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DB 94,10282 (GPS 65 ) - about 6 USB crashes yesterday trying to talk
to youse all. There seems to be no pattern to it except that it happens, when
it does, as soon as I start transmitting. This may indicate HF energy getting
into the system somewhere or that the computer reacts in some way and turns off
the power to the usb. I dunno. Never happened on the way north and as far as I
can see, we are configured exactly the same - all the new stuff is completely
disconnected. Only difference is new motherboard in radio and perhaps some
difference in wiring when it was installed in the boat. A bummer.
204 miles to the Equator - I've been looking for the Southern
Cross but either too cloudy or to much moonlight. Must be out there though by
now. We've got the expected lift - long may it last - and we should be able to
miss S. America if it holds.
Not quite a woohoo yet.
We've had the same three birds with us for about a week - two
very graceful flecked grey backed birds that glide around in the wavetops and
settle on the water and watch us go by or sometimes park together behind us and
we don't see them for a day or so and the third is a little Black Petrel that
flies and flollops around us and more or less keeps company with the other two.
Overcast and humid - short lumpy sea and we're cracked off a bit
to make the ride a bit easier. We will get headed again tomorrow but should
still manage to avoid Ferdinand de Noronha. On present progress, we will cross
the equator at about 2730W - not that far from where we were on the way up, at
2941W. Have just relented and used 5 litres of water to wash three shirts and
two pairs of shorts. First litre just disposes soapy stuff through each garment
in turn, then they each get 2 rinses in 2 litres. The second rinse water is
just as black as the first but the things seem cleaner and smell a bit less.
Charlie Y - interesting - Ballyhoo must have returned to Oz
later because I started in the Sydney-Rio race in Jacqui in 1981/2 with
Ballyhoo, Anaconda and a Kiwi S&S that eventually won it. We retired with a
broken steering quadrant mid Tasman. I think she had a block of flats on deck
by that stage. Or maybe that was Condor. Or both of them.
There's not a lot to report, otherwise. I don't think we'll get
to see any stars tonight, so no Southern X. We're very much in bouncy bus
shelter bash mode, but this time we've got some sensible cushions, so even my
bum is not complaining. Yet. Pete had to apply the Purple Unguent yesterday as
a precautionary measure. We are far enough from
Can't wait to see the new Wally and Gromit - were-rabbit ideed!
Missed THHGTTG in the
Peter & Mary, nice to know you are still with us.
Roll on 1700 and G&T's.
DB 115, 10,167 GPS 115 but now highly suss because of all the
crashes. Getting back up to speed, with a bit of luck, and we're just about
laying Trinidade well cracked off. A little woohooo might be on the cards, I
think. 102 to the Equator, so early tomoz perhaps. We will break out Dave's
RANSA rum, but I don't think we'll stop this time.
Have just had my breakfast consultation in bed - noice, and the
Coolgardie frudge works best overnight so it was roooly coool too. Will try to
send this while propagation window still open.
The flea has walked the walk and is a relative pooptillionth of
a nanometre from the aftermost point of the crevass'd and foetid pacyhdermal
rump, about to peer over the edge at the rolling creasy scaly slopes below -
whence it shall be downhill all the way. We just crossed 01 00N so we're 60
miles from the edge and the G & T is being mixed as I write. Should fall
over into the southern abyss in about 10 hours - with some sadness and regret,
I must say. We shall consult the Doctor from Bundaberg at an appropriate moment
to console ourselves. Thanks Dave.
Welcome to all the Gusts who have written to us since YM and YW
hit the streets - Thank You - I hope you find your end of this as rivetting as we
find this end. Stephen sends us updates and we've just read some of your nice
words. Best thing that could have happened for Cricket, Lloyd - enjoy it while
it lasts. And we'd love all y'all to contribute to The Great Shirt Buyback for
CanTeen - watch this space for details...
Charlie, I believe PD is still around - we could perhaps put you
in touch.
As for the technical stuff - we're pointing at Trinidade, broad
reaching at 6 knots with 1280 miles to go. There was a big low down there but
it seems to be dissipating - we're at least ten days away so everything is
speculation anyway, but the decision will be whether to blast off towards
Some hours later - back on watch again, after what will have
been the last Northern Hemisphere G&T and the Last Supper (rice, corn, bacon,
mungies) and I'm definitely sad - this exercise is clearly becoming finite and
there is a potential end out there. How could this be? - when we set off, the
whole thing seemed impossibly distant and unlikely yet here we are very much on
the way home after everything seems to have worked according to plan.
Preposterous really.
30 miles to the edge.
Some idle rumination - nothing whatever to do with the price of
fish, but interesting. Think Hippopotami - lumbering ungainly beasts with ill
fitting folded skin (perhaps someone can find Kipling's story - better still,
Jack Nicholson reading it?) and prone to sunburn. I once saw a short film clip
of hippos swimming underwater - cloudy, muddy water and they were shapes rather
that detailed images - probably Attenborough rather than Cousteau - and was
utterly mesmerised. These huge lumbering beasts were gliding in slow motion and
astonishing beauty on dainty toes in graceful arcs like Nureyev and Fonteyn on
downers. Wonderful. I was moved by the similarity between them and the Apollo
astronauts moonwalking in one-sixth gravity and more recently remembered them
when I watched Eileen Collins' breathtaking Shuttle flip a few weeks ago when
she looped the big lumbering beast and held it for 93 seconds while Krikalev
and Phillips in the ISS filmed its belly and checked it for damage, before she
brought it back to
stable orbit. Wonderful stuff - that clip is on the NASA website
at www.nasa.gov if anyone
is interested. And I get goosebumps all over when I think that our satphone
number is up there somewhere. ISS 11 must be due to land soon - they will have
been flying for six months in October. Leroy Chiao is in
Who is this fool burbling on? Bring on Pelagia's goat
immediately - we desperately need ruminant digestive censorship on this
website.
000000 261708 200905/02:47:39
Over the edge and going downhill, just in time for Katherine's birthday
tomorrow. WOOOHOOO tinged with sadness.
We crossed northbound on May 3 and sailed north to almost 52 degrees at the Fastnet, with a 250 mile
diversion to Cowes to the east, so, adding
in the curves, Berrimilla has sailed about 7000 miles in the top half of
the world.
Onya Berri! About 10000 to go.
DB i35, 10032, GPS133. Better.
Hiya to you all in 5/6K! This is
Alex, but Pete will do his bit later. Thanks for your thoughts, John, Adelia,
Merna and Daniel - we are really pleased to know that you are interested in
what we are doing - perhaps we could encourage you all to work hard in class so
that you can one day follow your own dreams too. Maybe that's too boring a
message!
And thanks for your questions. Some
of them are big questions if we are to answer them properly, so we might have
to have several goes at it.
Pete will answer Nasaskia.
Junior, I have a confession to make
- I can't count. When I wrote that last
email with the teabag number, I counted one too many boxes - we only have about
1600, not 2000 - but that's still a lot. I make my tea with 2 teabags, so I use
4 teabags per day mostly and Pete drinks more tea and he uses about the same
but one at a time. 8 bags per day times the planned 110 days of our voyage
comes to 880 bags. This does not take into account what are often called
'contingencies' - things that come along and mess up your best plans - so for
instance, if there is not as much wind as we think there will be and it
actually takes another 30 days, then we will need another 240 bags - so with
1600, we actually have enough for nearly twice as many days as we think we need
- just in case. It's easy to overstock with teabags because they don't take up
much storage space but much harder, for instance, to do it with fuel which
needs a lot of space.
And, talking of fuel Kellie, we actually
use diesel, not petrol, because it is much safer to have in a boat. Most
pleasure boats these days, except for some racing powerboats, have diesel
engines. We left Falmouth with 240 litres of diesel, some in 6 x 20 litre cans in the cabin, some in a
tank in the cockpit and the rest in the proper fuel tank under the cabin floor.
We have about 110 litres left, so we have used just over half of it. We used it
to drive the boat through some of the bits where there was no wind. We are
hoping that most of these places are now behind us and that we won't need the
engine much more. Fingers crossed on that one!
George, it's quite hard to get
bored. We work and sleep in three hour watches and there's usually something
necessary to do like changing a sail, sending emails, cooking, making tea with
all those teabags and things like that. When it is really windy, we don't get
much chance even to rest, let alone get bored. Sometimes it is difficult for me
to get over my natural laziness and actually get on and do the things that need
doing but that's another problem. And we now have all you people to talk to as
well - good fun. But we do have lots of books and we both have CD players with
MP3 discs for those times when nothing is happening. I like doing crossword puzzles
too and my family cut out a whole lot of them from newspapers over several
weeks and sent them to me in England so I've got no excuse for being bored.
Also, I have a little short wave radio and out here, i can listen to the West
Indies, to Brazil, North America, West Africa and the BBC from England.
Elvis, we haven't seen any pirates -
at least, not that we know of. There really are pirates in some places, who
steal whole ships but we hope we don't meet any of them. We are a long way from
the coast (at least 500 nautical miles most of the time) and it is not likely
that - even if there were any - pirates would come this far out.
Thats a big enough email for now -
we can only send quite small ones. Macky and Yehia, I will answer yours in the
next one - they need quite long answers.
We had our normal Breakfast Short Consultation today, bulk
billed, of course, with the medico from Dublin and then we decided that the
crossing should be appropriately celebrated with a southern hemisphere based
medicinal potion so - half and half Dr Bundy and ASDA orange squash was the go.
Noice. Very Noice - thanks Dave and RANSA. This could become habit forming.
After all, from 1400 UTC today, it is Katherine's birthday in Oz - even before
that at the Antipodes Islands and in NZ - and we will have to follow tradition
and celebrate in all the time zones. Happy birthday K. Looking forward to
talking to you this evening.
Big welcome to all the new Gusts - thanks for signing on - it
makes our day every time Stephen sends us an update. A bit intimidating too.
Today's co-incidence - I've been thinking about doing a note on Berrimilla's
sails, and who should pop up in the Gust Book but the guy who made them. A roar
of applause, please, all y'all for Mr Brian Shilland - a true master of his
trade. More on this guy later.
Must write some more for 5/6 K at Belmore South. [see below
]
20/1115
Diana and the PBers and anyone else who is interested - post Man
Overboard modifications as follows: 1. We will rig a second, lazy preventer on
the other side of the boom so that it becomes a simple matter to pull it on
immediately without having to re-run it from the other side after a tack or
gybe. Will also be useful for locking boom in place when we are not using the
mainsail. 2. The MOB recovery tackle with its sling (not the same as the
Seattle sling) has been retrieved from the lazarette and is now set up across
the coachroof just fwd of the mainsheet track. It is designed to be snap-shackled
onto a strop fitted to the boom (and now in place) or on to the main topping
lift or a halyard forward of the shrouds, or to anything strong enough to hold
it like the pushpit in a real emergency. It is a 4 part tackle with a jam cleat
on the lower block, giving an upward pull, and there is a lazy block at the top
which will enable a downward pull, for instance if the whole gizmo is hoisted
on a halyard. The tail is set up to be run to a reefing winch on the boom if
necessary. If we ever need it, the tackle simply unclips from its stowage and
can be clipped wherever needed. Also doubles as a spare mainsheet. I hope we
never need to test it for real, but I'm sure it will work. Diana, are there
Sydney PBers?
Macky - that needs a big answer.
Yes, we do use electricity. In fact, Berrimilla needs a constant supply of
about 1.4 Amps during the day to run all the electrical and electronic systems
and a bit more at night when we also need to have navigation and instrument
lights on and more still when we are using the autopilot or the radio or the
watermaker. We have three big storage batteries - one that is kept fully
charged just for starting the engine (although it can be used as backup for the
other systems if needed) and the other two, called the 'house' batteries, store
all the electricity that we need for all the other things.
There are three ways that we can
charge these three batteries. First, the engine has an alternator, so every
time we run it, the batteries get charged. We can select which batteries we
want to charge as well. Second, we have a big solar panel, which will provide
about 4.5 amps in direct sunlight but is no good at night and third, we have a
generator that hangs over the back of the boat and is driven by a turbine that we
tow through the water on the end of a 40 metre line. The turbine (sometimes
also called the impeller - can you work out why?) is turned by the water
flowing past it and it turns the generator at the other end of the line, but it
only works when we are moving at better than about 2 knots. The generator
provides up to 6 amps when the boat is going fast and the turbine is whizzing
round, but less when we are going slowly. We can convert the generator so that
it is driven by the wind by putting a big fan on it and hanging it in the
rigging instead of over the stern. Using a combination of all three of these,
we can quite easily keep the batteries fully charged. Any extra electricity
that we generate can be used directly to power the systems instead of using the
batteries, so helping to keep them charged. We have various ways of checking
for when the batteries need to be charged, but mostly, it happens automatically
because the turbine and the solar panel are working.
And then we also carry lots of both
rechargeable and throw away - expendable - smaller batteries for our torches,
headlamps, CD players and the rest. If you are still hanging in there and
interested, I can tell you about all the systems that we use to run the boat -
for instance, how we send these emails. But I will wait to hear from you about
that.
Silly question - do you know what a
'knot' is when used to measure speed, as I used it in this answer? It is quite
easy to find out, (try a dictionary as a start) but I can explain it if you
would like me to.
Yehia - sorry to leave you till last
- Pete is going to answer your question and Nasaskia's but, as usual when I am
up writing emails, he is asleep because that is how we have to live (which may
be part of your answer!) so when he wakes up, I will remind him.
From Pete:
Hi there kids,.....Pete here with
answers to a couple of your questions.
First Nasaskia's question "How
many injuries did you get when you went overboard".
I didn't hit anything when I was catapulted overboard, it was quick and
clean one second I was standing on top of the boat's cabin the next I was in
the water. A quick swim to grab a rope that was trailing overboard then Alex
was pulling the rope and me back to the boat. When Alex was was helping me get
back on board my arm slipped from his grip because the back of the boat was
bouncing up and down with the waves and I fell back in the water. My shin
scraped past a heavy piece of metal (part of the self steering gear on the back
of the boat). This caused a bad bruise down my leg and cut three bits of skin
from my shin, each about the size of a five cent piece. These injuries are
healing well and should be
better in about a week. We now have
to make sure that all the ropes that stop the sail from doing what it did to me
are properly connected all the time.
Now, Yehia's question " Is it
hard to sail in a small boat".
Let me answer your question this way....it is hard to sail long
distances on a small boat. Small boats cannot sail as fast as big boats so if
you have to go a long way it takes a lot longer and this is where the problems
such as storage space come in. Sailing from
The other thing with a small boat is that out in the middle of the ocean
you get very big waves and very strong winds. The big waves throw a small boat
around a lot and at times make things such as cooking something to eat,
impossible. That is why we have lots of grab rails and handles to hang on to,
because at any time you can be thrown across the boat by a wave and you need to
be able to grab something quickly to stop you being hurt. In front of the stove
we have a harness where you can strap yourself in and not be thrown while
cooking dinner. For most of the time
though the weather is fine and there are no big waves or strong winds to worry
about, that is when we can be out on deck enjoying the sun and the fresh air
and the wonderful sailing and in these conditions it doesn't matter how big
your boat is it all feels the same.......absolute bliss.
If I don't talk to you again before your break have a great
holiday........cheers
Pete.
DB 125, 9,907 (GPS 135). Truckin' along reasonably well, touch
wood, hold me breff till me eyes pop and waltzing matilda. I think we have
hooked into the Brazil current too, which is nice.
A bit short of sailmail connection time because of all the
Belmore South answers, so this will be short. K's birthday has been
appropriately marked and we will have a proper Consultative Engagement when she
gets away from assignments and gets to
celebrate with her friends. Might even crank up the satphone again.
As we go further south, I think we might leave the satphone
switched on - just in case any of y'all want to waste your money. I'll let you
know.
NEWS RELEASE
RORC ANNOUNCES YACHT OF THE YEAR 2005
AND
OTHER ANNUAL TROPHIES
The Royal Ocean Racing Club is pleased to
announce that Yacht of the Year 2005 has been awarded to the Ker 55 Aera
owned by Nick Lykiardopulo.
This award, known as the Somerset Memorial
Trophy, is awarded for outstanding racing achievement by a yacht owned or
sailed by an RORC member and voted by the RORC Main Committee. It comes as a result of Aeras success in the
most recent Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race, where she took the overall handicap
trophy.
Aeras success in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart is
all the more remarkable as it is only the third time a British yacht has been
the overall winner in the 60 years since the race was started. The first was Captain John Illingworth who
won the inaugural race in 1945 sailing Mani and the second was the late Sir
Edward Heath who won with the first Morning Cloud in 1969.
A special award has also been made by the
RORC to Dame Ellen MacArthur, skipper of the trimaran B&Q, for her
outstanding performance in setting the solo non-stop round the world record at
71days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds, reducing the previous record set by
Francis Joyon by nearly 1½ days. Dame Ellen is an Honorary Life Member of the
RORC and first joined in 1996.
The
Seamanship Trophy, awarded each year by the RORC for an outstanding act of seamanship,
goes to Alex Whitworth and Peter Crozier and their Brolga 33 ft yacht
Berrimilla.
Having sailed the 2004 Rolex Sydney-Hobart,
the two set off to sail to the
Having completed the voyage to the
The prizes, together with all the other RORC
Annual awards, will be presented at the AGM and Annual Prize Giving Dinner at
the Drapers Hall on 22nd November.
ENDS 20th
September 2005
Hi everyone in 5/6S from Alex and
Pete and thanks for your questions. We will have to give you rather shorter answers
this time because we are only allowed about 10 minutes connection time each day
to send emails and I think we are already over our limit. So here goes:
Ahmed and Allison - Pirates - I
don't think there will ever be cloaking devices, although it's a very
interesting idea, because it would be impossible to make a ship invisible.
Force fields and gravity curtains are interesting and provocative in SF stories
but not that easy to arrange in real life. The Americans have Stealth
technology which makes aircaft hard to see by radar but that's about as far as
it seems possible to go, at least with the knowledge that we have now. And
anyway, clever people and pirates would would soon work out how to get around
the device. As for what we'd do if they came - we would do exactly as they told
us, give them everything they asked for, keep very still and hope that they go
away. Real life is sometimes difficult to accept, but we would certainly get
hurt if we tried to do anything else.
Maria.k, no, we haven't seen a shark
anywhere. Lots of dolphins, some whales, turtles, flying fish and bluebottles
(Portugese Men O'War) but no sharks. Even if there were any, we are not
planning to get into the water with them, so no problem!
Charneice - there aren't words to
describe the night sky properly - there's no visible pollution out here and on
a clear night the stars over the ocean are absolutely breathtaking - there are
so many and they go so deeeep into the back of the sky and it's awesomely
mesmerising to be out here under them. The Milky Way - the side view of our
galaxy - is a brilliant glittering slash from one side to the other. Did you
know that looking out into the universe is like looking back into time? The
light from our nearest star (does anyone know what it is called?) takes about 7
minutes to reach the earth so if you look at it (DON'T - without special
goggles!) you are looking at something that happened 7 minutes ago. Light from the next nearest, which I think is
Alpha Centauri, takes nearly 5 years to get here, so if AC explodes as you read
this, you won't know for 5 years. This happens right out as far as the most
distant object we can see, whose light takes several million years. Not enough
time to talk about this but it's interesting to find out about it. Sitting in
the boat at night, I can see how small the Earth is and how big the universe
and it gives me goosebumps. You'd get them too!
Dyllan and Gunter - we have one
serious meal in the evening and we snack for the rest of the day. We don't need
to eat very much because we are not using much energy. We have used all the
fresh food that could get old and spoil except for a few onions, some eggs and
some bacon and cheese. We will try to eat this before it goes bad, but once it
is bad, we have to throw it away. The rest of our food is dried or in cans, so
it should last for the time we are out here. We can make bread and grow
beanshoots.
Rend - we have a satellite Global
Positioning System (GPS) for navigation and that shows us the way even at
night. It needs electricity or batteries to run, but if it breaks down, we can
navigate using the sun and the stars and a paper chart, a pencil (yeah,
really!) and an instrument called a sextant which measures the angle of the sun
and the stars in the sky and, with the help of a good watch, allows us to
calculate where we are. We have a magnetic compass as well and at night, we
point the boat in the direction we think we need to go. If we know where we
started from and our speed and direction (our velocity), we can work out where
we have got to by morning. This is called Dead Reckoning and it is not as
accurate as GPS but it works.
Feras - we don't have air
conditioning because it needs far too much electricity to run and we can't
completely close off the cabin. We would have to keep the engine going all the
time and we can't carry enough fuel to do this. And anyway, it's horribly noisy
and we can live without it! A little 12 volt fan would be nice but I forgot to
bring it, so I'm an idiot.
Karanbir and Melisa - we don't seem
to get sick out here - we are not in contact with sick people and as long as we
started out healthy, I think we are fairly safe. We try to be as hygienic as
possible and to keep everything really clean as well. We have some serious
medicines - antibiotics and the like - as well as a big first aid kit in case
we ever do get sick, or perhaps more importantly, one of us gets injured. If it
happens, it would depend a bit on how bad the illness or injury was - it's not
too hard to manage the boat by yourself, but it's nice to have help! All the
best A & P
DB: 121, 9786 (GPS 125) My propagation window now ends at about
0900, resuming again if we're lucky, at around 1700, so I think I will not get
your next post till this evening. This may not go either.
We have been outrunning the sun on our way down the heffalump's
rump and we just beat it across ADC - aft dead centre, the equator - today is
the equinox. We should continue to stay ahead of it down to the Tropic of
Capricorn so the bus shelter will start to get cooler - woohoo. The moon passed
very satisfactorily to the north of us last night, Orion is turning on his head
with dear old Betelgeuse heading towards the northern horizon. I saw the
pointers, Rigil Kent and Hadar, last night before the moon rose, but the
Southern Cross itself was down in the murk layer just above the horizon.
Tonight perhaps. We are still going west, by a smidgin, and we won't turn
properly for home for about 10 days at least - it will depend on what develops
down at 20+ south near Trinidade.
I have just discovered that some of my emails are not getting
through - please let me know if you didn't get yours. Ho Hum. I think it may be
to do with virus checkers not liking our sailmail address. For instance,
nothing I have ever sent to RORC has got there and I've been wondering almost
since NZ what we might have done to offend them.
And on RORC, I think our best imitation of Uriah Heep might be
in order - we are deeply happreciative of the great 'onour bestowed hupon us
and werry 'umble. Two old geezers in a battered old boat should BE so lucky!
And once again we will be late for the party. Must do better.
Still broad reaching south and a bit west - not sure whether we
are actually getting closer to Oz but it's definitely good progress and great
sailing. And getting cooler too.
It has been a lot of fun talking to Belmore South and a nice
diversion. We hope the kids got as much out of it as we did. Did anyone pick up the bit on the
cheesy feet bacterium?
Kevin O' - I don't know about rating against modern exotics - in
long ocean races, luck is as important as skill - you need both in abundance,
and this year was a good year to pick to do a Fastnet in Berrimilla.
Diana, thanks - i didn't understand the subject line about
Points - am I being obtuse? I sent you a direct email and it bounced - your
virus scraper not liking our sailmail address?
Charlie - I'll find out which boat it was in the Syd-Rio - it
was big and black. I wonder who the aussies in the Swanson were.
DB: 129, 9657 Gps 131 Definitely going downhill...
[ed: Berri is tracking about 200nm to the east of the northward
journey back in May. map here ]
Not much to report - the Coolgardie fridge (a TESCO supermarket
tray with two cans and a wine bladder wrapped in a wet sheet kept in the shade
and the wind and periodically doused) is really cooling the ointment these days
- it's getting noticeably cool at night and this morning's breakfast Con is
next to me as I write and very pleasantly below room temperature.
Steve will be away for the weekend, so you wont get any updates
but I will keep sending them so you will all get a major fix on Monday. [Ed: Sorry
bout that]
We are on the direct line for sailing vessels bound for Cape
Horn or the East Indies from Europe and the US - mostly Portugese, Spanish and
English and Dutch in the early days. Then came the Germans, the Americans from
the US east coast - traders bound for California and Nantucket whalers and then
everyone else down to todays round the world
racers and silly old geezers. In the early days, most of the Cape
Horners would have been to the west of us here, preferring to sail down the
coast, but once time became important and ships were better able to sail to
windward, they would have followed almost exactly our route, before some turned
east as we will in a week or so. If we could bring them all back to life for a
moment, I wonder what we would see. There would be ships from horizon to
horizon - all shapes, sizes and rigs, Magellan, Drake, Anson, Cook, Bligh plus
R K-J, Chichester, Connie van Riechshouten (?)and the Whitbread Racers, and the
Volvos, Ellen MacArthur, Pete Goss, the Vendees, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.
And then there would be all the others going North from the Horn as well. Quite
a crowd - Sydney Harbour in 1988 would have nothing on it.
PeterB thanks for your note - did you notice the coincidence? It
will be the second time we have shared a platform with Nick Lykiardopulo and
one if his Aera's. The last time was after the 1998 Hobart, when he won IRC and
we won PHS but we really couldn't celebrate. I hope this will be different. but
we still have to get home to enjoy it!
Trudi, thanks. I think your single handed friend may be in
trouble. He is probably stuck in the north flowing current along the African
coast where the SE trades are southerly or even SSW. If it were me, I would be
looking at trying to sail WSW or SW to about half way across, getting lifted
all the way and then turning south east near Ilhas Martin Vaz (Trinidade) at 21
S 28 W. It's a long way and I would have to cross most of the South Atlantic
twice to get to Cape Town, but perhaps my only hope of making any distance
south. It would almost certainly mean going to the west and south of the
predominant high in the S. Atlantic. Does your friend have enough food and
water? Martin has probably told you that we are nearly 700 miles south of him
now and way over the other side at 07 22 S, 27 00 W.
DB: 145, 9512 gps 147. Wooohooo. And what a day! the Swannies
get up, we've got 4000 miles in the can, going down the hill.
We had an early email from Jeanne with the result, and then a
satphone call. Noice. So we had a little consulting session for the Swans and
another 4 4k nm.
Simon, I've worked out how to disable - but you cant do it if
the whole screen has gone ape. I tried on the last crash and got the blue
screen. It destroys the active desktop as well and makes a real mess. Deleting
the serial ballpoint when it appears (not always) seems to work. Still have to
repair the desktop each time..
G'day to all the new Gusts - welcome aboard the flea's back.
We're racing south as fast as its little legs will carry us. John S., I hope
your boat comes in too - and the Vogon constructor fleet leaves you alone. Richard
G, I will contact you direct as soon as I can. You can send us more details if
you like via berri@berrimilla.com. Bill W at RANSA - we are really looking
forward to a twilight or two!
Jose -I wonder what da Gama and Cabral would have made of GPS and
weather by email grib file and above all, a satellite phone? Cabral was
probably the first one to find his way back to make a report... Selwyn, G'day.
We're still a bit gobsmacked by the RORC award - something to be
proud of and appreciate for ever. Shame
we can't go and collect it - late again for our second RORCfest.
DB 134, 9378, gps 146, day 36, 74 to go. Seems we are about a
third into the planned 110 days and we've sailed about a third of the distance
- but it's all in the unknowable variables. Now in 40 kts.
I don't know how it happened but I have just lost about an hours
worth of hard worked middle-of-the-night creative headbanging as I was trying
to get it to your breakfast tables. I'll have a go at recreating it, but it may
lack that je ne sais quoi that comes from the immediacy of experience. Here
goes:
Small milestone: we are south of Bamaga, (this was written at
about 1049S) at the tip of Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost point on
mainland Oz. Woohoo!
Just spent a rough and wet half hour doing a sailchange in 35
knots - I was lying awake on my sweaty bunk cushion listening to Berri crashing
into waves and creaking and feeling the rig flexing and generally stressing.
Climbed reluctantly out about half way into my sleep time because I knew there
was no hope of sleep till we'd fixed things. Short confab with the pee bucket
and pass it up to Pete in the cockpit to empty and rinse and discuss what to
do. Agreed sailchange necessary, down from #3 and a reef to #4 and two reefs.
Into full party gear for the first time for a long time - the whole works, WWG,
lifejacket, tether, gloves, epirb etc. but this time over T shirt and shorts -
you may ask Why bother? - partly for protection if things go wrong and it's
always better to stay dry if possible. Pete put the rest of his on, we turned
on the spreader lights - wild gyrations, bright flashing sheets and clouds of
spray, solid water running down the decks. Pete went forward while I ran the
boat down wind a bit to ease the motion and reduce the quantity of water over
the top. When he was tethered and ready, I dropped the 3 into his hands as he
dragged it flogging across the lifelines onto the foredeck. He tied off the
halyard, I locked it and went forward up the lee side, knee deep in water
occasionally. I moved the sheet car to the #4 position on the way, took the
sheets off and started to pull the foot then the leech of the 3 aft into a
rough flake as P unhanked it. It has a full width batten about a third of the
way down and this is bigger than any sailbag on the boat and also the hatch, so
its a pig to bag and stow, but we got it done, still braced on the heaving
foredeck sitting in streams of water. P hanked on the 4 as I went aft down the
weather side, moving the weather car on the way. We left the sail flaked on the
foredeck while we put in the second reef (with the preventer on this time!) and
then adjusted Kevvo to sail upwind again, hoisted the 4, adjusted the sheets
and we were going faster than before, in the same direction but sailing almost
upright over the waves rather than crashing through them. Much easier motion.
Will go through reefing procedure in another update.
Tidied up the spaghetti of reefing lines, sheets, halyard etc in
the cockpit. By this time drenched in sweat inside the party gear and soaked
outside - skin on hands starting to pucker. Only half an hour of sleep time
left, so no point in going back to bed - just took off safety gear and jacket,
dropped WW pants to knees, removed Tshirt and wrung it out and hung it on
stormboard while I made a cup of tea. Tea made, shirt back on, hitch up pants,
give P an early mark and take Tea into cockpit where cool 35 kt breeze starts
to dry T shirt. Hit a nasty wave sideways, huge blast of almost solid spray
into cockpit and over dodger and shirt soaked all over again and tea salsified.
Poo!
That's more or less it. In Falmouth and Lymington we carefully
fixed all the leaks into the cabin - really successful except for the one right
over my bunk. Drip drip... Will try to plug it with lanoline later when the
deck stops messing me about.
Doug, there's a small pink waypoint on my chartplotter for young
Henry at 2835 S, 02609 W. They must have been stuck in the Horse latitudes. We
should pass fairly close, I hope a bit to the north, but we will certainly say
G'day and dip the lids. Could we post your email with the story, please? I
think it helps to recognise the ghosts that live out here. Please let Stephen
know if ok. I will visit the original when I'm next in the Mitchell - which
reminds me - there's a story there too. Later.
Thanks Ron - I look forward to seeing it.
Isso - hurglaffboolagerry budnoodladingburtle to M & R for
18.
And Brian S, your time will come! Just a bit busy... The old
main now has about 30 patches but still going strong.
DB: 138, 9240 GPS 128 (long crash) Another wet and windy night,
down to 3 reefs, but now seems to be easing. Nasty front forming to the south.
Propagation dreadful so will keep this short. It seems my idea about a Team
Berri bid for the shirt at the Lord Howe auction is not going to happen unless
anyone out there wants to volunteer to organise it - it's a big ask, and I
think we will quietly drop it otherwise. A pity.
I've been taken to task (what's the derivation of that
expression?) for leaving out Australian and Kiwi round the worlders from my mind
picture of all the sailing vessels passing here over the centuries - so,
apologies to Kay Cottee, Naomi James, David Adams, Don Mcintyre and Peter Blake
- to name a few. And I got Connie van Rietschoten wrong too, but who wouldn't?
He won the first two (I think) Whitbreads in boats called Flyer and he was
reported to have told his crews that if they went overboard in the southern ocean, he would not
turn back to look for them. A practical man!
We're plugging on through the night. Going through a series of
squalls about 20 miles apart with 35 knots and pretty vicious seas.
Uncomfortable, frequent sail changes and quite hard work just to hang on - you
have to do everything one handed while holding on grimly with the other, your
toes and eyebrows too. Berri banging through the seas as well, but short of
slowing down to 3 knots or so, we can't do much about it. Would be trivial but
for the seas.
Have not yet seen the Southern Cross - it has been cloudy to the
south for days. Clearing as I write now, so will go up and have a squizz and
make a cuppa with some dunkers. Which done, I have to report that things change
out here rather fast. I went up into the cockpit with my cuppa to find the sky
completely overcast again.
I know I've been banging on about this a lot in these logs - and
I'm going to do it some more: Nelson said of Cook that you had to be familiar
with the sea to appreciate the magnitude of Cook's achievements. As someone now
reasonably familiar with the sea and going back to that mind picture of all the
ships here together and then transporting the picture to the North Atlantic, a
Viking longship was a marvellous vessel for its time - seaworthy, fast and
rugged and it almost certainly got to Newfoundland via Greenland long before
Columbus found the West Indies. Think, though, of the conditions for the crews
on those voyages. Berrimilla is a tiny world, but enclosed, relatively dry,
very uncomfortable but bearable for very long periods, with sophisticated
watermaking technology and safely preserved food and the space to store enough
to last for at least a year as long as the water holds out. And she sails very
efficiently to windward, with GPS to record every twitch of her wake. A
longship was open, the crew sat on thwarts or on a deck below the thwarts in
the spray and the rain where they also slept, probably in running water for a
lot of the time. They had to bail with buckets. Their sails were made of wool
and could not sail better that about 45 degrees to the wind, their wet weather
gear was cowhide and they had to store water in casks and food preservation
technology was salting and drying. One of those in a North Atlantic storm would
have been desperately frightening and cold, with the crew unable to cook food
and close to death from exposure and starvation. And on top of all this, the
captains had not only to preserve their vessels and crews on the way out but
also remember how they got there and then find their way back and pass on the
knowledge. No GPS, no instruments, probably no facility for writing, no charts.
I don't know whether any of the longships ever got back from Newfoundland but
it would have been an astonishing achievement if they did. A nation's capacity
for empire building - or theft on a grand scale if you are a revisionist - depended
on this capacity to get superior technology into action in distant places and
then get home again with the spoils and the knowledge.
Closer to where we are now, there's an account of this process
written by Bernal Diaz, who was one of them, of Hernando Cortez' destruction of
the Aztecs with his few hundred soldiers and sailors and their guns, horses and
armour (and considerable local help) not very long after Columbus first found
his way back to tell them how to get there. I read it as a schoolkid and
wondered then - but not half as much as I wonder now. I might bang on a bit
more about rutters and charts and computers in another update.
DB 125, 9115 gps 128. As you can see, we are creeping infinitesimally
eastwards again. We have been further east since the equator, but this may be
the beginning of the real turn for home. As I write, we are heading directly
for Tristan da Cunha nearly 1500 miles ahead. We have passed Ascension Island
and are just passing St. Helena way over to the East. Watch this space - here's
hoping. I have learned not to take anything for granted out here, though.
I've been thinking about young Henry Knight and the thousands of
people like him who died out here in truly appalling conditions and have no
marker or memorial - some, like Henry, properly buried at sea with a log entry
and a tiny slip of paper to record the position, but most just abandoned like a
bucket of galley slops. Think for instance, of the million or so Africans who
were just tossed overboard from the slave ships when they died, unnamed and
unwanted. It must have been quite common to sail past floating bodies and, in
the very worst calms, they would have floated with the ship for days perhaps.
This is my tiny attempt to pay my respects to them all and to acknowledge their
existence. Perhaps their ghosts will find a little comfort in our passing and
remembering them. Perhaps not.
My father, who flew aircraft off carriers and survived the
second world war and would never talk about it, used to sit quietly and play
Kathleen Ferrier singing 'Blow the Wind Southerly' and I could see that it
affected him emotionally - not just the sheer beauty of her unaccompanied voice
but also the words. I think I now have some idea about why. As an illustration,
Hilary did some research for us into Pedro Alvarez Chabral and found that he
was sent by King Manuel 1 to follow Vasco da Gama's route to India. Sailing
with him were four tiny caravels commanded by Bartolomeu Dias. All were lost.
Think of the grief, courage, pain, uncertainty and loneliness in those three
words - all were lost. Many of my father's friends disappeared without trace
too (and even some of mine) and Kathleen Ferrier was his way of remembering
them all. I will play it for Henry and all the others when we get closer to
him.
Yesterday I wrote about finding the way back. Every captain kept
a log of a sort, partly to get him home again and partly for those who were to
follow. It was more a word picture of what they saw and did - "we steered
through the night towards two bright stars close together and the swells came
from the east...". The Dutch called these logs 'rutters' and I think the
French equivalent would be 'routiers'. I don't think there is an exact English
equivalent - routemap is the best I can do - even the dreaded travelogue,
perhaps. Pedro Alvarez Chabral would have carried a copy of da Gama's rutter.
These rutters were highly prized and were seized by the national authorities
whenever any captain was skilful or lucky enough to find his way home and they
became part of - in today's terms - a nation's intellectual property. The
Portugese kept them in an archive in Lisbon until it was burned down in the
1700's and the Dutch, English and Spanish guarded them carefully as well.
Nevertheless, copies were made and smuggled across borders and I have seen an
amazing atlas that was presented to Henry VIII that is almost certainly the
result of this covert intelligence work. There is conjecture that Cook had
pirate copies of the early Portugese or Dutch rutters when he sailed through
the Torres Strait for the first time.
As an afterthought, modern computer gizmos are called routers.
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