri is limited but
I think we can overcome this by joining "Pete's party network". Select
some area get a few friends ( or if you are like some of us who have no friends
just yourself will do fine ) open a bottle of some suitable liquid refreshment
and join the party, you just have to imagine the rest of us are in the next
room, oh and try to keep the noise down I don't want any raucous behavior
disturbing the neighbors. That's about it for now, I'll get back to you after
the party.
Cheers Pete.
From Alex:
Sao Antao is about 140 miles ahead. Its
westernmost point is at 02521W so we are already west of it. Once it is abeam,
we can, geographically at least, gybe for home. Would be nice to drop in for a
demijohn or two of vinho tinto on The Birthday - but perhaps a project for the
future. The course for the Cape of Good Hope will be 166M, distance about 4150
miles, about 35 days at 5 knots. That's geographically. Meteorologically, while
we could sail that course, it will be better to head (perhaps a pooptillionth
east of) south to the equator and see what the SE trades will allow us to do.
My waypoint at 23S 023W is the notional target, at the back of the high and a
few degrees east.
From Sao Antao, it is about 1025 miles
to the equator, so about 9 days away if we can keep moving. We crossed going
north on May 3rd at 029 41 39W. The Fastnet is at 51 22N and Cape Horn is at
56S so we sailed 6442 miles up the Atlantic. We will sail down to about 40S, or
about 5482 back down again. Then we really turn for home.
A bit more on the satphone, in case
anyone wants to call the old geezer on Friday - be aware that it goes into
messagebank after only about 3 rings. Usually we can grab it in that time but
not always. If you get messagebank, don't leave a message - it costs us too
much to collect them - just try again in a couple of minutes and someone will
be waiting near the phone unless it is in its thunder box. If you get
messagebank twice, it probably is, so give up.
I have a small present to get him over
the hump, and a few balloons to liven up the messdecks and a card from H &
K and a rude one from me. And we have some of Dr Boag's special throat elixir
for breakfast, perhaps a lunchtime consultation in Gaelic, and the aphrodisiac
Dr Cooper for afternoon tea, to go with Isabella and Graham's alcoholic cake.
Then there's Dave's bottle of Bundy in case we need fortification into the
evening. Promises to be a Big Day Out. We might play Pink Floyd on the cd
player,if it still works.
DB 106, 11237 (GPS 102) very slow day.
Did anyone spot the deliberate mistake
(actually, I just forgot to explain it)? In the last Daily Bull, the GPS
distance was less than the calculated day's run. If everything is working
properly, this should not be possible. But it isn't all working properly and
every time we have a USB crash, I have to turn off the GPS and the SatCom until
I've got the system back up again - if there's any data whatever getting to the
USB-Serial gizmo when it powers up, the laptop thinks it's got a serial
ballpoint mouse going ape around its edges - can't pre-delete it because
there's nothing in device manager to delete. It all has to be done from inside
device manager as it comes up. Tedious. And the CMap dongle has to be inserted,
SoB activated and the dongle removed before the main USB cable is attached or,
when the dongle is removed, the laptop again sees the USB gizmo as a mouse and
crashes it and, usually, the computer as well - the dreaded blue screen of
death. Does anyone know how to permanently remove the serial ballpoint mouse so
that it doesn't boot or isn't seen by XP? Anyway, I'm gradually getting to a
standard procedure that works. If only the failures had an element of
consistency. Enough nerdery - back to Twaddle.
Reading Pete's stuff about the Fastnet -
Pascal Loisin, the guy that beat us in the 2 hander, was 16 hours ahead and
would have had a fair tide or slack water across Falmouth Bay over the last 40
miles to the finish - we were headbutting nearly 2 knots most of the way and
that was the difference - about 2 miles on corrected time. Just as in Storm Bay
and the Derwent (at the end of a Hobart Race) it all depends on timing and
luck. Extinction is a tough examiner but the Dinosaurs almost got themselves
reincarnated to bite a bum or two. Would
have been a nice Jurassic touch. Everyone has their 'ifs' in ocean racing!
I've found the mung beans - we used
exactly half of them on the way up - and we have started the vegie garden
again. Cress is a lot of effort for the return, so will leave that for later -
in case of desperation.
Hugh, thanks for snails, Is for news, Hi
George, Hi, Ross - the northern constellations are all going slowly belly up -
Orion is flat on his back and the Great Bear is getting lower. Noice - I keep
looking into the Milky Way down south - when we can see it through the haze and
dust - but the Southern Cross has a way to go yet.
Warm sticky night - tiny moon, almost gone.
Could do with one of Pete's long tinkling glasses with condensation on the
outside...Have just gybed to pass closer to Sao Antao in the morning. A
symbolic first turn for home, although we are not quite holding 180 yet.
Santo Antao is 41 miles away on the port
bow and, for the first time since we left Falmouth, we are moving back
Eastwards towards Oz. Woohoo. We will pass the island tomorrow morning and,
Hugh, I'm pretty sure we will see it, blue mist or no. I don't know whether the
islands were inhabited when the Europeans first sighted them, but the first
European was almost certainly one of Henry the Navigator's Captains, who may
have been lost or coming back from the other side of the Gulf of Guinea, or,
perhaps, using the technique the Portugese developed of running southwards from
Cape Blanc until they reached the required latitude and then running eastwards
along the latitude until they reached a known spot on the African coast. The
identity of the Captain who actually sighted them first, and his report, were
probably lost when the Lisbon Archives burnt down in the great fire in, I
think, the 1770's. Not sure of my dates, but the Ming Admiral Cheng Ho was on
the East African coast in the early 1400's and Vasco da Gama would have been
there within the next hundred years or so. It would have been an interesting
meeting if they had coincided.
We will try to pick up as much easting
as possible from here until we hook into the SE Trades in about 600 miles. This
will give us a better angle across the trades into the South Atlantic. There's
a little low forming ahead of us, which may assist - or not - depends on which
bit of it we arrive in and what is in it.
DB: 121, 11116 (GPS 134) Murky hazy
morning, Santo Antao 25 miles away directly up sun - so Hugh, you may be right
after all.
The Old Geezer has hit 60 in various
parts of the world already. He's threatening to shave off his beard - says it
itches, but really it's because it makes him look older. We have had a Date
Line G&T to start the celebrations, the first birthday card has been
delivered and duly filed and the lad is resting. I will blow up the balloons in
the 0300 watch tomoz and deliver the second birthday card and - perhaps - a
small present to get him through the rest of the day at 0600. The satphone will
be on from 0600 UTC for the party network to talk to him - except that it looks
like the line of thundersqualls might thwart that one - try anyway. And there's
almost no wind yet again - drifting in the heat.
I've been reading Captain Correlli and I
think all y'all need a pet clone of Pelagia's little goat to exercise selective
digestive censorship on all this nonsense. Was going to offer a 6 pack of
Coopers to the first person to name the Goat's Island correctly, but, sadly,
Google has just made it a matter of who is quickest on the draw. It was
Cephallonia.
Get that network going out there...
[later
]
This grey haired old fart has just spent
the last hour belting away with a tiny plastic pump to blow up those sausage
balloons that you twist into animal and other shapes. A semi-futile exercise,
as the pump has no non-return valve and keeps coming apart. But the cockpit is
bedecked with coloured sausages to greet the birthday boy when he emerges at
dawn. Which is occurring a few minutes earlier today as we creep back to the
east. Thanks, Wendy.
Have just caught a glimpse of an
aircraft through the low cloud - funny time to be arriving. Apart from that,
and a couple of others that Pete saw some days ago, we have seen nothing human
since Madeira except plastic bottles and other floating gunk. It's a desert out
here. We did not see Santo Antao, as Hugh predicted - I think in fact we were
too far away - but we are aiming directly at Ilha Brava, the south western
island of the C.V. Archipelago which we should reach in daylight. Not a fishing
boat or a ship in sight anywhere around what seems to be a well populated and
touristy place.
We seem to be slotting in between the
tropical waves that form as swirls along the convergence line between the warm
air to the south and the cooler air in the north. The waves form little
depressions that move westwards at 10 - 15 knots with the earth's rotation
about a day or two apart, with attendant thundersqualls and nasty gusts. They
then go on to become Katrinas as they deepen and grow, but not all of them last
that long.
At breakfast time today we will commence
a Conclave of Consultation lasting all day, with no less that four Prominent
Medical Persons due to visit and provide Learned Opinions about the price of
fish and the state of the world's entrails. There will be our regular Consultant
from Dublin, his colleagues Dr Boag from Hobart, Dr Cooper from Adelaide (go
away, Lion Nathan!) and Dr Gordon from London, together with their students. A
record of proceedings may become available at some future date.
Go the Swans - and there's a cricket
match due to start soon too! Maggie, Katherine, whoever, please let us know -
the BBC is not interested and anyway, I can only get it feebly and
occasionally. What is the world sinking to? An institution fades away on the
dubious basis that it is all accessible on the internet. I beg to differ.
A DB festooned with balloons and in the
August Presence of Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Dr Laura Boag:
114, 11002 (GPS 116) pity about that 2!
We're just about to run up the assy to
get us back up to a respectable speed and around Ilha Brava 36 miles dead
ahead. Lots of phone calls - thanks - Pete took one from someone - male - whose
name he didn't catch because the line was bad - special thanks to that person.
Go the Swannies!
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