5059.57 179197.45 Sat 31/05/2008 02:35

A bit tense in the Whitters camp. McQ asleep and oblivious. We're 30 miles from Amchitks Island, about 50 miles west of the ideal spot to push the stick forward and dive the veehicle into the mosh pit (how's that for a three tier mixed metaphor?) and the wind is building - now 15 - 20 apparent as we progress - and we're on the stbd tack, so working the damaged shroud. I've just put the 3rd reef in to minimise the stress, everything softly softly, trying not to pound. Shortish steep sea, not too difficult, water now grey olive greenish but seems crystal clear. Our chart tidal data is set to Sydney time (it would be wouldn't it, when everything else in the software is on UTC!) but if I've got it right, it tells us that the tide turns against us at around midnight tonight until about 0900 tomoz. This more or less correlates with Kimbra's data, (hers set to UTC - 10). and for a different tidal station. Seems to me, therefore, that we can get ourselves as close as we can by midnight, perhaps motor NE to get a better position and start going in around 0600ADT, on the last of the ebb. I think we'll have to motor unless we can get upwind somehow. Then it's all down to Huey and the Examiner.

Wish us luck!

I think I need a calming consultation - it's the Alchemist today.

A couple of hours later - calm prevails, the Alchemist has worked his magic, McQ up and cooking, wind easing, sea still olive grey - like volcanic glass - and I saw Berri's and my very first Puffin - tubby beast, very flappy and with THAT face - if not a puffin, then a guillemot or an auk? 24 miles from Amchitka Island, no spot heights on chart so don't know what to look for but it looks a bit like Lord Howe. Semisopochnoi to the north looks just a bit interesting too. The Plan is to plough on until something tells us to stop. As McQ says, a 50 mile wide pass is just like the Channel, but this one's a lot shallower.

McQ: Corrish-the new english. Hi from the cwampet berri!!

Engine is off, finally- it's such a pleasure to have just sailing noises (and lizzy whining away!!) Lizzy's pretty amazing- absolutely no engine assistance required to charge the batts so long as there is a bit of wind. We are now averaging about 4 knotters to Amchitka Island!!! Wind is due to be about 15 knots N/NE in approx 12 hours time, probably about the same time we get to the Pass, so likely we will need to tack our way through, which could be kinda time consuming I guess. From the info on the chart (I say 'chart' but I didn't need to do any calculations- just put the cursor over the T symbol for tide info and use arrow keys to get to appropriate time and date on computer- not a purple tidal diamond, breton plotter or set of dividers required!!!) if we get there around 2am local it will be just after LW and just under 1m range at Amchitka Island and at most 0.2knots of current flowing North-east through the pass, but I might have got our time zones totally wrong!! so though it is likely to be wind over tide, with only 0.2 knots flow and the whole thing about 60nm wide I wouldn't have thought it'd be too feisty- famous last words- we shall see!! And of course the info I have to hand may not be accurate/ I may have completely missed some Amchitka Pass oooh chat somewhere and everyone else might know that there is lots of current squeezing the pacific through this little gap- It does decrease in depth from about 4000m quite rapidly to 1000m then averages around 500m for a bit with the min depth about 100m so that could contribute to some lumpety breaking waves!!! We will find out soon enough!!!

Allie: mum sent me a message saying you have organised me some midlayers, so just wanted to say thank you so, so, so much- you are truly amazing (but you know I think that!!!) I shall possibly be forever in your grateful debt and won't forget it when notsocold up north!!! I know I didn't give you much choice tho'!! In exchange I shall wash my Sailing Logic T-shirt and jacket so they are nice and fresh and clean for wearing in port and fully advertise and market you as the only people to sail and race with in the Solent!!! You never know- you might get some Alaskans racing with you next year!!! Thanks again and lots of love Bol xxx

Web: Amazing news re SB engine, so it is said that a bad workman blames his tools, so in this case does VP take any credit or entirely due to maintenance team??? Certainly, I'd like to book in for the diesel engine maintenance course in October, if thats ok? also I don't understand fliders and galloons, gliders and falloons but what is a falloon?? c x

Not much else at moment... pretty grey outside and cwampet too (thats THE new word for cold/wet/damp)- maybe its time I invented a whole new language- soon everyone will be carrying round a copy of the OCD, corrish to english version. (Oxford Corrish Dictionary)

Oh yes, the phosphorescence last night was truly out of this world. wouldn't photograph on my wee olympus tho. but incredible... bright bright white against the black sea, not the usual glowing green, but the sort of pearlescent, iridescent ultraviolet dazzling white- the colour/effect rich and famous people pay loadsa money to their dentist for!!! Never seen anything quite like it- properly mesmerising!! big fat white lines streaking out from the boat swirling miles away into the blackness. And a thick frothy white trail behind us as the prop churned up the ocean. Pretty awesome!!!

Enough ramblings- we've slowed down so am off to deck to speed us up.

lots of love
Corrish
xxx

5106.35 17919.38 Sat 31/05/2008 06:06

Just tacked out from about 12 miles south of Amchitka Island - lousy angle, only making 120 but we'll play with it as things progress. We will see what sort of ground we can make from here until the tide turns tomoz and then go for it. Everything crossed please. Still bleak overcast, thick mist towards Amchitka so no actual sighting.

Water now brown...

We're 73 miles from my waypoint. Grib says that the wind goes north tomorrow morning with some attitude (therefore potentially wind over tide so opportunity for renewed pearshapedness), we have flood tide tomorrow morning, we are due there around 0100 ADT - iff I've got the time right - I'm juggling with UTC, Speedy time (UTC + 1) Kimbra time for tides (UTC -10) and ADT (UTC - 8) and my cheesebrain gets confused. But it does look as if we have one good chance of pushing through early tomorrow AGW. Every appendage crossed please, applicable or no! Still no worthwhile wind and I'm playing the tiny bit there is for all its worth to squeeze inches out of it. Motor just above half revs from the feel and sound and I hope being very frugal while keeping 4 knots clicking over. McQ just off watch and asleep so can't ask re BAPTO.

Water sludge brown - must be the edge of the tidal flow from the Bering. Still lots of kelp around. Woolly overcast, patches of light on the water, long rolled almost tubes of fluff SE to NW, rain cloud to the west. Thin dark line of cloud on the horizon to port that wishful thinking tries to make into Amchitka Island but cheesebrain knows that we won't be able to see it from 60 miles.

Have spoken to Lacy Plummer, Harbourmaster at Adak - we have permission to enter from US Customs - yeehaa. Apparently there are 2 sailboats (when in Rome!) in Adak from Australia. Amazing.

MJC - of course! How could I have forgotten!

Speeds - agree absolutely about some aspects of sailing engineering. There's also the ego side that shaves tolerances in order to win...

I'll try to keep these updated but it may get busy, particularly in the pass.

Thar she blows!

Whales, weed, phosphorescence. nukes, krill, trench, terns, acclimatisation..quick, dash below checklist for this blog.

Too hairy to sit down here while on watch - more on this later. Down in the big trough between two wavest I looked up and saw a dark column silhouetted against the sky out on the port bow about 300 metres away - odd - it disappeared, then another - yesss! whale spouts - huge plumes of vapour and spray, perhaps 20 ft high and cylindrical - then they were white against the sea, from the top of a wave - perhaps 4 or 5 animals, going our way, only the briefest glimpse of one - long back, small fin, very Finwhale. And then - and then there was a black shape beside the boat, perhaps 10 metres away - I now think it might have been the tip of a pectoral fin - and a HUGE black shape surfaced - no spout, just massive presence, no apparent velocity - and then dived and turned towards us as it did - enormous swirl of water, longer than the boat. I had a Moby Dick shiver, but it did not reappear. I could not see any detail - just black.

McQ's weed is kelp - enormously long fronds of the stuff with stems like tree trunks all longer then the boat and highly dangerous if it gets into the prop - hence not being down here blogging. We hit one - big bump and I could see a long sinuous line in the phosphorescence astern - took me a few seconds to work it out and reach for the throttle and it was gone. Lucky,

Phosphorescence - astonishing, amazing, I've never seen it like this. Berri's path through the water is a silver green arrow with brilliant surges from the bow and a long undulating shaft stretching astern as far as you can see. It is bright enough to light up the sails and, believe it or not, the terns milling around the masthead as well. It's they who are making the chirrups I mentioned earlier as the try to land on the masthead. I photographed one in daylight. I went and sat in the pulpit looking aft and just bathed in the raw beauty of it all - like the most subtle firework display, but cold and fierce as well. It seemed, too, as if we were going through a shoal of tiny fish or perhaps krill in terabytes. I wonder if it's all a left over from the nuclear tests at Amchitka!

We're now over the Aleutian Trench - up to 7500 metes deep - it would take me half an hour to run that these days. I wonder how long it would take for - say - a coke bottle to reach the bottom. And I'm deliberately trying to sit out there slightly underdressed to get used to the cold - and the damp. I like McQ's blurky. Needs cold and wet somehow as well.

Mad McQ: in new knicks

Its getting dark. We are a bit out time wise, would have been more appropriate to change clocks in a couple of stages- say 3 today and 3 more hours in a few days time, but bit confusing really to do that and apoart from the fact it will be quite dark till about 9am for a bit, and its midnight and jsut getting dark now!! makes no odds to us really in the big scheme of things- on watch is on watch whatever time of day or night!!! (which hopefully answers a question I often get asked: do you anchor at night and go to sleep? (No)) I have clean knickers on, you'll all be relieved to hear- so can sleep easy now- perhaps a rash decision given we may well go to Adak and have the opportunity of a shower- we shall see, but had to be done nevertheless.
AW saw whales on his watch. I haven't seen any on my watch yet. boo! Up until this watch I haven't spoken to myself (never mind the walrus) except to recite the Ancient Mariner out loud, which I think is acceptable in society, and doesn't count as talking to yourself. This watch,however, I have been talking nonsense to the whales...chat that goes along the lines of 'whalefish whalefish whalefish' Fortunately, i know that there is one person out there that would believe I haven't gone more mad!!! (Its a song, sort of) but I guessed anyone with their satellite trained in on me from space would think i was mad, hopping about the cockpit to keep warm and muttering ramblings about whalefish to myself!!! And still no sign of any real whales come to say hello!!!
Well, all I really wanted to tell you in this blog was that I have new knicks on, but I said that already in the subject.
Am I going barmy, who knows???
love
McQ and other McQ and other McQ
xxx
PS: i've just invented a new word, 'BLURKY' Its not quite black and not just murky- its that smudgy, fuzzy darkness where there's no discernable horizon but just faint wavy boundary lines in the clouds distinguishing between different shades of dark grey. Its a blurky night out there tonight. Now if everyone could incorporate 'blurky' into everyday usage, eventually I might get my own entry in the OED- cool!!!

4939.31 17832.19 @ 2245 ADT (Z - 8) Fri 30/05/2008 07:48

We're about 140 miles south of my waypoint in the shallowest part of Amchitka Pass. AGW, we should get there on Saturday around midday local, on a flooding tide so - again AGW - we might just have a go at it. But in this little gig, that's far too far ahead and extra tempting for Herself in the patents with stockwhip. Just idle speculation! Between here and there lies the Aleutian Trench, 7000+ metres deep and only 40 miles or so across - presumably where the two plates are interacting. The shallowest sounding I can find in the pass is 88 metres over a spike in the middle. We'll see. Would be a fascinating place to cruise in the right boat - insulated, heated, big engine, space for wet gear - a proper Boot Room in fact. We're a bit exposed in Berri.

Not much else to report - I wonder at the fortitude of Cook, his crew and all the other early explorers who sailed so far into this and beyond. Without a satphone or polar fleece or 'technical' yachtie kit. What does technical actually mean?

We should cross the international date line about half way to the waypoint on present progress, but that will change. Unless the wind changes, we will probably have to tack to get there.

Will keep this open...4 hours later...Somehow I've deleted the exciting bit so here goes again - where complacency took over and I sat down here writing this and looked up through the window and saw a huge container ship heading towards us. Grabbed vhf command mike, set it up, raced on deck, decided he was actually coming to investigate dayglo orange trisail, still in track tho not set, below main, thinking it might be a distress signal. Tried calling him - no answer, so rolled out the headsail to indicate business as usual and started to bring in the trisail. He turned away and was gone over the horizon in about 20 minutes. Grateful he bothered, but slightly unnerved that I didn't see him first. He was heading along the line of the outside of the islands, so great circling from China to Vancouver or Seattle perhaps.

We have about 60 litres of diesel in the tank and 60 in jerries - decision time very soon. Not enough wind to sail, doing 5 kts almost all vmg motor sailing so very efficient use if the stuff but...125 nm to go to Amchitka - should bo ok to use 60 getting there and through if necessary, but will need careful judgement.

McQ: See Weed!!!

Just saw seaweed!!! Which is very exciting- means one of two things- either we are in the Sargasso Sea and thus lost or, or we are nearing land!!! How exciting!!! How exciting!!!
Theres a big lolloping swell about too- lake district size perhaps (as opposed to Himalayas), big undulating rollers. Notalota wind but headsail out and making good progress motor-sailing. All good.
Cold outside and its that time of the afternoon where its getting that way inside too, despite the engine. Probably too late in the day for a knicker change- means peeling off lots of layers to get to them, definitely a warmest-point-of-the-day job at this latitude (49 33N- woo hoo!!!) The sea is a general sort of grey colour with a kinda greeny-browny tinge to it all over, shiny though and clear and bright, so not an unpleasant muddy colour, more slightly metallic, dull chrome, in need of polishing, sort of colour, maybe. Sky is pretty much 8/8 cloudy with a twinge of blue occasionally. mostly white with long layers of low grey lines out towards the horizon.
Can't quite believe we've been at sea for 50 days!! That's five-zero!! mental!! That's a long time.
Wondering really whether a knicker change is in order- its a bit like hoping that you'll have your best knickers on if you get run over by a bus- imagine if something happened and we are close enough to civilisation now to be rescued and I got rescued wearing 50 day-old (slight exaggeration!!) knickers?? would be a wee tad embarrassing!!! Right, have decided- knicker change at watch change!!
Lots of love,
(Soon to be wearing clean knickers) McQueen xxx

4923.06 17802.55 @1800 ADT, noon tomoz sydney

Thanks very much to everyone offering help and advice. The plan - as it stands - is to motor into the Examiner's latest little zephyr coming precisely from where we are trying to go - for as long as we can manage given our diesel reserve, keep some in hand for the pass and for the 100 miles or so in the other side to Adak, assuming Customs allow us in for an emergency fuel stop. If they do, we have to stay on the boat and depart once refuelled. Pity, but them's the breaks - I rather expected as much. I took heart in hand and put the main up again with 2 reefs, having braced the other shroud as well, and we're trickling along. I thought, earlier on, that things could be worse, it could be raining and the Examiner head me - cold, sleety rain for a bit. The grib - I relented, couldn't resist it - is not too favourable but AGW' we'll make it as far as the pass in the next 2-3 days.
Huge, southern ocean type swell from the NE - not quite losing a cathedral in the hollow standard, but pretty big, and it's not helping.
Kimbra, I assume the Gary in Seattle is Gary Ramos - I'll call him and maybe take or send the shroud there if no riggers in Anchorage, as seems likely.
And we've raided the goody bag - randomness prevails - and decided that the occasion demanded that we open one of Hilary's rummy cakes. Rather nice - and it will get us to Dutch.xx I wonder whether, if we do go to Andak, we will be the very first boat - or veeehicle - in the history of the world to travel directly from Sydney to Andak - or, for that matter, to Dutch. A little warm fuzzy for the mighty Berri if so. Certainly seems possible.
We've officially changed from Sydney time to Alaska daylight as well - as we are now well and truly here. It's now 1535 yesterday for all you caffeinators Down There. Old time noon position is now out 1800 position.

McQ: and Whitters, time travellers (to yesterday!!)

Crikey, its all very confusing. Today it is four o'clock yesterday (instead of 10 in the morning today, or indeed midnight, tooday) Not a worm hole or Large Hadron Collider to be seen and we have decided it is yesterday!!! We haven't got to the date line yet, just seemed wise to go to Alaska time as it was broad daylight at 3am last night and for local tide info etcit makes sense and when communicating with people on land, it stops the probloem that we might be satphone at antisocial hours!!! Fortunately my rather fab pink (to match my thermals) watch has a button you press and the top left hand corner changes from 'SYD' to 'ANC' (Anchorage I guess, its the right time anyway!!) Our noon position is now 6pm pos though!!
So all is well this arvo- even the sun came up out of the sea and is shining bright... we have more sail up, tacked too- so motorsailing upwind on port making about 060 ish, COG same on the tack- darn typical!! still easting no bad thing. going faster too!!
Boiled eggs for brekkie (lunch)- pretty mushy by now tho'!!! And Hilary, amazing cake thank you, we broke into the first this morning and pretty confident that if all else fails, this cake will keep our spirits up and bellies and brains nourished all the way to Dutch!!!
Also broke out my heavyduty norwegian hat that Marten gave me (well, I borrowed then refused to give back) during the Hobart...thank you Marten!! It is the best hat in the world. Thick and fleecy and perfectly snug and now staying firmly on my head!!! the turquoise o'neill is nice and fluffy but not quite adequate during the chilly nights anymore (has become my bedhat!!) Notalot else to report. still on v11 of AM, but recite aloud on deck regularly so know them pretty well, indeed am getting a touch bored of the first 11verses- looking forward to finding out what happens next!!!
Think Adak (approx 51ishN) is roughly in line with Cork- must be Cork week quite soon???
Now my fingers and nose are nicely warmed up, back to deck i go!!
Lots and lots of love
MCQUEEN
xxx

McQ: Fog Solvers

I spend lots of time whiling away the hours on watch (between checking we going the right way as quick as poss/ the rig not falling down/the repairs are holding/ we not about to get squished by passing vessels etc) thinking about 'what if's' so yesterday morning- I kid you not- my what if's that I were running through were first reactions if forestay goes, backstay goes, shrouds go, minutes before The Big Bang!! Anyway, this morning I have been thinking about fog (Its a clear morning with a dash of sunshine too so hopefully no fog-dramas about to happen!!) Lots of different solutions really, for eg, if i was in the Channel and I had working radar/AIS/both, probably carry on fairly comfortably. If I was in the Solent and had no radar/AIS etc and my GPS's were all broken/out of batteries I'd probably head north (or south, depending on where I was by my last visual) to say 2m contour (assuming I didn't draw more) and follow it to somewhere (Lyminton, Cowes, Hamble) or anchor till it lifted. I'd probably be quite grumpy too!!! I'm still working on no radar/AIS and broken GPS's and definitely in middle of shipping lane in channel...

Anyway, these are all sensible things to think about and every situation is different. up here, according to all our repoorts it can get pretty foggy and grim round the Aluetians at this time of year, so may well have to put into practise various fog-solvers and then these won't seem such ridiculoous thoughts!! We have no radar. Our AIS box hasn't talked to the poot since Newcastle- of this we are 99% convinced but then again ships since then have been few and far between!!! GPS still working (touch wood) and we have a fully charged 276c too, so should be ok unless big president B presses any buttons. Fishing fleets prob biggest concern but through our great contacts in Dutch they know we are going to be around soon and would do all they could to guide us through, so worst case we could radio them and take it from there. Its all interesting stuff to think about really and good to keep us on our toes...

Big A has surfaced so I am going to go and discuss thoughts on putting a wee bit more sail up, since shroud-solution seems to be happy, and going a bit faster...

Top o the morning anyway,

Lots of love
McQueen
xxx

Dunking 4847.56 17722.59 Thu 29/05/2008 14:36

Does anyone remember reading a scientific paper on the physics of biscuit dunking? May have been one of Karl Kruszelnicki's - certainly his style anyway. Really interesting stuff, but it seems to me that my McVities absorb tea at a greater rate than the very ordinary coffee I'm using. Certainly, my coffees are more treacly than my teas - anyway, an observation for the record - has no scientific value without lots more experimentation and I'm into the last pack of dunkers.

I think our bit of excitement will slow us down by about half a day to Amchitka - could be a crucial half day if the weather closes on us but that is yet to be seen. We are also losing height, which is a nuisance but can't be helped. I'm resisting getting new gribs - we have to cope with whatever we meet anyway and the gribs seem to change radically every update, so better just to get on with it. I'm not too concerned about the pass itself - I can see from the topography why it could be dangerous but we can go in and have a look. Portland and Alderney races with wind against tide are good for the confidence and McQ professes to be on top of those, so we'll just probe gently when we get there - starting, obviously, at low water slack or an hour or so before. Once we're inside, we have to reassess and move on.

The fix - two large cable clamps about half a metre above the swage, clamping a big U shaped through-deck fitting to the shroud. Big turnbuckle hooked on to the U and a spectra strop from the chain plate to the bottom of the turnbuckle, tighten and bobsyer - the swage bypassed. The mast is still in column as far as I can see and I'm tempted to go for the third reef tomoz in daylight. Will do a similar setup on the other shroud as a precaution and put clamps on all the other shrouds so that we can at least buy time if they start to fail. Will take some photos for the website. Speeds, the handycam hasn't been out of its bag this trip - it's just been too busy or too wet - so there won't be any video for this leg.

Getting lots of help and advice from Dan at Westward - thanks Dan - and I think the long term fix is to get the old barge to Dutch as fast as we safely can and I'll take off the dead one and fly to Anchorage with it. Speedy is checking for riggers - there's got to be at least one somewhere - and we have another friend who will know for sure but he's not answering his mobile at the mo.

Water now 6 degrees. Not much warmer than how it comes out of the fridge. Lucky I splashed the nethers yesterday, I suppose.

McQ: Snickers and knickers

I just wrote a blog but it sounded really grumpy and I am not grumpy so I have deleted it and started again. Not grumpy- just tired and my eyes are going funny looking at the horizon and the sails and the instruments and Ray in the blackness outside. Well, maybe a teensy weensy bit grumpy when our COG and heading are 40degrees different- yes four-zero, can you believe it????? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! And when it says our boat speed is less than 2 knots, though I am adamant that we something tentacly has attached itself to our log impeller and is slowing the rotation of the paddle wheel- this is not entirely unreasonable as we certainly feel we are going faster through the water that it says we are!!! And our SOG indicates current with us, which, well, could that possibly be true, after all this time???????? Can't even comprehend what it must be like to have current WITH us (even if its with us and a lot left!!!)

Trisail up and wee headsail too. Ray has had it too and keeps whining, extending fully and making us want to tack. Can catch most of them but have had to accept a donut too. hmmm. He's alright if we don't try and make him go too high, but of course, if we don't go high we are heading straight for Amchitka ISlAND (instead of PASS- yes, huge difference!!!!)

We've had a Pretty eventful afternoon really- just as Alex described, but it'll serve me right for spending the previous 2 off watches considering the merits of opening the snickers and changing knickers and not sleeping!! Now it is 9pm and I am very very, very, very tired!!! Temporary rig repair, bypassing the unwinding bit on the lower shroud, seems to be working so far (touch wood) and this is the reason we are taking it gently with trisail etc. Do not want to lose the rig. Not a good look for any boat!!! And masts not the easiest things to just pop down to the shops and pick up a new one whenever you feel like it, obviously!!!!

OK, things looking better now- 4knots SOG and roughly making course- yay!!! s'pose I should get back on deck and go say words of encouragement to Ray...

Snickers were for 6 days to go, which might have been tomorrow, but prob not for a couple more days now!! Knickers, still undecided, too tired to decide now, will reconsider in morning.

Nearly got through a whole blog without mentioning my feet, which are, incidentally, as cold as my nose, which is very cold, so cold, infact, that I have to keep checking it is still there. It is.

Is it time for bed yet???

Lots of love
McQueen
xxx

North to Alaska! Thu 29/05/2008 09:59

[Just before receiving this, got call from Alex, to reassure everyone that they're okay - a little local difficulty. -ed]

We just crossed the 200 mile territorial waters line. USA it is....Kind of special to have actually done it. vTiny remnant of Dr Brian's Med. compound shared between us to celebrate. So far soo good

Interesting how a bit of adversity changes the perspective - before The Event, I was all tenterhooks and anticipation - what will we find at Amchitka? Now I don't care - we'll get there, we'll sort it and maybe call in at Adak - I'd like to do that anyway and we now have an excellent reason if customs are nervous - and then dutch and one more fix than intended.

Much later and a sleep - just re-run various lines across the deck to free up a couple of winches and the trisail is now working as intended. Satphone has just beeped so will go for grib and send this - lots more for later.

Love ysz all. That's a Polish 'yez...'

Pearshapedness in earnest. 4808.41 17658.37 will do as noon as well. Thu 29/05/2008 05:45

There was this metallic bang. AW in bunk instantly rigid, thinking oooh s..t! I know what that is - and so it turned out. The starboard inner shroud - the big heavy one that supports the lower half of the mast - has started to strand, or break, strand by strand. Happened in the Atlantic last time too - and now I wish I had insisted on staloks but that's life. This despite bungees to stop the shrouds moving. We have bypassed the swage using cable clamps and turnbuckles and we're sailing again, but it's softly softly from here. Really serious problem if it develops. Even worse of the port one starts to go as well. Big, big effort getting it sorted - and in the middle of it all, murphy struck again - cannot imagine how this one happened, but all the line in the furler drum ran out long before we could get the sail all rolled up. Sorted that one too, not without some interesting events.

So the state of play - I have spoken to the rigger who made the rig and he's sending the dimensions of the shroud to the website. I will call our contact in Seattle to see whether we can get 2 new ones made there, or anchorage, and shipped to us, else have them made in Sydney and shipped to Dutch.

Not the end of the world, but may slow things down a bit while we faff around. Watch this space!

Meantime I'm going to Consult - Mcq is cooking noodles for afters. Dr Steve, yours was next in the Medicinal Compound Management Plan and very good it was. The whole set of three brews has aged beautifully.

A couple of hours later - i've rung around the world sorting possible options - the most important thing now is to get through Amchitka and to dutch. From there we can fix anything. We've got the small heady and the trisail up, doing 5kt in roughly the right direction - losing a bit of height, unfortunately, but trying to keep the rig unstressed. Quite messy and still semi violent so taking it very easy. Weather for the next three days is critical - but we'll get there. Wouldn't be a proper Berri voyage without one go at least of trisail-in-anger so I hope this is the only one needed! Next watch, after some sleep, I'm going to put a cable clamp on all the other shrouds so that if any of them initiate recalcitrance, we've got 'em covered and can rig a bypass very quickly.

We're 3 miles from the US of A...wooohooo and yeeehaaaa! By the time you read this, AGW, we'll be in the promised land.

Best option from here might be for me to fly to Anchorage from Dutch with the dead one and find a rigger. We'll see what turns up.

Blonk:4723.44 17608.40 @ 0200 Wed 28/05/2008 17:20

Soft, woolly darkness - a bit like reading under the bedclothes with a fading torch as a kid - there's almost no light from above so the sky is only just grey - uniform, dark, dull grey and the horizon merges into it so there is almost no frame of reference either - the boat's movements seem randoom and you can't anticipate and brace. Gyrations subdued in a fairly gentle sea but difficult nonetheless. Thick, dense overcast, base almost at sea level and we're in and out of misty low cloud all the time - vis from perhaps 1/2 mile out to maybe three at best so constant vigilance needed. Berri's masthead is a little platform about 6 inches wide and 9 long. It has the tricolour light at the aft end with the windex behind it, the VHF stub aerial in front to the right and the lightning conductor to the left and the anemometer sticks out ahead of the mast. In the mist, the effect is eerie - the tricolour streams its green, red and white sectors which reflect from the mist, and each bit of equipment casts its own shadow, so we seem to be sailing along under a glowing set of spokes and coloured lights. Very good check too, that the tricolor sectors are properly aligned. Looking up, I saw a ghostly glimpse of a big bird - unexpected and surprising - and there are the very occasional but very bright dino sparkles out to the sides in the surge - we're doing 6 knots and long may it last!

All quite soft and gentle, but Lizzie makes it seem a whole lot more serious - she whizzes and whirrs and howls down at the back and it sounds just like quite strong wind in the rig so I'm always slightly edgy until I've got the different sounds isolated and sorted. Berri would be almost silently slipping along just now but for out tame banshee!

Given all this, I must get the raincatcher radar reflector up into the rig in daylight - I have already checked that all the christmas tree lights on the mast are working in case we get into a close encounter and we need to advertise with attitude.

The grib ain't so rosy - the low is deepening and we need to get through that pass by Friday evening or we may have to sit it out this side. Not really much better the other side either, but the passage through is critical. Then Adak or Dutch depending on conditions and our diesel reserves.

Thanks to everyone who has sent us information on Adak and tides - Chris, H, Mjc, Speeds - and I'll try to contact various authorities tomorrow ADT

Ann - assume you meant N Pacific - Dutch is on N side of island, so must pass through Aleutian chain to get to it. 3 passes close to it are all very dangerous for small boats - google Unimak, Akutan - so approaching through a less dangerous one - originally intended Amukta but current & wind have pushed us way west and Amchitka beckons. Sort of.

Australia operates 2 massively powerful transmitters, VMW @ Wiluna and VMC @ Charleville to coordinate distress, safety snd wx info- they have to put them on the edge of the desert s they doon't fry all the local sheep. I was listening to VMC loud and clear and undistorted on 4149 earlier this evening. Must be nearly 6000 miles away. We're now closer to Belgium sailmail stn than NSW.

lift off and excuses for our course!!! Wed 28/05/2008 13:10

We have lift!!! Its now 2100 Sydney time and the wind has come further round behind us than expected at all for now- thank you wind gods!! Long may it continue and fingers crossed that the weather gods aren't just toying with us and we will get a battering of some sort from them over the next few days- now, if everyone can concentrate on sending them good and happy vibes, so they remain nice to us, that would be great!!

Also neglected to draw attention to the fact, in my last witterings, that we are not actually useless sailors but the reason our angles are so bad relative to the wind is current!!! (is true, is true) So whilst we might reasonably sail 045 in a strong E wind and a bit of a sea, what that actually gives us (currently, (haha)) is around 020 over the ground- not good. On the upside, unlike the entire length of most of the Pacific, this current was expected (think it might even be called the Aluetian Current) and we can be pretty sure we are in it since the water pretty quickly changed from 18C to 8C. brrrrrr!!!

Whatever happens,all appendages, as Whitters would say, crossed for the SSE breeze to last, well forever, round here would be nice!!!!

Much love again
Mcq
xxx

4654.19 17525.17 Change of vegetable Wed 28/05/2008 10:53

The time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of other things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of mushy peas and kings...

As I write, there's a can of mushies sitting on top of the cooling engine (yes!)getting its preliminary charge of heat before I stand it in hot water too really get it hot. Then it gets slipped into a polar fleece sock and down to the end of my bunk and - magic really - warm feet.

JG, thanks for camera advice - problem is that when you half press, it locks the focus and when you don't know the distance or if its further than a boat length, it gets tricky. My albatross in the sun was about 50 metres away and there's nothing that far out to focus on...bummer.

And if I'd had my brain in gear for the last few days I'd have realised that we have the phone number for US Customs in Dutch in the digital chart info. I will call them first thing tomorrow ADT and ask about Adak entry and they might even know about credit card facilities. There's no Adak data in the chart.

McQ's lift arrived and we're sailing reasonably above our required track for the barn door. As McQ says though, the Examiner has a real chance to get fancy with us if she plays fast and loose with the big low forming ahead. We'll see, I guess. It's all grind from here.

McQ: Whether the weather be...and, of course, my feet!!

From our the latest grib we have, it seems there is a bit of a low low forming (might already have formed, but outside of area grib shows?)to the SW of us. In the grib for 10pm this evening (Sydney time) we can just see the easterlies on the edge of the page. Over here where we are we should have easterlies, or with a bit of good luck, SE, and thus a bit of a lift, at about 15knots. Grib for the next 24 hours shows low arc'ing northeast- up towards the Aluetians and where we will potentially be, will be in strong (20+knots) E wind- so we try and make as much easting as we can now, as it is likely we will be forced north, (and to the left of Amchitka) tomorrow. Though, its too early to say, and the gribs change all the time, but the outlook for friday 10pm (72 hours grib) show the low moving NE still and even stronger Easterlies, but just below, as you would expect, moderate S/SW around lat 49...which we may or may not be north of, depending!!
So, now listen up wind and weather gods, this is what is going to happen: we'll have a wee lift tonight and tomorrow then the low is going to move a teensy wee bit quicker so in a couple of days we shall barely have a chance to think about where strong E winds are forcing us and soon enough we shall be swept up by S/SW winds straight up to the Aluetians, through Amchitka pass- the low will continue to pass over the top of us and S winds will veer SW then W then NW: all of which will have us stonking East and in to Dutch!!!! My ETA is the 5th now!!!
Now, where's this afternoon's lift, so we can turn the engine off...???
hmmm!!
We'll see what the next grib says, but there is also the possibility that the low will go under us and in a few days we will be stonking along east in a northerly wind but unable to make any northing!!
Of course, if things don't go quite according to my plan and we have to deal with full on easterlies then, I guess we make our way north towards the islands and then at some point, either sit out the easterlies or tack back and forth to try and make our way to the east, which will be close to soul-destroying in a strong E wind (we'd be pointing SE or worse on port tack !!!) but then again, that's sailing for you- a certain proportion of the time your destination is inevitably close to where the wind is coming from!!! It's all part of the challenge and thats why we love it!!
Lots of love to everyone,
McQueen
xxx
ps forgot to mention my feet!!!
pps: kimbra, please may I have a ski mask and balaclava too, if you have room- was just thinking such thoughts during the chilly night watches!! Thank you. x

noon 4624.15 17503.44 Wed 28/05/2008 05:00

dtd 852 dmg 96 - still going sideways relative to Dutch. 136 to Alaskan waters.

From this rather uncomfortable, cold and damp little grot behind the Cone, things ain't so good. IFF we can climb high enough to make it through Amchitka without having to park and wait, we're about 9 days from Dutch. If we get lucky, that is!

Real headbang stuff. Engine running, heady now rolled in, boat set up to just slide the swell rather that pound into it and stop with every third wave. So we're still 10 deg. below the direct track required of 028. Small chance from the grib that we will get a lift tonight and then again a couple of days out off the big low but it will be a close run thing. We have about 120 litres of diesel so in deep conservation mode. That is about 70 litres for distance and the rest for contingency - 70 litres is about 150 miles if we get the right conditions and we're 400 from the other side of the pass, so Adak is looking like a definite if they will allow us to enter. And if we can pay by credit card - all our $US is waiting for us in Dutch. Been trying to contact our local friend but no luck - would be a real help if someone could please let us know if Adak has credit card facilities, so that we know whether we can burn diesel to get there.

Pearshapedness looms large! All applicable appendages crossed for the next week or so please.

I've taken the punt and rolled out the headsail, cranked it right on with the autopilot following the windvane to chase every lift and 33 deg off the wind with the engine running. We're getting 015 - 025 with 5+ knots so while it doesn't get us uphill far enough, it's a lot more efficient than before and I hope we'll get the lift tonight and be able to climb far enough under sail to make the pass. Iff all goes well, we'll be in Alaska sometime late tomorrow with 220 odd to go to Amchitka.

4609.28 17453.50 and pearshaped Tue 27/05/2008 23:30

Seems that pearshapedness prevails, at least as far as Amchitka goes. To hit the centre of the barn door, we need to track 030M but current, wind and sea state only allow us about 015 - 020M. This means we will make landfall some 70 - 90 miles west of the pass and have to fight our way into the teeth of the easterlies in front of the low developing to the west. Poo! I have the engine running, full sail just at the point of stall, squeezing every inch of height we can get while the wind is soft. We may well have to do a Cook and park while it all blows through. No word from anyone re Adak entry yet, but we may well need to go in there for fuel.

Kimbra - agree with you, Tom and the other naysayers. We'll go without a rifle - you can carry the oxo cubes and I'll push the wheelbarrow with the pepper spray, McQ can be the advance Party - did I really say that?. And yes, ski masks (3 better than 1) but better still windsurfer helmets with visor - unlikely in Anchorage! May be a fisho equivalent in Dutch - will advise. Cd you please buy 3 metal half litre camping water bottles for hotties, hand warmers etc - they'll need reasonably heatproof tops and the wider the top the better for dekettling into. Thanks re fleece.

Carla - thanks - thought it must be ice! And it certainly looked like bushfire smoke. We must be in some sort of propagation hole unless there's a bug in the calculator - unheard of in Jim Corenman's stuff, so I'll go for the hole. The whole thing went red as we crossed 43 degrees.

Pascal - probably too late but if you do ring our satphone, please keep ringing back until someone answers. The person who hears it first will be in their bunk, the phone is sequestered in driest possible spot and awkward to get at .... but someone will get there eventually. Don't leave a voice message - we'll never get it. I'll try your cell after this. We're not in Dutch yet - I'd say about 10 days from here, all things considered.

Blunky Tue 27/05/2008 19:06

Looks as if we will be at or close to amchitka on saturday. we have tidal data from argos stations either side but not for pass itself - seems low water slack is around noon utc sat 30th = 0400 alaska daylight time so if we're there it will be a dawn entry - locals advise not at night. Can anyone pse confirm low water time sat, sun, mon - Kimbra/Tom perhaps?

water temp 8 deg and now more current from NE so probably in the Aleutian slope flow, though still a long way out. Hands too cold for more - will do another in daylight. Water at Cape Horn was 7 deg.

Anyone for a tour of old nuclear testing sites? Jump aboard! First the Marshalls, now Amchitka. I doubt whether we could get to New Mexico, but there's Mururoa and a few others to go.

For ages now, I've been hearing a strange squeaky chirruping noise at night. Unable to place it but assumed that it was not threatening and probably coming from some part of Kevvo's wheels and pulleys. A couple of night ago, in the yellow cheesy moonlight. I saw a ghostly, tumbling black shape silhouetted against the moon's reflection - yay! got it - it's the Stormy Petrels talking to eachother. They must congregate around the boat at night attracted by the lights.

We're now nearly at 46N - way past Tasmania and approaching Stewart Island in our southern equivalents. Berri's highest latitude was Cape Horn at 57 and a bit south, and the Fastnet at about 51N so we're getting close to one and closer to another. Shame there's no gin.

Through the water log now reads 6343 after starting at 342, so 6000 miles - would be at Dutch if no current -we couldn't have gone much straighter. Must work out our average speed ttw - must be better than 5 kts.

A cold, wet, grey gloomy morning out here beyond the boonies. Manchester as I remember it, every Tuesday. Supposed to be midsummer - but I like it heaps as long as it keeps bringing us wind and keeping the nasties south of us.

Hey, Austin - glad you've found us again - pass the word around! Would be really interesting to know who else is out there - sign the gust book please everyone!

McQ: Ship Ahoy!!!

4452N, 17423E- just had an enormous container ship cross behind us from west to east. He was huge and so fully laden with containers that the bridge was barely visible over the top and he looked as though he had containers hanging over the back too- literally full to bursting!! He was dark blue and he passed close enough behind us for me to read CMA CGM (just, and I think!!!) on his side (but not close enough to stress about) He did come absolutely stonking out of nowhere though- I guess they don't expect to encounter anything out here and it really is full speed ahead... wasn't long before he was gone over the horizon at the other side either. I watched him for a bit after he passed, partly to make sure he didn't do anything crazy like turn around and come and have a look at us (like MV Beryl, once before in the Atlantic!!) and partly cause, in about 45 days, that is really the only tangible evidence I have that there is still a world ticking over out there!! If they'd been able to see me close up they would have wondered what this random michelin man-girl with bunches was doing sipping coffee and staring at them intently but a bit glakit from the cockpit of this tiny boat!!!

Sailing again, all good... should prob get back to deck to watch for more ships, would not be good to get mown down and squished here, so near to a large glass of red juice!!!

lots of love
McQueen
xxx
ps is seymour out there at all??... miss your chat seymour, if you are!! will try call from dutch. xxx

noon 4439.10 17413.12 Tue 27/05/2008 03:57

dtd 948 dmg 91

dmg much better for Amchitka as we are heading more or less straight towards it. Now only 250 nm from US territorial waters - we're only a couple of days from Alaska at least, touch wood and lick me nose...

What to report - good wind, benign sea for the last 2 days - unimaginable. Real progress, although the bloody GPS keeps telling us we're not getting any closer timewise. Blood red sunrise - rather like sydney bushfire effect - obviously particulates in the air but what and where from? Indonesian forests? Chinese industry? I took a photo of the sun with an albatross just about to cross it - perfect timing but out of focus and just a splodge so worthless. Pity.

Found a way to get the fuel filter off the engine to fix the oil leak, which had been getting worse (obvious really - put a hose clip around it and was able to turn it by hand) and cleaned up the contact areas and replaced it with a new one so I hope that's sorted.

We're in a propagation hole - not a patch of green anywhere on the calculator and almost no orange. Checked the co-ordinates and all ok - anyone heard about unusual sunspot activity?

Carla - yay! re Phoenix. What it is looking for? And thanks re Dall's porps. They were dazzling.

Kimbra - thanks for Gary R stuff - really useful contact - and for fleecy inners. Have mine in my Chinese slippers from Beijing that keep my feet off all the damp floor inside.

Duncan - thanks heaps for all that research - basically confirmed my own opinions - I have raincatcher as well and have just assembled it. Will remove the cylinder in dutch. Also have AIS gizmology, but it seems to have gone to sleep so will have it checked.

McQ: Yep you guessed it- more about my feet

Oh Kimbra, how wonderful you are!!! This morning we opened one of Kimbras parcels, on her recommendation, and what were they?? A pair of fluffy insoles for each of us- AMAZING!!! I have never been so excited!! Have just finished watch and am about to cut down to size... then the question remains, will they fit inside the ziplocs or do I risk removing the ziplocs and hopefully it will be a long time before the damp (not wet anymore) insides seep through my new woolly insoles... whatever happens, boy they look like they will toast my tooty toes a treat!!!! Thank you!!!
Its starting to seem as if I am a bit obsessed about my feet.
Was a bit over excited this morning, got up, made coffee, oatcakes and marmalade as a treat for brekkie- a change from museli and undried fruit, back to the museli for a few days tomorrow tho, then crackers for a bit, before any more oatcake rations, I think. Had my vitamins too, went on deck and then realised it was only 0400, usually wait till 0900 watch before doing all of the above!!! Got a bit ahead of myself this morning tho- think it might be cause we've stuck to Sydney time but realistically we must be a few hours ahead by now, so it's pretty light pretty early. We've got a 6 hour time change between Sydney and Alaska (and also it'll be yesterday, if you see what I mean!!) Might be sensible to change the clocks when we cross the dateline, or we might end up very confused as we near Dutch!!
Right, must get on the woolly feet case.
Sailing again- woo hoo!!! Gentle 5.8 knots boat speed, in the right(ish) direction, not loads of wind but all our sail up... all good really!!
Lots o love
McQueen
xxx
ps dave bright: what are your words for fingers and toes? I think i remember but I won't announce just in case I am totally wrong and then people really would think I was mad!!! Oh, am contemplating talking to the walrus, what do you think??
pps: mum, Frozen in Time is by Owen Beattie and John Geiger

4336.46 17351.22 Mon 26/05/2008 14:16

Was right first time - its Andak. Moonless, so far, at 2245 AEST, 2345 local. Hazy, first and second mag stars only, grey sky with myriad pinpricks - Great Bear was directly over masthead, now off to port - undefined horizon - just a heavy merge from grey to black. Doing diesel sums - how far can we motor this time - we have 130 ltrs in jerries and whatever is in the tank, say 60 ltrs so 190 @ 2/hr = 95 hrs or about 3 days = about 300 miles. My Amchitka waypoint is 533 miles ahead, then there's at least another 400 to Dutch along the inside. In round numbers, 300 miles in the tank, 1000 to go and we need a contingency factor so say 200 in the tank + 100 contingency. I think we'll keep the motor running for 24 hrs max and reassess with new grib and actual progress as factors.

I saw an aircraft too - I wonder which route we're under. Perhaps Seattle to Beijing? My aircraft seemed to be going north, and was to the east of us. US West coast over the pole to Moscow perhaps or am I way off?

Follow up from my last about state of mind - I can't know, of course, that I actually do wake up when things change - just a pious hope - but I do know that I have done so at a couple of critical times - once just in time to prevent the forestay from parting company with the boat.

180 degrees - the International Dateline - that arbitrary divider imposed by Imperial Britain - last time Berri crossed it was way down at the other end, just south of the Antipodes Islands, so named because they are almost exactly opposite Greenwich on the earth's surface. That was in January 2005 and about 6 months later I stood at the exact opposite end of the axis, on the Greenwich meridian at the Observatory. I bet there aren't many people alive who have done that. Odd feeling too - think about all that mass and heat in between...Will be fitting to cross it again in Amchitka pass if we do go through that way.

Propagation here non existent - odd - so will try iridium to see whether there's goodies for us out there. Speed awol in Dartmouth, so might be change in routine.

Just stuck my head up to check for sea monsters and there's a soft cheesy moon just above the horizon, yellow through the murk and only the first mag stars visible - but there's a horizon.

McQ: A heater in the Boot Room??

Wet feet = sad me
Cold feet = sad me
Dry feet = happy me
Warm feet = happy me
Warm and dry feet = extra happy me!!!
A simple formula really but Alex's latest innovation, a variation on the hot water bottle theme is just wonderful (empty nutella tub and, of course, ziploc bag, just in case it leaks!) Warm up some water- but not too hot to melt the plastic, into nutella pot, screw lid up tightly, into ziploc and tuck in at the bottom of the Cat's Meow at the start of off watch and two hours later, toasty feet- woo hoo!!!

Which got me thinking:

Is there a heater in the boot room?? Probably, being the Arctic. And which sort of person is worse/better- the one who rushes back, first into the boot room, throws of his layers and takes pride of place by the heater for his boots to warm them up overnight... or, the one who ambles in late after everyone else has gone and moves aforementioned boots and replaces his own in the best, warmest spot. Then theres the type of person who keeps his boots in the corner furthest from the heater, he will have no probs locating his own boots in the morning but has to suffer cold feet continually. A system perhaps, whereby, everyone gets a turn of their boots getting the warmest spot??? A heater in the boot room- adds a whole new dynamic.

5 knotters of wind at the mo, so donk on and pointing to destination: first clear night in ages tho'- I see stars!!! Saw a plane too and I think a satellite aswell... busy up there tonight!!

Lots of love
Cor
xxx
PS. For Heat(h)er (!!): I seem to recall we used to make excellent lemonade at 67WPS and Viewmount too- we have 6 lemons and 3 limes left on board, some sugar (not loads- need to keep enough for our tea and coffee, v v important!!) Can you tell me what quantities of sugar and water i need for our fruit and do i need to add anything else/ do anything other than pulverise the whole lot together??? lots of love Cor xxx

Noon 4253.46 17341.60 Mon 26/05/2008 04:13

dtd 1039 dmg 115
Kimbra, I've left a message for Gary Ramos Been thinking about state of mind, cold feet, endless finishing straights - all more or less linked. Standing beside the Cutty Sark, before the fire when she was fully rigged, I wondered how anyone could get that huge ship with that enormous sail area and unimaginable power up to maximum speed and keep her there for 90 days through the southern ocean rollers, the doldrums, and all the storms and calms in between. How would you feel as the captain, making daily decisions about sail, course, weather and the rest with the ship creaking and straining around you and water crashing across the decks and the rig vibrating and shuddering and flexing with every huge wave? Disaster lurking every moment and with every breaking wave - some bigger than the ship itself. Were those men so confident in their ships and their own abilities that they would sleep easily at night with all that going on - and, above all, a deadline to meet and a race to win in some cases? Or did they, like me, live their lives in a state of nervous, analytical, catastrophising, anticipation? Was their whole attention focused on the ship and its dialogue with them, the subtle changes in tone and pitch, in vibration, in motion through and over the water, the tiny sounds that signalled changes in condition, in the state of a massive brace or a spar and the state of the crew and their capacity to keep driving the ship? That's me and it's a big big strain. Only at times when the sea is at its most benign and there's nothing in the forecast can I ease up and read or do a crossword or listen to music. Inevitably, when I do, it gets interrupted by a random thought about something that needs fixing or that should go on the list for Dutch. I sleep tuned to the boat and when things change, I'm usually awake immediately and trying to sense what has changed. When things are bad, I doze, but don't sleep, and usually sitting on the floor of the boat at least partly dressed in party gear. I guess that in my world, shit happens and I like to feel that I'm prepared to deal with it and am at least partly on top of each possibility before it happens and have taken action to minimise or prevent it. Lots of examples on this trip - checkstays, furler mods, backstay tackle. And simple things like noticing that the shackle pin holding the tack on the main to the gooseneck had unwound a couple of turns, or that my mousing line for the checkstay was about to fly loose in 30 kts - little things that so often get ignored or missed And as I write this, I wonder what I have actually missed as we enter the never ending finishing straight.

The Melbourne marathon finishes next to the Art Gallery almost in the city centre. The last 8 or so kilometres are almost straight - a long straight stretch along St Kilda rd, about 4 k, the long shallow bend to the left at Toorak rd, and back again past the old barracks and then a final kink to the left and you can see the finish. A whole kilometre away at least. If you've never run one, you won't have any idea how difficult it is to keep pushing a screaming body metre by metre along those stretches and the final k is almost the hardest because that's when you know you have to push even harder and you cant feel your legs any more and your eyes have no focus. The headbangingest thing I've ever done and not just once but about 15 times. This little stretch of 500 miles or so to Amchitka is similar - never seems to get shorter, day to day - GPS always seems to say 5 days 6 hrs to go. Immensely difficult to stay cool and just wait while it all happens - but happen it will.

And cold feet. Dry though they may be, they just don't ever get warm. I've just remembered that Pete and I used plastic beer bottles as hotties and I'm experimenting as I write. But we'll buy those little metal camping drink bottles in Dutch and use them for the next leg.

McQ: fairly random selection of thoughts

After extensive clinical trials I can officially sanction large ziploc bags as the best boot liners I have come across to date- they are so good that I have discarded my first pair of warm but soggy socks in favour of anew clean dry pair- normally I owuld eek out the soggy pair a little longer but I am so confident in the ability of the ziplocs that I have gone for a new pair. Bear in mind dry socks oft become a precious and rare commodity on board and the utmost should be done to preserve, at all times.

Also, Just below Clam Lagoon lies Yippee Shoal which is just to the North and West of Lucky Point!!! I wonder what happened round there??Do you think they really meant 'yippee' when they found the shoal??!!

Fair bit of easterly breeze at the mo, so screeching reaching North- past 41N so not long till only 10 degrees latitude to cover (as Alex points out tho' we do need to sail the hypotenuse!!)

Mum, please could you get dad a copy of 'Frozen in Time' about the ill fated Franklin Expedition to discover the NWP. Alex gave me a copy before we left and I have just started reading it- gripping stuff and I think dad will enjoy too, if he ahsn't already read it. Tinned food- who knew??!!!

Irish Stew and creamed corn for dinner, am quite partial to those two tins together, they actually taste of something, I think must be what it is!! Fingers crossed we don't get lead poisoning!! And used the penultimate meals worth of pots- finally!!!

Wee snooze now before what I have named Black Watch (8-10pm no moon just black gunky sea and sky mixed together and you can barely see the mast from the cockpit)

lots of love
Cor
xxx

Congrats on wedding last week N&A, heard it was lovely from Carie. Sorry I didn't get my best wishes in in time- knew it round about nowish but as you know the days disappear out here and become meaningless, so I missed it!! Wish i could have been there... maybe see you Sydney at Christmas?? Bol xxx

4113.07 17328.33 evening update Sun 25/05/2008 08:57

Still stonking along - wind E about 15 - big jib rolled in a few turns and one reef. Grib says more of this, all day tomorrow - hope so and hope it doesn't increase too much. Iff we get lucky, we might just slip between two systems, but that's serious wishful thinking and I must wash my mouth out with soap - or at least my finger tips. We had six albatrosses wheeling and circling and gawping at us for most of today - all the same sort, black browed, as described earlier. I think at least two of them have been with us for about a week. Lovely to watch them formation flying - sometimes two, sometimes four, lazily soaring and dipping back to the surface, airy grace and symmetry.

Our local advisor says that up here, May through July, the Bering Sea and probably as far down as here tends to be permanently overcast, low cloudbase some mist and fog. That's what we've got. Getting through Amchitka will be a bit of a challenge - to be met when we see what we've got but not to be attempted against the tide and only in daylight. It'd 50 miles wide, but quite shallow in the middle, and the bottom rises from gerzillions to tens of metres in a very short distance, very strong tides, often against the wind, so very like the SE corner of OZ, of what we know!

McQ cooking, then I'm on deck for a couple of clank and dammy hours. The nights seem very long in two hour stints - three is almost better, but that last hour really drags, so we're sticking to the 2 hour routine.

Had in mind to write about some of Berri's systems for anyone else who is thinking about long distance sailing. Perhaps if tomorrow is reasonably benign, that'll be the go.

4010.33 17315.01 North coast of Tasmania in the S2H!

Grey, translucent overcast - tinges of pink and orange as the sun does its best - even, ethereally, glimpses of milky blue jade universe, evanescent, distant but near. As my Dad used to say during those endless English winters in similar conditions, just enough blue to patch a Dutchman's trousers. That was back then, when we all thought that the Dutch went around in clogs and blue baggy pants like in the fairy stories. Banks of mist all around - glossy, polished calm surface with complex swell pattern, long and rolling and all over the place but seems to be a biggie from the ESE in there somewhere. Motor running, everything waterfall wet, moisture rilling and dripping everywhere but great because it washes the caked salt out of the lines and the blocks and all the bearings, so the lines are soft and pliable again and the blocks run properly. If salt weren't hygroscopic, my shorts would have crackled last time I took them off - instead, they just sort of creaked and remained in the shape they were - they would have stood up on their own. Had to flatten and subdue them with our mega adjustable spanner and stomp them into a plastic bag where, I hope, they will fester until Dutch. Revolting instant coffee and sweetened condensed milk on the go to remind me that offices ain't where I want to be.

Which was a long and wordy scene setting for - dolphins! - about 50 of them, leaping and snorting and racing around Berri under the mirror surface - absolute delight to watch and hear and participate. Smallish, dark grey backs with a vivid white curved patch from roughly below the dorsal fin all the way back to the tail and the tail has a white stripe around the outline of the top surface. Impossible to photograph with the camera I have with me - it's very clever but desperately slow between shutter push and actual photo so have to judge timing and focus way early and I've only cracked one passable pic and even then the dolphin is out of focus. Oh for the Nikon at times like these but way too salty and humid out here.

On which note, (clank and dammy and cold...) time for another BAPTO for things that really work. This one should have got up on the last website as well but can't remember. We've got a Sea Rug each - Australian design, www.searug.com.au (I think - Speeds, could you check please) and it does exactly what is claimed for it - works when wet, either way up, depending on circumstances and it's all I need in these conditions to keep me warm and dry at night. McQ buries herself under searug, arctic sleeping bag, various sheetlike thingies and a polar fleece blanket but she's a sensitive soul. On the last gig, my rug worked as a sort of tent on the way home because we did not have time to re-install the insulation and condensation flooded the old bus shelter. It soaked up the drips and streams and at least kept the water off my polar blanket and ultimately my skin. Great gear. Still have that rug as well - now rather tatty - using it as a pillow. When it gets cold - which it won't, unless we get stuck for the winter somewhere, (average temp across the top during the time we expect to be up there is about 0 - 10 degrees C - an English summer's day) I have three thermal survival bags that we can stuff searugs or whatever anyone fancies into and stay toasty. Maybe!

Noon 4034.23 17322.16 Sun 25/05/2008 03:14

Looking a bit more reasonable out there today. Fitful sunlight through the mist, beck to the big jib and doing 6.5 towards Amchitka. Our day of painful stitching on the little sail has survived with attitude - will probably get us all the way to wherever so if no big sewing machine in Dutch, we'll not fret. Berri slipping through the water almost silently - what a change it is to be in benign conditions! The only - and more or less continuous noise - is Lizzie whizzing away at the back - has kept the batteries fully charged all the way - Fantastic. If OK with US Immigration, we might call in at Adak for fuel and freshies if we do go through Amchitka. Was once a cold war US Naval Air Station - now handed over to local Aleut community.

A rant against snake oil

This is a rant, but it's well intentioned. Out there at the far end of it, it just might save someone's life.
It's not intended for people who just sail around the cans, but for those of us who go offshore.

I've just made a minor mod to my Henri smock - simple and easy with the trusty sailmaker's needle and I thought about McQ's boots and how the Fashionistas and the marketers and the brand managers - the manipulators and the snake oil merchants - have taken over the sport and the minds of the gullible. Very expensive boots - to take one example - look cool at the briefing (how often do you see the rockstars sitting there for the cameras?) - but they have to work out here on the ocean as well. In my experience, they are no more effective than my $40 wellies and I've seen and sailed with a lot of people who were wearing them and have tried them myself(borrowed a pair and they were already wet inside and leaked like the proverbial). My wellies do two seasons before the rubber begins to perish and I chuck them and buy another pair - and I have dry feet all the time unless I get water over the top. It is utterly ludicrous that poor McQ has to wear plastic bags inside hers, but maybe she will not get conned so easily next time. This is her second pair - for that money Our Appointed Sailmaker could make me a new storm jib and trisail...how many of you out there are in the same situation? The fishos, who spend their lives out here, wear wellies like mine. Dry feet reduce fatigue and contribute to safety. And, having said all that, perhaps there are some boots out there that are worth the money but I doubt it.

Then there's wet weather gear. I always used to buy Gill because it is excellent gear, quality control superb and they used to listen to people like me and fix things that didn't work. Before the last Fastnet, I looked for a Gill smock only to find that they only had silver or black ones. So the fashion statement has taken over from the safety factor there too - the primary function of this stuff is to keep us warm and dry, and the secondary one is to provide maximum visibility to the helicopter pilot who might be looking for us in a 1998 storm. It is not - not - to sell product for a sponsor. Or to look good in the bar afterwards. They come way down the list. If you are in the water in a crashing storm at night and you can hear the chopper, would you rather be in a black or silver top or dayglo orange or red or yellow? And the sponsors are now insisting that crews be dressed in company livery - there's a well known outfit that puts people in light blue and white kit - if I were an owner at that level, I'd refuse, point blank, just as I did in my own small way to the Gill HQ salesman who tried to tell me that colour didn't matter - after all, they had a yellow hood. Bollocks. Paint a soccer ball yellow and put it 500 feet away and see how small it looks. Then arrange for waves to break over it. That's what the chopper pilot sees from 500 feet - then try it at night. So now I have a dayglo red Henri smock, lots of retro tape, plus yellow hood and there's a pair of pants on the way to Dutch to match it. Sorry, Gill, but I tried. McQ, incidentally, has a black smock, light blue jacket and blue pants. Dame Ellen, from hazy memory, wore grey.

If us sailors don't insist on these things, it serves us right if there's nothing but froth on the market. Tell them, loud and clear and don't buy it! You will be glad you insisted if it's you in the water. I'd like to see race authorities taking a stand as well - while it might interfere with individual liberty, the safety issue is so important that it's worth it. Just a recommendation would be a start. 1998 changed a lot of things for the better - let's not lose sight of the basic principles just to keep sponsors and the fashion industry happy.

noon at 1300 3855.13 17246.33

dtd 1371, dmg 121. DT Amchitka 785 - about 6 days? My June 3 prediction for Dutch still has legs.

Closer to Petropavlovsk than to Dutch at the mo - love to go have a look...

I think I can say we are now past my mental half way point. Finish not yet in sight but we'll get there, pain yet to come and body weary, complaining, but still able to put one foot ahead of the other. Every painted white line on the road a small hurdle that must be negotiated on the way. This is about 36 k in my mental marathon. It gets harder from here in so many subtle and not so subtle ways.

Too much waiting in the queue. Will stop waffling. Motor sailing more or less straight towards Amchitka. Almost no wind. I expect you all are looking at satellite pics of a big white mass of cloud in the top left corner of the Pacific. Yep! We're under it. Sea mist this morning, water temp 14 degrees.

McQ: More from the Boot Room...

I've been thinking: At some point the plastic bag in my left boot disintegrated- though,possibly my fault for using one of those bags that you might get at a fruit and veg market but would think twice before using even for just your salad leaves!! Anyway, on looking around for a substitute I started thinking... so now I have invented the McQ (patent pending) Gore-Tex Boot Liner... I would like to patent my invention- Speedy I bet you know about stuff like that? Now, this is not a sock, sealskin/waterproof or otherwise, it is quite simply a thin goretex boot liner, a foot shaped liner with the waterproofing capacity of a plastic bag. I have drawn some pics of wet but happy people who have dry tooty-toes using the McQGTBL and wet and sad people who aren't and have soggy feet. I will donate these drawings to be used for the advertising campaign and though we can't really market this to the likes of Dubarry (that would be like admitting your product doesn't work, I guess) there must be lots of waterproof gear people who would make them for us. AND...If this already exists, er, why don't I have a pair??? In the meantime, i am improvising and have discovered that a large ziploc bag, whilst almost too thick is proving quite sturdy!!

I have to defend my baby blue jacket... It was bought for warmth pre Hobart as I had nothing else with me!! I tried to get the lady in the shop to sell me a normal midlayer jacket in red, shall we say (shh, but probably I actually wanted grey or black!!) I specifically told her I didn't want to look girlie before getting on a boat to Hobart with lots of handsome Dutch men!! She only had huge great big man sizes tho'. Anyway, go figure but I came out the shop with a fitted girlie baby blue jacket- and whilst it looks v nice in the YC I am the first to admit that I don't think its designed to cross oceans (it is first on my mental list of stuff to go home from Dutch!!)

And, I shall definitely be reverting to red when my blue bottoms and black smock (which does have some reflective bits on it) wear out and need replacing (and to be fair to Musto, as far as I know, they only make their full on Ocean kit in red and yellow and they've never stopped making the Offshore in red and yellow too, despite the other colours). Until then, I shall use the fact that no one is going to see me to fish me out the water as a deterrent from going for a dip in the first place...

Can you believe it, but the sun is out????
Sunnies on and off to deck we go!!
Speak soon,
Love
McQ
xxx
ps I am starting to look forward to a glass of red wine, i think thats fair enough after 45 days!!
pps I can see that well known town of Pertropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy on the chart now (!!)

McQ: Alert... Alert... Snickers detected...woo hoo!!!

Its not so miserable outside now!! Just a bit feisty still but its not black and gunky and murky anymore- theres a wee bit moon fuzzing through the cloud. lumpety sea and charging along still in 20 knotters. All good!! To be fair, at the start of the last watch I did stick my heid on deck and after one look around into the gloom decide that the getting through the next 2 hours would require going under my bunk and breaking out the last remaining Tim Tams!!! Whilst hunting for the tim tams I also found more ryvita!! and Steves emergency chocolate... wooo hooo thank you steve!!! Which Alex was as excited about as I when I told him what I had found and brought out!! AND, there is another packet of SNICKERS!!! So, ha, all you who mocked me by sending those mean adn teasing messages about tucking into more snickers at your desks and stuff. We have rations!!! woo hoo!!! I left them under the bunk for the mo- clearly out of sight out of mind works wonders and I think we'll need them next week!!!

T'other news, oh yes very exciting- our Gribs (weather files) that come in are all in pretty colours- no wind- blue, little wind green, then yeller, then orange then lots of wind red and then pink!! and land is little grey blobs... well at moment there is blue and green for the next 24 hours then lots of red, but the most exciting thing is we now have little grey blobs that represent the Aleutians, at the top of the picture!! Wicked!!!

Its hard to write anything articulate and cohesive when you keep popping up on deck to check whats happening- Merc-you Watch is rubbish, I want to be on Whit Watch- they get all the exciting things- first fishing buoys and afishing boat, next watch big shipo, next watch another boat, then last watch he came down woke me up said it was black and grim but the phosphorescence was amazing, I go up on deck- black and grim yes and not even a flicker of luminous green to be seen anywhere to amuse me!!!Had to entertain myself with singing along to power ballads on the Ipod and one or two recitals to the wind of the first 11 verses of AM.

Hope everyone well and happy.
Lots of lvoe
Cor (AKA: McQueen)
xxx
ps mum, am shorter than big A- he quite tall. No JC's (obviously, doh!!), why you ask???
message for hannah (via email-thea maybe? are you even there my thea??) if anyone going to jamaica- 'brilliant, darling, brilliant, just the Atlantic to go, you can do it. go Glasgow, much love and vibes to the whole crew from Bol in the North Pacific'!!! FF, thank you for hannah updates- much appreciated!! Is Ricky 4th now and still hot on heels and were NY and H&H 1st/2nd into jamaica or has she closed any gap there, overall??

Answers on a postcard Fri 23/05/2008 15:07

Keith - thanks - please pass on my commiserations. I have at least some idea how he must be feeling. Hope he's ok otherwise.

David W tks. Intend dumping some excess baggage on you for your trip home if ok.

PMcQ I'm 5ft 10ish old scale.

Carla - brewing it is easy - we've got a stainless plunger (and a plastic backup!)so as long as you can brace for loong enough to fill the thing, then pluuunge, easypeasy. Then you have to get it and mug out the door into the tempest - not so eastp. But the real problem is cleaning out the plunger afterwards - has to be dunked over the side and that's a bit fraught in this stuff.


wooo big dunking wave just broke across the boat.

Fiona - nah! Nothing so pansy. This one's the very latest Henri - lovely bit of kit, just wish

I'd bought a size larger. Must go check the horizon.

Bloggage Fri 23/05/2008 14:44

I wish I could capture for you the splendour and magnificence of all this. From a black, menacing night with a glorious dino show glowing and sparkling and pulsating in the surge as Berri surfs through her gerzillionth wave to a grey night with soft fluffy, cotton ball clouds in huge swathes across the sky - really just elevated mist patches but with their own presence and attitude when silhouetted by the moon. And the moon - almost directly astern, sometimes just an illusory glow, sometimes a brilliant reflection as its light comes through a hole in the fluff and becomes a silver plate on the water, sometimes a grey disc with a halo of subdued iridescence and sometimes the moon itself in our own gap - the horizon goes black, the sk silvery grey, there might be a star or two and suddenly its all lovely soft/hard texture and dappled sea. And then it's gone again.

I think what I'm describing is the developing centre of a small low we're crossing but I'm not sure. Wind now WNW and we're still on about 020, following cross sea, kevvo in charge and still stonking along, though a bit less enthusiastically as the wind has abated to about 20 kt. Improved by a cuppa and some dunking mcvities.

Speed has blipped the phone - must go gather your gems - excitingest part of the night.

Kimbra, I'll try to call Dave today or tomoz if conditions allow.

Love yez

Not having fun! Fri 23/05/2008 13:30

Too weary for long blog - possible change of plan - if more convenient wind and wx wise, we may try to go through Amchitka Pass at 180 deg W. Despite mcq's enthusiasm, it's not much fun out there just now. But the dinos put on a huge show for me earlier that helped too lift the spirits. Kimbra, could you please run Amchitka past Dave and Karl and Tom? Tks. Will see whether I can pull in Speedy's latest.

PS I think the GPS in the SatC has died - not really surprising in these conditions - so, for Karl, we're no longer trackable.

McQ: Cape Cheerful and Annoy Rock rock!!

We had spag bol for dinner tonight, it was really very good- the first spag bol we've had, would you believe?? So now it has surpassed beef and coconut curry with cashews (and a good dollop of SC) as my fave meal so far, and before we had a beef curry my previous fave was Oirish Stew and creamed corn and some of our many potato supplies. No beef curry left, some spag bol and lots of oirish stew to keep us going, if i remember rightloy from the recent stocktake.

Interesting chat, huh??!! But thats tinned food aboard boat life!!

Currently still stonking north, we had some big SEasters and huge following seas this afternoon- 32/33 knotters for ages- Big Whitters even bunged the exhaust (that phrase means just that!!!)- the wind's come round quite quick though and merely hours later we now have around 20 from the WNW, so it feels pretty feisty again!! Its amazing how chilled it all is going downwind, even with big ole seas!!

Did I mention Cape Cheerful ever??? Sorry if I have but it is fascinating me: approaching Dutch form the north we have to clear Cape Cheerful, which is just the most brillisnt name- I just keep wondering whether, with all the rocks and current and fog that appears to be the norm whether Cape C is perhaps ironic??? Will let you know when we are near!!!

I just had a look at some other names up north- Imagine naming your local rock Annoy Rock?? just bonkers really and hilarious but perfectly logical nonetheless!!! There is also Teapot Rock, i don't think we'll go near but I wonder if thats ironic too and it looks nothing like a teapot!!! Its so nutty, you could sit and look at the funny rock and place names on the chart and amuse yourself for hours (well I could, anyway!!!)

must be time to go get some sleep, perhaps!!

Lots of love everybody
Spag Bollinger McQueen
xxx

I just found another one- Bobrof Island, 'Hello, I am the King of Bobrof Island' hmmm no one's going to take you seriously now are they??
Also, I swear Egg Pt is next to Banger Pt and Salt Pt... was someone having breakfast when they discovered???

noon3710.10 17133.45 Fri 23/05/2008 04:45

This will probably morph into noon pos. (it did!) Now 0950. Berri is stomping along - hugely exhilarating, somewhat visceral, but a blast. Stbd tack, full main, right out till the head is touching the cap shroud, small furling jib, about half way between a #3 and #4 in old wardrobe terms, short steepish sea, 18 - 25 kts apparent over the stbd quarter, serial rain squalls and Kevvo in charge except when I was hand steering. Cracking 8's and 9's, occasional 10 off the waves, white surging water back past the cockpit - kevvo a bit erratic because he is essentially reactive, so smoother to hand steer and probably at least half a knot faster. We're tracking about 020M, the intention being to get as far north as possible while we can and worry about the east later. Due for more northerlies in a couple of days, some slack in between Just as I typed that, Mcq stuck her head around the rain screen and said it's time for a reef, so we've just put one in and rolled in the heady for balance. Still cracking 7's and 8,s but still bucking a knot of current.
Now 1030. 3702.40 17128.02

Post noon 3721 17142 put in the second, third reefs and then dropped the main, all together. unrolled about a third of the heady in 32 kt and now breaking following sea. Still honking at 6.5.

3632.23 17109.20 Thu 22/05/2008 20:51

Moving satisfactorily NE towards the barn door. No predictions.

Lurking dangers - passed a white buoy about 10 metres to stbd. Looked as if it was supporting something so looked further and yep - 200 metes away, another one, with a flagpole. Cods and wallops - how deep is this stuff? Did we run over it? Has it escaped from somewhere else or is there a fishing boat around? Half an hour later, big white fishing boat hoons up over the horizon to the SW and towards the gear. At least one answer...
Then, during a very black night, I decided a smock was the way to go too keep warm, took a quick squizz around the horizon and nothing in sight, went down found smock and brought it to the cockpit where I sat to leeward and struggled into it (easier down below, standing rather than sitting)stuck my head out of the top and there off the stbd bow, about a mile away, a vessel's lights crossing from right to left - so we are the give way vessel. Very quick sort of sheets, Kevvo etc and we're heading east and behind him but a close shave - no idea whether he was trawling, long lining or what, but the odd thing was that I could see a red light all the way to the horizon, so might have been part of a fishing signal. Impossible to work out what the lights mean on some of these boats.
Then, next watch, lights on the horizon, port quarter. Constant bearing, 2 white, one green so we stand on. Watch him closely and about 2 miles away, a definite turn to starboard and he's headed behind us. Was a very big ship, bulk carrier of some sort, heading roughly east. My AIS black box has not worked since leaving Newcastle with it's hundreds of ships, so I don't know any more

Can someone please tell me how Scott is going on Everest?

noon @ 1130 3518.03 16959.22 Thu 22/05/2008 03:36

dtd 1509 dmg 59 GPS trip log 5540 (departed @ 342) end of our 6th week at sea actual dmg 4310 distance lost 1230. Well, those are the numbers but there may be different interpretations!

Now that conditions are reasonably benign, I have managed to disassemble my mp3 player and furbish its batteries and it seems to be charging again, though only holding a charge for perhaps half an hour. With luck, this will improve with every charge.
But I cranked up part 2 of 1000 years in a Day (inspired gift,H - thanks xx) and there's a burst of Shakespeare at the beginning - not acknowledged but I think it's a sonnet, in which the narrator, outcast and friendless and unhappy, remembers his love -'...when I think of thee...for then I scorn to change my state with kings'. Watching an albatross in full arrogant, subtle majesty spearing in at three inches above sea level, undulating with every wave, wings flexibly rigid, massive anhedral and sometimes the little out turn at the tip making a wide omega as the very last fibre of the outboard feather strokes the surface, completely casual, having a look at us as it flows past and a tiny almost supercilious lift of one leading edge up into a high, vertically banked climbing turn (the Stormy Petrels seem to do full Immelmanns right on the surface, not these guys- way outside the design envelope for the airframe)or - sometimes - fanning what tail it has, extending its feet as whopping airbrakes, it plonks itself on the surface a boat length away and contemplates us with its black shrouded eyes, its long hook tipped beak wagging gently at us - clumsy, clod footed humans in a daft contraption trying to cross my ocean!

..'for then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

McQ: woo-hoo, think I might have over caffeinated myself this morning!!

It feels like a monday morning, but in a good way, but i don't think it is! Thursday, apparently, according to my watch, though I've long since stopped registering days- they matter not one iota out here!! Maybe its the cwoffee i just had followed by museli and un-dried fruit for brekkie. Awesome!!

We have around 5knotters from the SE... woo hoo!!! So, I guess we watch this space and hopefully it will just build all day. At the mo we have the donk on and are pointing direct to Dutch... woo hoo!! The latest Grib I've seen is showing it build to 20knots SE by this evening and maybe up to 25/30ish through the night... should give us a wee boost anyway!! Calm-glassy sea at the moment too, be v nice if it takes its time to build too.

We are currently at 35 14N so we are more north than Sydney is South... woo hoo!!! And boy you can tell, woolly hat on at 1030 in the morning!! Water 18C!! I used to swim off our boat in Scotland (they'd tie a rope to me and I'd go swimming- I think it used to be fun but that may just be cause thats what they kept telling me!!) and I remember swimming, proper laps of the boat, in 11C... which seems very, very cold... 18C splashes send shivers!!

I remembered the sensible, interesting (perhaps) stuff I was going to say.
I was on deck yesterday, and suddenly it struck me as to just how small we are, not relative to the ocean/in the big scheme of things but actually physically, we are a tiny, tiny 33ft boat!!! I was standing in the cockpit- only room for 1 to stand!!(2 can sit, one either side.) and if you lose your balance over a big wave, your neck catches on the spray hood if you fall forward or the tiller pokes your kidneys if you fall back (which makes me sound like a very short and rotund michelin man, I guess!!) The bow, slicing through waves, felt barely arms length away.
It is the sort of boat that my mum and non sailor friends will see at our destination and say 'crikey, you came all the way here on that???' Actually, it might be my sailor friends who only ever go anywhere on huge big racing boats, who wonder that!! But Berri is a proper, proper boat, she may be small but she is just brilliant. She might not get polished to gleaming white in the harbour everyday, she might not get her rusty bits Y-10'd and hosed down in a water ban before the owner pops down but I know if I were a boat I would far, far, far prefer to be a proper boat that gets taken across oceans and shown the world!!

My random thought process then goes on to ramble in my head about the Dolphin 3 in Pittwater and the man who brought his mast down on the way in to Lymington- (how they connected I can't remember but they are the thoughts now floating around in my heid) I'll save those for tomorrow maybe!!

Lots of love
McQueen
ps Anyone seen or heard from Carie?????

Just to confirm 3504.49 16946.16 @ 0700 sydney

Spoke to Carla - wonderful - made my day!
First time in weeks that conditions have allowed this - if you are being tossed bodily around a confined space, fiddling with very delicate sim gates and trying to keep everything from flying around and also dry is not really a goer. Anyway, I swapped sim cads between handsets. The xsat sim does work for data in both handsets, but not always first time, every time. Sometimes it is rejected before dialling, sometimes while verifying at the very end of the connection process, and sometimes it connects so I think it must be a problem between the sim card and the handsets. As my original C & W sim works fine in both handsets, perhaps the xsat sim may have slightly flaky contacts - I dont know. WD40 on a tissue perhaps? I have tried again to dial the xsat sim's own number - 00881631633526 - and the automated 'please do not hang up' voice tells me that the number is 'not in service please check the number' and I do not get as far as the voicemail prompt to enter a password. I can live with this, but it does indicate that something is wrong somewhere.

We're motoring - a couple of albatrosses with us all night and this morning - 6 ft wingspan. dark grey brown over wings, white body but black around eyes, light beige beak, grey brown under wings but with whiter dappled streak along the length mid chord. Remind me of the Falklands black browed version. Stunningly beautiful birds, sweeping majesty as they caress the water - you can sometimes see the downdraft on the surface when its mirrored. They fly out in front, always approach from behind or one side, and sometimes alight on the water a hundred metres or so ahead and watch us pass. Big birds, but nowhere as big as the southern wanderer.

And we have our own Stormy Petrel - opposite end of the scale - appears to flollop along diving, swerving, almost tumbling over the surface - requires enormous precision - I've seen them in huge winds blasted by spray just doing their thing - a real delight to watch.

And back to Cook's decisions - he'd be becalmed again, not even able to move in this. We can motor north - completely different attitude to time and the achievement of objectives.

3449.40 16936.06 Wed 21/05/2008 17:46

Everyone knows - don't we? - that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland is going to destroy the world by creating a mini black hole which will suck in the whole shebang and keep all those tax avoiders and thieving dictators just a bit closer to their funds. Whoopee - will be huge fun while it happens. Meantime, it will be creating wormholes in space so that future life forms can come and visit us in their shiny kevlar suits, sucking on their heated pan galactic gargle blasters as they observe our puny antics. I have to inform you that this has already happened. A future life form, a specially designed cow from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe has been detected by a secret CIA spy satellite at the wormhole periphery ellipse coefficient and sent to a place where it can be quarantined. It seems to have escaped and inadvertently found its way into an abattoir and thence to a soup maker. McQ drank some of it in her Hearty Beef Soup so I think quarantine for her once we get to Dutch. Meantime, a designer Beast in a wormhole? Caroline, doesn't that stoke the boggle reflex?

We're motoring north as the haze and grot closes in - wind change today sometime. Electric autopoilot at last gasp and may have to revert ot actually steering the boat ourselves as Kevvo doesn't do motoring.

PMcQ, the locals have recommended that we take bear spray...When someone convinces me I am wrong, I change my mind...we'll take some aboard. Should enhance the flavour of the canned stew at least. Would still like to hear from the errant 8%

Carla, thanks heaps. I'll try to call you in the next day or so - I want to wait till daylight and, if conditions permit, swap sims between handsets just in case that's the problem.

McQ: Wittering Whitters and other ramblings

Warm toasty layered up mcqueen wouldn't say no to a first plate of fettucine alfredo!! Which is probably why she resembles the michelin man!! methinks I don't have many more layers than Big Whitters, I just wear them more michelin man-like!!

I just got up for watch after falling asleep 3 minutes before... typical!!

And am trying to get my head round the fact that I am sure Whitters wittered something about the wind coming round before he went to sleep but he sounded way to chirpy about this for us to have been headed, but well, we have now. I think I'll keep that one to myself and fingers crossed the wind comes back round to where it was coming from to make him cheerful sooner rather than later!! Or maybe he didn't sound happy and it had headed us a bit for him too. Or maybe Kevvo's brain is as in gear as mine is!!! [After attending to deck] It's the wind, bit all over the place- 6knots then 16 from all over the place too- pretty much as expected tho'.

We had proper boat food for dinner tonight and discussed what constituted proper boat food- definitely has to be a concoction of whatever is to hand and needs ot be hot and probably a selection of things that you wouldn;t necessarily serve at home to a willing audience but that here need using up and accompanied by something cooked in a generally improvised way... so for example, tonight was onion (needed using) and bacon (likewise) and sweetcorn (variety) on top of naan bread,which we fried, one at a time, in the big pot to heat them up, worked though!! And, in my case a big dollop of sweet chilli sauce. Perfect!!! We did imagine that Alex might be my only guest on the evening I choose to recreate this delight when we get home!!

Its funny how on this keyboard you barely need to touch the o and you get ten oooooof them, or you brush past it by mistake!! quite annoying sometimes to have to go through blog and delete them all every time.

I think i was maybe going to add some wisdom about Cook or barometers to my last blog but since it was an intelligent thought It didn't remain in my brain for long and thus proobably the reason I can't quite remember said wisdom.

Time to pretend to be MM after forth FA and put on an extra layer and get some mid watch fresh air and chat to Kevvo for a bit- liven him up a bit. Oh look: We are trying, trying to push North, heading wise, so I guess that is what Whitters was wittering about after all.

A wittering Whitter would be a good name for a bird. I might decide to authoratatively name the little birds that are with us wittering whitters: As in, 'What are you wittering about Whitters, they're not Stormy Petrels, they are definitely that well known Northern Hemisphere bird species, the Wittering Whitter...'

Only one flaw in all this: that is, I definitely witter more that Whitters, but this has distracted me enough to stay awake without thinking about it for a whole hour of watch!!

Lots of love
Woittering McQueen
xxx

Reflections Wed 21/05/2008 10:16

Radar reflectors - small boat variety - research in UK seemed to indicate are almost useless. These are the cylindrical plastic tubes with a honeycomb of aluminium plates inside to provide reflective area. We have the larger diameter version on the shrouds just above the lower spreaders, only because Cat 1 race rules require us to carry one. When I visited it today, I noticed that it is half full of water - and, yes, it is fitted the right way up. How? unless the wind somehow blew it up inside the flange around the 'lid'. I also have a set of flat plates that can be fitted together into a trapezoidal shape and hoisted in the rig - much better performance, but a pain to manage.

What I had intended to investigate but ran out of time is a gizmo called something like a radar echo enhancer - passive device that sits around all powered up, until hit by a radar beam which it then sends back but with a boost. Problem is that there are radars across quite a big frequency range...Might be useful to have one though, tuned to whatever is the most common frequency for fishing boat radars. M'sieur le Fruitelet - est ce possible you could investigate? Would have to be relatively inexpensive and easy to install.

We're tracking NW at varying knots - 2 at the mo - kevvo having difficulty with apparents. Must go and check.

I think I'm getting the hang of the SatC weather warnings - there is a string of circular storms that form off Eastern Japan and move NE just to the north of where we are. They all have 'possibility of winds 30 - 50 knots within radius of 500 miles of centre in SE semicircle'. Tends to gnaw at the viscera a bit until you realise that that phrase is a bit of a backside coverer for whichever Met office issued the warning. The grib shows the one moving north of us now is a lot tamer, but no doubt it could develop.

Warm, toasty layered up McQ looks like the Michelin Man with bunches after his third massive plate of Fettucine Alfredo. I don't know how she can move, but she does. I tend to go for a lot less fabric and lots of air, with good seals to keep as much in as possible. Whatever works, I guess. Must soon brave the starboard upper bunk, delve below it and drag out my bag of warm stuff. Noticeably cool, though we are at the same latitude as Sydney. Water 19 deg. Oily margarine has recongealed in the ice box and the VoA is at jackhammer level.

McQ: H for...

After yesterday, I thought i would check my cup-a-soup flavour today before I started, it was called 'H/Beef' Hmmm, H for Happy? I like the idea that my soup came from a cow that led a happy life, however, I suspect that my soup saw about as much bovine life form as our (olive oil) margarine did in its making!! H for hmmmmm then. H for hopeful, or even hopefully, hopefully beef. H for hungry, yes, I still am!! hostile, hooning, hurtful, heartbroken??? who knows??I have a vague recollection it was supposed to be 'hearty' but given its watery consistency and smattering of green herby bits and nothing else it wasn't!! Must be herby then. Don't get me wrong though, with our cup-a-soup-rationing, all flavours our greatly appreciated and all do their job of warming you up in these chilly climes, whatever they are supposed to be made of!!

Since we are actually back on starboard tack I have re-opened the library. Chichester is order of the day and I fully urge all those who haven't read yet to read Gipsy Moth Circles the World- much much much much more interesting than these nonsensical blogs of mine!! Though both possibly require the same quantity of gin to be consumed to enjoy fully!!

No scrabble on board, attempted irony, precisely due to lack of flat, stable surface!!!

Let us never, ever, ever again speak of the negative distance made good over the last 24 hrs. ok? The eternal optimism runs out with backwards movement.

I think there was supposed to be a serious/sensible point to this one but I have completely forgotten what that was, so you just get more of the same inane drivel instead!!! sorry!!!

With love,
A toasty warm, thermaled, midlayered, hatted, booted, dry socked and gloved (once I finish typing), McQueen xxx

1300 position 3409.14 16956.40 Wed 21/05/2008 04:18

dtd 1568 so dmg -1 No comment!

In the black glooms last night, thinking that pearshapedness threatened and plug pulling was on the cards, I thought about Cook and La Perouse who must both have been close to here. I wondered about the usefulness (should that be utility?) of information and the effect it has on the quality of decisions. Here we are, with SatC forecasts and warnings, grib files, weatherfax (note to myself - must try to pull in Kodiak wxfax -should be in range) and, in desperation, professional routers almost permanently glued to the satphone for the RTW racers. Does all this stuff inhibit the timid - who can't make a decision until they have 'all' the information? Does it embolden the rash - 'The grib says we can do it...' or simply inform the experienced, who might make a different go/no go decision without the storm warning...In other words, is the quality of the decision dependent on the quality and extent of the information or on the experience of the sailor? Obviously both - but what would Cook have done last night? My bet is exactly the same as us, but without the angst. He'd have been sailing backwards and forwards at the same wind angles as us, looking at the sky, assessing the cloud patterns, feeling the wind, watching the swell and its direction and checking his barometer every hour. (Did he have one??). Then he'd have done what we are now doing - headed NW on the freeing breeze, ready to face whatever was in store and glad to be moving again. The fact that we know that there is a chance of a nasty storm ahead makes our present slightly less comfortable than his perhaps. We also know how it will move, more or less and can therefore decide to back away if we want to. Cook's best information would have been his own, or other sailors' logs from previous visits to the area.

And I wonder how Baudin's committee decision would have worked. And how, maybe, a cold war Russian submariner with his party cadre in his little cabin full of appropriate texts supervising the Captain to ensure the political content of the Captain's decisions was sufficient to ensure their quality. There was a cold war Russian sub in Sydney for a while - those guys must be the bravest of the brave. Still are - Komsomolsk and Kursk as witness. Courage and fear - fear and courage! And in those early days, to have to comply with the cadre as well (whose cabin was next to the Captain's and slightly bigger). We were always in awe of those boats, but to actually see the conditions aboard was an astonishing revelation.

Visited the mid portions of the mast - not as spectacular a performance as Pete's in the S2H, but interesting. Needed to move the radar reflector back to where it is supposed to be and improvise a strop for a second check stay. All done, reflector moved but not taped as intended, strop made, checkstay installed, after some expert unravelling by Mcq and Whitters bruised but happy. Time for a late visit to the Barber Surgeon.

McQ:I love our barometer today... and found the oat cakes

Amazing what a barometer on the up can do to spirits!! Oh and not forgetting the sea abating and wind slowly slowly freeing us...we are pointing less at Japan and more towards Aleutians!!! Woo-hoo!!! Hopefully comitting to the SE when it comes in and riding it North will prove to be not a bad move and hopefully , we will then start to have a more realistic idea of the depressions a bit further up there that we will have to face... if they are still stonking on, with wads of winds in them then hopefully if needs be we can ride east a bit underneath and pop north behind the worst... As I have said before, ruled by the predictable wind and wave gods, this is exactly what will happen!! Did a Vancouver bolt hole stock take too- we have enough food!! (possibly actually to go there and back!!) certainly enough museli to last a lifetime!!Did I mention though that it would be nice to bump in to a snickers ship though???!! Also found the oatcakes- being Scottish, huge boost, almost, almost makes up for lack of snickers!!!
Sunnies back on and off to deck I go...
Lots of love
McQueen
xxx
ps Gems, ty for info, please yes send all luck and love with Ross to him and the whole crew and ask him to send lots of love and hugs to Hannah, tell her, she can do it, and though I can't follow everyday from here in Pacific, I am still fully behind her and sending as much good vibes across the ocean as I can- also we must have crossed their to-Hawaii track sometime last week- kinda cool to think about!!! Cor xxx

Decisions 3349.49 17018.24 Tue 20/05/2008 22:20

We've had a look at the grib for the next three days for the area to the NW of us and it seems that we can keep going north. The wind should come around to the south, 25 - 30 by tomoz evening and stay for a couple of days. As long as we can sail downwind in the change without busting anything, we'll go with it and then try to stay in the bottom of the string of lows to get some easting and duck around one when we get a chance and go for the barn door. So that's the plan.

Caroline - great minds! And don't they boggle. Must ask Matt one day.

Kimbra - guesstimate for potential bolt holes still useful - but not so urgent, I hope.

Kris - Your driveway with Berri in it might be an interesting photo caption competition!

Sailmail propagation extinction was finger glitch on my part - must have entered the wrong longitude in the dark and not noticed. Interestingly, there are little fail safe indicators if you know the system - I found my error while setting up the grib request because the little boat wasn't on screen. Apologies to all of you that have never seen sailmail, but it might help people that do use it.

There's a temp lull and I have to go up the mast - see yez.

McQ: Cup-a-soup and catastrophising Tue 20/05/2008 09:56

I just had the most curious cup-a-soup. There was hardly any powder in the packet. It was bright yellow and had noodles in it, but they all seem to. Anyway, usually at this stage you can make a fair assumption as to what flavour it is but this time i had no idea. I checked the packet, it said 'cas cns' still none the wiser and having eaten it still no eyed deer.

It warmed me up enough to give some thoughts on the catastrophising though:

Poor old Alex, stuck on a boat with an eternal optimist!! Though, i don't think he is being pessamistic in this case just, extremely sensibly realistic. Still, I suspect, 'I love Hawaii' and 'I love Vancouver even more!!!' were not quite the first reactions he had hoped for!!!
We can get to Dutch, the question that will start to become very apparent is whether we can get there within the time scale to make it possible to attempt to carry on north. The journey there might become even more: stonk north in the southerlies, park for a bit in the northerlies, all well and good but will become immensely frustrating and time consuming and not only that the lows seem to be more intense farther north- so its not even as if we'll be able to say, 'phew, through the worst of it now!!' We would get there eventually though, I think. Its this unbelievable sea state that is making any head way whatsoever impossible. I guess we can hope that the wind eases tonight as forecast and the sea eases too- it did yesterday for a bit but as soon as the wind blew again the pacific became a big old seething frothy mass again. grrrrr. I am currently being thrown around violently behind the cone and it is a struggle to write and think and brace yourself all at once.

Hawaii, Vancouver, Japan, China, Galapagos, back to Sydney, general cruising round the Pacific- all of which sound fine options!!! We might struggle to get anywhere with our Consulting provisions though and we're out of chocolate, and cup-a-soups are rationed, but it's never meant to be simple at sea!!! We might have to rendezvous with that snickers ship, after all, at the same time as we collect Kimbra!!! It truly would be a real shame not to make it to Dutch though.

Fingers crossed we get to Dutch tho' otherwise, the question is, iff, where and when do we open mum's 'arrived in Dutch pressies'????

Well, we'll be seeing y'all whenever we get to wherever we make it to...
I keep trying to keep these short but they keep being long!!!
Love McQ
xxx

creeping westwards Tue 20/05/2008 09:56

It's going to be a looong night out here in the boonies. Glimpses of very Turner moon, wind fitting and starting, but never less than 20 and often closer to 30. We are now closer to Japan than to Dutch and the next couple of days will be critical. If the wind does soften and veer and - big and! - we can make headway safely to the NW, we will at least be starting to go in the right direction, tho prob only at 2- 3 ks. Then the front of the next depression is due the following day with 35 from the SE - another big iff we can make headway safely, that should get us a couple of hundred miles N and I don't yet know what's behind it but if more of this, then I think we could be in for another long park.

My only data link is good old C & W satphone - the xsat one still refuses to connect (iridium says the phone's number is out of service when I dial it from the phone, even though I can make voice calls) and sailmail is completely out of action at the mo - must be excessive sunspots or something, but there's no green anywhere on the propagation charts.

I said this thing was finely balanced way back - it sure is!

McQ:Update on hair, library and boot management programmes

T'other day, when we were still on starboard tack, I decided it might be wise to do some precautionary Library Management... The library is on the starboard side at the end of my bunk, beside the mast. Whilst I re waterproofed all the library, Alex re waterproofed the mast boot- we had been taking in a fair bit of water there and this certainly would have been to the detriment (the ruin of,infact!!) of the library once on port tack. Fortunately, there is seemingly nothing the man can't do with a big jubilee clip, a roll of black and yellow hazard tape and, of course, the requisite lanolin!! The mast is proving watertight!! But since its been pretty windy and wet and wavy and damp inside in general, i have shut the library for the moment- poetry recitals will begin again in due course. I am just considering, though, that since we are hove to for tea and scrabble, it might also be a good time to reopen the library and learn the next few verses, or might it be tempting fate if I take any books out of their wet weather homes????

Its been a productive morning tho'- hair fully managed- it really is quite remarkable how a bit of hair management makes such a difference!! Have also begun the boot management programme- now, don't tell Alex, I won't live it down but my very expensive yottie boots leak- great, 2nd pair wet socks already. Not amused. I have another pair of boots at home that leak. Either I brought the wrong ones (stoopid) or they now both leak. either way, not amused. Anyway, nothing a couple of plastic bags can't manage to fix, many a mile I have gone with plastic bags in my boots!!

lots of love to all
McQueen
xxx
ps how is AG figaro getting on???
pps For Jamie Powell: though I imagine there is almost zero possibility that you are reading this, I thought I should let you know that i have a sun tan, well, on my hands anyway!!!

noon 3327.19 17115.30 Tue 20/05/2008 03:10

dtd 1567 dmg 29 I guess there' a always the possibility we could get stuck down here - the prospect at the mo is not good given the current forecasts. If it really does get pearshaped, the next best option might be Hawaii. This bit did not look so difficult off the NOAA stats and we might have got it seriously wrong least for this year. That would be a shame, but if is going to take us too long to get to Dutch, there's no point in pretending. Kimbra and David W, watch this space.

3324.43 17118.36 @ 1020 Sydney time, I'll save this blog for the noon position for what that will be worth!

Back under way. The wind has abated slightly, same direction, still the short lumpy sea, maybe 4 metre waves 15 metres apart, about half of them breaking and one or two much bigger, often arriving in trains of three with cross waves. Half the heady unrolled and we're tracking a smidge N of W at about 3kts, intending to get over towards the advancing high and the predicted veer and softening wind, followed by the front of the next low and 35 knots again, from the SE. Grib and SatC predict that we're going to have to negotiate at least one full on low pressure system with up to 55 knots in it somewhere to the north. Not a pleasant prospect. We can try to loiter till the nasty bit is past, but that puts us back in these northerlies again. 1300 miles to Amukta - 2 sydney - hobart races but this is harder and I don't - of course - want to destroy the boat just for the sake of progress. When we have sail up and are moving, the boat's motion is immediately much easier, because the pressure in the sail dampens the rolls and keeps the boat heeled.

On iridium, the last blog went Cable & Wireless. I don't want to be swapping SIMs around between handsets in these conditions to try to diagnose, so I will retry Xsat periodically and just pay the money to C & W if still dead. Irksome, though, because I've already paid for my 500 minutes what I don't seem to be able to use as intended and an absolute pain to have to fiddle with the wiring and connections each time I do a data call. The iridium hardware was designed for stable, dry platforms, dry hands, no salt.....

Catastrophising.Tue 20/05/2008 05:13

Keith C: could you please email your contact phone numbers to the website and Speedy will forward them to me?

Those of you who know me will understand that what follows is called catastrophising - thinking things through to worst possible conclusions and developing contingency plans. What it isn't is the beginning of a rationalisation for failure.

The task, as I see it, is to get Berri safely through the NWP and out to a safe port at the other end with an acceptable safety margin. The eclipse would be a wonderful spin off. So - starting from the far end, we really need to be at the south end of Greenland by the beginning of September at the absolute latest. The Atlantic is starting to growl by then and even getting to Halifax might be difficult. That means leaving Beechey Island or wherever we get to up there by mid August. No later. Allow 30 days (ambitious in itself)for the NWP from Barrow to Beechey, and we must be past Barrow by mid July. Dutch to Barrow via Nome is at least 2 weeks, so we must leave Dutch by the end of June. The current plan is to leave by June 14, so from here we have a contingency factor of about 2 weeks. That's the balance, and there's no real safety factor built in if we accept the latest dates. Nor does it give us time for maintenance and fixes in Dutch.

I think we will be able to push through this nastiness here, but it may take a lot longer than I had allowed for. If it is more than two weeks, we have a problem. The broad options then seem to me to be:

- accept that it would be stupid to headbang beyond the two weeks and so head for Hawaii or preferably Vancouver, park the boat and rethink for next year, or just go home or for a cruise. Kimbra could join us wherever.

- get to Dutch come what may, park the boat and - say - fly into Cambridge Bay for the eclipse, then collect the boat and sail home via Canada and points south

- Get to Dutch, reassess what may still be possible given our arrival date and get on with it. A sail up to Barrow would be pretty interesting...

Kimbra, all this affects you most. My preferred option would be the Cambridge Bay one and then you could sail back down the Alaskan/Canadian coast and fly home when duty calls. Any comments?

All that said, I've got work to do - I think we may be at the start of the wind change - appendages crossed please.

False alarm - it's pretty ordinary out there. Some very big waves - going downwind would be tricky, but upwind, Berri is no better than an old square rigger like Cook's Endeavour or Resolution in these conditions. We just can't do it, so we have to manoeuvre to optimise for future changes and then wait and see whether they happen. Right now, we are tracking 300M at 2.5 kts...

Underway again Mon 19/05/2008 07:50

We sat and rolled around for about 6 hours while the dragon played with his blast vents. Now under way again, still pretty awful but psychologically better. Creeping NNW with heady alone, hoping the grib is right and we get a NWly tomoz. Still a bloody long way to go and if it's all uphill it will be just like the last 10 k in a marathon - only worse, if that's possible.
Lots to write about but connections very flaky and my iridium data connection has died, which severely limits us.

3322..20 17116.19 and parked again.Mon 19/05/2008 22:17
I just don't understand this iridium business. I have 2 motorola 9505 satellite handsets and a data kit that connects one or the other to the USB port on the laptop. Airmail (the sailmail application) has a brilliant iridium connect facility and - if the phone has a signal - it should be just a matter of dialling the iridium data call number, establishing the connection and using Airmail to send and receive messages - plain text only - no effective internet access. One 9505 has my old faithful Falklands Islands Cable and Wireless SIM card in it - a contract service and quite expensive but it has never failed. The other 9505 has an Xsatusa SIM with a 500 minute voucher on it that theoretically should give me voice and data at a cheaper rate. This is still not properly set up, but that's a different problem It worked fine for data until yesterday but now will not connect to the iridium data service - it tells me that the remote computer will not allow the connection. I have carefully checked all the settings and even created a second dial up connection. The C&W handset sent the last blog and - I hope - will send this one. I can't access the Xsat support service - too long a story but I cant. Anyone got any ideas?

The sun is out, sparkling day, quite noticeably colder - water @ 22.9 degrees, which slows down the watermaker - and the wind coming from exactly where we want to go at about 25 knots. Because of the sea state, there is no angle that we can sail at that gets us closer to Dutch - the closest, either way, is about 5 degrees away from what we need. And bloody uncomfortable too! The engine will thump into wind and sea and move us slowly and stressfully in the general direction but there's very little gain per litre of diesel and we now must conserve. So we're hove to, rolling around, but quiet, boat unstressed, sleep possible.

Heaving to - without getting too technical, means setting the boat so that it lies parallel to the waves and at right angles to the wind, both give or take 20 degrees or so. Some boats, like Berri, do it easily, with no sail up, others won't do it at all. When hove to, it drifts downwind and sometimes forwards or backwards and generally, apart from the rolling, is snug and safe. In really huge breaking seas, it's not a good option - you really have to try to sail the boat to minimise the effect of the waves and wind, as we did rather a lot of in the southern ocean, but here, it's fine. Occasionally a wave breaks and crashes across the boat or fills the cockpit - as just happened, but no drama.

Inside the boat at floor level, everything is damp if not outright wet - you can't keep a tiny boat dry while you tramp in and out in soaking, dripping party gear, which you then have to get out of and stow somewhere, with the litres of water it is holding dripping out of it. As I sit at the nav table, I'm thrown violently (and I mean violently) around as the boat rolls and have to wedge and brace myself to keep the keys going.

Will try to iridiumise this - we're out of HF sailmail range at the mo.

Hove to. Noon 3249.08 17123.07

DTD 1596 dmg 83
Passing the time really - not possible to make headway safely with sail into this stuff. Surprisingly, we are moving north while hove to. Slowly! Cant really even do routine maintenance stuff - but bilges must be looked after, and half cupful of exquisitely flavoured but excess olive oil poured down the head (bog, loo, toilet etc for the nautically challenged)


Spoke to Steve on the batphone to resolve laptop problem - I killed the thing in the end and it has come good. i think the nav program takes over and tries to save all the trackpooints. But, in consequence, decided that today's Con would be with dr Steve the Alchemist. Onya, mate - gold as ever! Will now try to send all this via iridium, which started started this problem in the first place.

Previous cont 3241 17116 Mon 19/05/2008 03:24

Later - 3243.24 17126.41
We're hove to waiting for this swirl of dragons blast to go away. Wind 25 kts 050M, our heading is 310M and we're fore reaching 283M towards northern Japan at 1.2 kts. Just might make it in time for the finish of the next Melbourne Osaka race in three years time...There was no way we could make reasonable headway into a truly awful sea - nothing severe, but short, confused, steep, occasionally breaking and dumping on us. Poor Berri pounding and flexing and not happy. So we're parked until something improves. Could be a day or so, but the grib indicates tomorrow morning. McQ asleep, I've had a shave, done the boat chores and will work away at some other things on the list.

Last night full on - I've never seen cloud rushing past the moon like that - cloud base must have been about 500 ft to get the perspective. You know, perhaps, how a non stop train blitzing through a station seems to be going very much faster than you expect, sometimes. This cloud was like that. One lovely few moments - tiny clear patch, moon in full glory, silver sky all around and ice crystal halo. Tiny wisps of high cloud, the whole patch surrounded by black, beetling blasting monsters - and then it was gone. Next watch spent out of the cockpit taking out reefs, re running tweakers, sorting messes and tidying up - immensely hard work, because every movement needed bracing against wild gyrations and dumping waves. Soaked. And next watch, McQ in charge, wind came back from the N and put it all back in again. So we considered the options and here we are. Quiet and peaceful, although, inevitably, some wild rolling occasionally.

H - can't think of any snail mail stuff, thanks. xx

Carla, thanks so much for sorting the email. Moot point as to whether it was spam - to me, all unsolicited commercial email is spam and anathema! Will write today - post caffeination. And perhaps part 2 of 1000 years in a day.

Kimbra - for Dave and Karl - again, huge thanks for all that useful info. If we ever get to Dutch, or Seattle, there will be Consultation and Discussion.

3241 17116 Sun 18/05/2008 19:15

What a night - words fail me - atrocious conditions, tho not severe. memories of very low clouds rushing past tiny glimpses of the moon, berri with postage stamp heady rearing and falling as big, closely spaced waves overtook, Katherine, your playlist briefly - liked allelulia - tried to apply all that stuff you taught me - now in northerly drizzle, lumpy, awful, cog about 080. looks as if the next 1000 miles will be like this so we'd better get used to it.

love yez - sorry, Carla, all to hard at the mo...

The Posts have arrived out of order owing to comms: What follows is the previous to this:
3221.00 17114.19 Mon 19/05/2008 19:33 {ed}
Hove to again. This is where Francis Chichester would have closed down the boat and resorted to a big G & T. What is is about Francis? Chichester, Drake, Joyon, Crozier, Clare? Seafarers of distinction, all.

Keith - You've put us in very distinguished company. Hey, Scott, love your work! There's a marathon I've run more times than I care to contemplate that has a finishing straight of about 5 miles but with a little kink in it towards the end. You can sense the finish, feel the buzz, can't see the end and your body has started to eat itself and rather wants to stop, so it's just one foot after the other and the finish eventually arrives and it was all worth it. We'll be the smiley face way out on your eastern horizon - blow it a kiss from the top and take care on the way down! All the very best from Berrimilla.

H - all the best to John. If it's any consolation, he's almost certainly having a better time than we are!

And that's just about where we are. Going nowhere, probably no communications as my iridium link has died and we are out of HF range at the mo so this may never go. One foot after the other - I can sense the Examiner grinning out there as she sharpens her nails with a broken grinding wheel. We are doing exactly what the ancient mariners did all the time - patiently waited until things changed - as they always do eventually. In this instant age, we've forgotten about patience.

McQ: Mouldy me and the Cats Meeoow

Well the wind is doing exactly what it said on the tin folks!! Fully filled in 30knots from the SW by ten this morning. Big, huge rolling seas, but we're hooning on through, munching away at those miles- am just so impressed once again as to how the fabulous wee Berri just storms on through, thoroughly enjoying herself!! Dropped the main and barrelling along with just headsail... I tried to take some pics but you never quite get it in photos, then I went for a bit of video, definitely not going to be a career move there, and I felt a bit sick watching my movie of us surging through these seas, while surging through these seas, but you do get a better sense of the scale of the waves!!! Never again will I complain about all those waves coming crashing over us earlier in this voyage either- the sea is now 25 degrees and that down your neck feels positively icy compared to a balmy, salty 36C!!!
Had to break out the Cats Meeoow (The Sleeping Bag!!) last night and I am a touch fearful that I am getting into the cold weather kit all a bit early... I also discovered everything has gone mouldy... mid layers, jacket, vest, shorts, purple hoody, etc, and not just inoffensive black pin mould either, I'm talking about full on fluffy, white, foosty blobs, all over everything!!! Nice!!!
Lots of love to everyone.
Mouldy McQueen
xxx
ps Can someone please give me a short report as to how Hannah J is getting on?? TY.

3055.08 17000.56

I think I can see the loom of the Dragon's eyes just over the NW horizon - murky. baleful jade, this one. When he emerges, I think he'll swish his tail and change the wind from SE to SW and breathe brimstone and stink at us. A gybe and perhaps 35 kts.

For the very first time since Sydney, we seem to have a freebie - some current behind us. Perhaps half a knot, and not to be sneezed at. We're clocking 6+ over the ground - noice!

Doug M - fascinating - I'd forgotten that Napoleon might have drowned on a Pacific reef. And yet it has its own skein - because he didn't, he married Josephine, who encouraged Baudin (interesting man, interesting story - imagine having to run a ship as a revolutionary committee!) - and established her botanical garden with the specimens he brought back.

Carla - thanks - separate email follows, once the dragon has farted. I will transcribe the ISS possibilities into the diary I use as our minimalist log (just a series of noon positions and dmg). This bit of silly bloggery is really the loggery.

So far travelled, so far yet to go. About 12 more days at this speed, but that's hugely unlikely.

3116.33 17021.17 About 0630 AEST In praise of flatulent dragons...

Noon pos 3143.07 17028.41 DTD1679 dmg 133

This one may develop as the day goes by... the dragon's tail is a quivering - 25 kts, still from the SE, sea building, 3 reefs and the small heady. Berri, and Kevvo handling it fine. The dragon will fart sometime - there will be a front and about a 90 deg wind change to the SW and up to 35 kts. We'll assess the stench, probably drop the main till it all dissipates a bit and keep on hooning. Still got a bit of current under us and cracking 7's. Small wooohooo - exhilarating after all that headbanging but wont get us back much of the distance lost. And we still have to keep it all together for at least another 10 - 15 days.
Done some precautionary things around the boat - rigged a backstay tackle in case the ram goes - unlikely, but it's been doing odd things. Filled the tank with diesel, sponged the bilge, did stocktake on the Medicinal Compound remaining. Would not do to arrive in a foreign port without my three Consultant Physicians in attendance. There will be enough if we keep hooning and I maintain my self discipline. Made lots of water, but we have a full tank of Sydney water as well (with a bit of squeezed ocean added occasionally to keep it full).

More later.
An hour or so - smells a bit farty. Pulled in some heady, had a bit of a feel and decided to gybe - from about 040 to - as it turned out, about 355. Very careful gybe, put the checkstay back on, eased it all, sorted the heady. 28 kts, seas still building and the wind now definitely SW. Have just taken photos of farty looking blast roiling up astern - white, fluffy, tightly rolled series of cloud lines, catching us fast.

More later. Will be several hours before I can send this, according to propagation application. A coffee, I think.
And post caffeination - McQ came up for her watch just after we got our first cockpit full of water. Good practical lesson in why I'm so obsessed with keeping the drains clear of peanuts and other jetsam. We rolled the heady, dropped the main in 30 kts while Kevvo bare poled, unrolled the heady again and back to 6's and 7's but with big breaking waves and dragon pong all around. And now it seems to be abating. Nice dragon - go somewhere else please! I wonder whether dragon spray would deter 92% of these guys.

But - heading North instead of about 030 and we've got current against us again. My befuddled brain just cant sort that one. Water temp 27 deg. Still at least 2 hours before I can send this, so watch this space, smell this pong.

3002.21 16938.19 A lopsided tribute.

John Grunsfeld
About a century ago, when I was a kid, a young guy called Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group (yeah! That long ago!)made a record called 'I left my chewing gum on the bedpost overnight'. I was idly contemplating the beauty of all this ocean and sky out here - plenty of time for that in these long, hot, empty, dreamy days - and I felt the stiletto tip of envy just brushing past the membranes of my heart. I think I wrote about him before, when I heard he'd got the guernsey for the gig, but there's a guy at NASA who most of you have never heard of, and I expect he'd like to keep it that way, who has got the job that I would most like to have, in all this world at least. His name is John Grunsfeld and he was at the LSU Symposium where this silliness began. Sometime soon, John is off back to the Hubble Telescope for, I think, his third time, to service it and add new goodies - probably the last mission ever to do this. He will be thoroughly sick of chewing gum and lost spanner jokes, but perhaps, John, when you get out there, you could turn the thing around and take one last loving series of pictures of the Earth. Bring back a copy for me and leave one up there in memory so that when we destroy the planet or the Vogons arrive with their yellow tip trucks to take it all away and, in their usual sloppy fashion, fail to check that they have finished the job, the Hubble will drift off and perhaps some new life form anthropologist will have the technology and the imagination to recreate the images and appreciate just how stunningly, sublimely lovely it all was. Good luck mate! I'll have a cold Coopers for you when I come to collect my copy - perhaps if we get this old barge across the top and go home via Houston?

We're in the calm before the - what? Oily swell, no wind, tiniest ruffles on the water, big build up of cloud to the NW and dire warnings from Met Japan about the depression forming out there. We're due for about 35 kts from the SW tomorrow sometime, but all that might change before you get to read this.

Classic example of a safety feature that causes so many problems that it is preferable not to have it at all - a bit like some virus checkers. Easymail is the software for the SatC device we use for Inmarsat communications - free weather downloads etc, plus safety and distress messages and it can be tracked, but very expensive if used for email. Really useful bit of kit. When the Inmarsat system sends a distress or urgent message, Easymail takes over the receiving computer and puts a big flashing message on the screen. If you are not watching the screen and don't immediately acknowledge the message, it sends another...and another. Each of these has to be separately acknowledged (or else I don't know how to wipe them all at once)before you can do anything else so I have just spent 20 minutes getting rid of a hundred or so of them. And then I switched off Easymail - if there was an easy way to fix it, I'd rather leave it on but....The SatC system is still on, but we can't read the messages without Easymail.

noon 2945.45 16921.34 Sat 17/05/2008 02:56

dtd 1812 so dmg 111

I think we heard our first Alaskan voice this morning - there are regular wx broadcasts on 4125 mhz - extreme range for us but there was definitely someone there - wooohooo!

Still just in range of Hawaii sailmail station, then, perhaps Friday Harbour in Washington (sailmail HQ - hi guys!) and then it will be iridium all the way.

Hot, sweaty, nasty joggly sea, very big swell from NW - motoring to keep up speed through sea. V unpleasant - and seems our little fan may have died - very unpleasant...

McQ: Port Tack and Turquoise Hat

We are on Port tack folks...way!!! And boy you can tell we are making our way north...the water is less than 30degrees now!! We are entering into the region of depressions that go barrelling past us with lots of wind- first biggy should start to increase this afternoon/evening and should reach 30ish knots the following evening. Things are all starting to cool down- definitely out of the tropics now: NW winds- chilly!! I woke up v cold this morning and have broken out the first of the thermals!!! I had to put my new fluffy turquioise hat on last night too- which i bought the same time as my new turquoise bikini and the girl in the shop thought I was mad, even when I pointed out that I wouldn't be wearing them together!!!
Mum, lets hope we aren't in the 8% that meet a bear that thinks, 'Pepper Steak- Bonus!!!'
Time to tuck up for a couple of hours in my wonderful blanket (courtesy of the Whitworth Family) its got a print repeated all over it, of a girl in a red dress with a big yellow and white daisy on the front and she has bunches and the biggest smile- makes me happy every time i wake up!!
Lots of love
Cor
xxx

Blogo 2914.14 16907.08

Things change fast around here. Pulled in new grib that said more wind and here it is. Not a lot yet but due 35kts. Down to small headsail and first reef as precaution, pottering @ 5 kts North. Water temp down below 30 deg for first time since Oz coast - and getting noticeably cooler, esp at night. Now that SatC permanently on, getting all the cyclone warnings for S China Sea, plus warning for the low forming to our NW. Great service, but the software is not user friendly for small boats with intermittent opportunity to check laptop and hugely unstable platform.

Bloog Fri 16/05/2008 09:19

Back on the donk - now looks like a long slog - maybe 300 miles - till we get something useful. The Examiner has just been stalking us quietly, slicing strips off our SOG and COG - we still have a 15 degree difference between hdg & track and 1.5 kts off our speed thro the water. Pooo! Headbang, as I said earlier.

Golden orange striated ice crystal sky as the sun set. Open, clear horizon to the north - the empty sea and the sky - save for my ghosts. Tommy, young Henry and all the others who never made it home. Coleridge said it better. Somwhere down near the Marshalls, we must have crossed the tracks of Magellan's ship full of starving, scurvy ridden sailors - and a Filipino who, it is thought, must have been the very first circumnavigator, having been taken to Portugal from the Phillipines by an earlier expedition and then sailed with Magellan away to the west and home again.

P McQ - tks re bear spray. Good to have in back pocket but I rather think I'd like to hear from the other 8%. Have they phoned in yet? A.

Caroline - thanks - we'll look for Cass - hope we don't need next eclipses!

Kimbra - thanks to Dave pse. We'll try to pull in some of those wx broadcasts - a bit far out still for 4 megs, I think. I'll call him on the satphone when we get through Amukta. What freqs do the fisho's work?

biloge:2746.54 16842.19 @ 0900 Noon 2758.30 16844.56

Lord Howe on the left with Mt Gower to the left, Mt Lidgbird on the right, Wheatsheaf Rock in the centre and Ball's Pyramid on the right.
Still motoring (0900). Tiny breeze from the SW - I think we have about 90 miles to go to get into a reasonable gradient, along with its attendant depressions. Last night, we motored through a patch of thickish cloud, rain falling out of it, but astern. The moon was behind one of the bigger ones and silhouetted it - stark, black, ominous, full of Vlads with impaling stakes and a solid wall hanging below it - impenetrable and opaque. Very Turner. This morning, there's a line of just such clouds behind us - soft white fluffy lambskin totally unthreatening and even quite inviting for the shade they bring. Night and darkness hide vampires, ghastly predators, fearsome ghoulies - daylight restores faith in the best of all possible worlds. Boat jobs today - I've just completely repacked the forepeak, extracted the emergency kedging line and lashed it on deck in case we need to anchor in a hurry near Amukta and so that I can splice a thimble into it as we potter on. Still plenty of diesel in reserve, but if the grib is wrong, we'll have to start conserving in a day or so. Found some other stuff, and put a snatch block on the vang bracket for the trisail strop.

End of first watch. Time to wake McQ.

now 1230 AEST
dtd 1923, so dmg was 108.
Now sailing - just...This is the headbang stage. There is the feeling - the suspicion only - that somewhere out there is a finishing line but tempered by the knowledge that it's a very long way away. Grind out the metres one by one. I had a list of 'P's in the last website - planning, patience, persistence, perseverence, providence, pig headedness, pain - can't remember them all but here's where it is at. Looks like a good list for Sei Shonagon 'Things that contain The Other' And you can add 'courage and fear'.

Out there to the NW there is the faintest suspicion of a line of cloud that just might be the bottom of the next system. If so, then, pace the Examiner, it's westerlies followed by northerlies and then SW and the barn door beckons. Amukta is 35 miles wide, foggy in the middle with a volcano on either side. Berri does volcanoes - Lord Howe and Balls Pyramid are the remains of a giganormous crater - pics perhaps, via Speedy.

Duncan C - tks for good wishes.
Peggsy - stand by for a phone call one of these days...

2709.47 16824.53 Thu 15/05/2008 18:59

Before we left, I was interviewed in depth by a Master's student for his thesis. He was interested in certain qualities in crews that make boats go faster and it was a fascinating discussion. Been thinking more about that since, and I think the one that I did not fully emphasise is the one that is absolutely the sine qua non of the successful single or shorthanded sailor - an acute, intense focus on the boat - first, middle and last. No detail is too small, no problem should ever be left unfixed except by deliberate decision, no mystery can be left unresolved, nothing but nothing should be allowed to intervene. It's an exceptional responsibility and not everyone has the capacity. The boat talks to you, tells you how it feels, smothers you in detail and it's essential that you pay attention even when you are asleep - yes - I wake up if the leech is fluttering or if there is a different noise - and race crews get used to my head poking out of the companionway and saying 'Oi! what's going on?' And it fills me with delight when I see other boats' crews climbing aboard for a Hobart race with cameras, ipods, mobile phones and the rest - onya guys! Go for it!

MJC - I would have thought trades, constant @ 20 kts say, at high rotational velocity as well would be main engine for water flow and diversion of current to the east up north is result of coriolis not wind. Too hard! At the mo, we're banging into 3 knots as we track north. Weird and frustraring.
Carla - them bloody Vogons! But then, might have been a bit of poor battered Marvin's BTSOAP. The Eeyore bit, perhaps! Definitely no sound last night, but an awesome flash.
H - pear and fennel chutney sublime. Eating with teaspoon as nowt else to eat it with. Hard on the teeth though. (Erk!) Ta re Wendy - pleas e tell her - again - that she doesn't have to ask, just send soft copy of the bill. Also, I may be using it a bit in the next month or so. Good to know the system still works. Will contact Paul and DC. Cd you please call Spowie and tell Bev we're into her mango pot as well?

Things to do 2648.45 16816 42

Still motoring. Wind very slowly coming in from the SW. Big, confused swell from all points. It's been a long, hot day. Put the trisail up in its new track to make sure no adjustments needed. Looks good - always better to do these things when conditions benign. Swapped checkstay to port side. Put bungee on starboard shrouds (to . prevent the leeward, loose shrouds from swinging around and fracturing at the lower swages). Rather tedious and dull report - sorry!

Kimbra - for D & K & T,
Gents, thanks for your wise counsel. Several things to run past you, if I may - Karl, I don't know what tracking system the fishing fleet uses, but we have SatC which can be tracked - our mobile number is 450302047 and I'll leave it turned on for the duration. It's a passive system and we can't track other boats.
Our to-do list for Dutch includes the following:
- Buy 800 beers or the local pan galactic equivalent for Dave, Karl and Tom if he's in town
- Slip the boat and try to get an ice guard fitted around the prop. Thought it better to get local experts to do rather than second guess from Sydney.
- Find a sailmaker, for relatively minor repairs (or at least someone with an industrial sewing machine)
- Also an electrical engineer to refurbish the motor on our backup watermaker. Not essential.
- Find a computer geek to help restore laptop - not essential but would like to have for backup.
- Get internet access - at the small boat harbour perhaps?
- Find a chandler - lots of stuff
- Buy a 2 or 2.5 hp outboard
- buy a rifle
- plus refuelling, restocking, contacting local and Canadian weather and ice forecasters, and all the other stuff that we'll need to do to get out of there by June 14 at the latest.
- buy another 800 beers....

Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

Carla:
Looks as if we'll be north of the good ISS flypast. Pity. And it will almost certainly be cloudy where we are going.

Plog 2625.37 1609.16

So here we are - a smidge over 2000nm to Dutch (say 17 days), a smidge under to Amukta plus 2 days to Dutch. No wind worth mentioning, but what there is is from the west so it's good. There is a line of nasty tight low pressure systems crossing our path from w to e between about 30 and 45 N. These guys are clockwise rotational systems with 50 - 60 kts in the front sectors and just like the Southern Ocean - not nice. We are west of the great circle route, at least notionally deliberately, though we did not have much choice. This is good - means we can pick up the westerly flow at the bottom of each system and reach north, sea state permitting. When the system passes and we're in the back of it - strong northerlies, dead against us - we will be west of the direct line to Amukta and - in theory at least, can fall away a bit to get a reasonable wind angle and keep stoking along towards Amukta. Fog expected in and from Amukta towards Dutch, so extract serious radar reflector and hoist. Time and reality will tell, but that's the theory. I think we should be able to maintain a reasonable vmg from here. Approaching mental turning point in marathon - but not there yet!

So - assume 110 nm/day and work it out for yourselves.

Original to-do list for Dutch included:
refuel and restock
check whether diesel heater necessary
investigate ice basket for prop
warm clothing and boots
charts and local advice
buy small outboard?
repack boat to include Kimbra
sort anchor lines, stow at least emergency kedge line on deck, maybe buy appropriate anchor for conditions if not Berri type CQR activate NL200 iridium SIM additional fuel tanks?
Rifle (sorry Ann)

Additions:
New autopilot - buy Berri type socket and fit fit Iridium aerial checkstay tangs?
sailmaker for refurb of old sail & small adjustment to trisail computer geek who understands CMap to rebuild small laptop Electrical engineer to refurb backup watermaker motor send pics to speed inflate and stow both inflatable duckies.
heavy duty rubber gloves

early noon (1100) 2616.09 16807.53

For kimbra (& blog?) - yea! - we're now on P tack in feather breath of wind. Still motoring. How far north do the lows go - gribs indicate around 45N plus or minus. Any word from small boat hbr? Wd also like to try to get on slip to see whether ice basket for prop possible. If in contact, cd you pse investigate? Would need stainless welder, prob, and perhaps f/glass in the feet/supports but I'm sure they make them regularly. Tks for good info.

Too hot for more.

2605.58 16805.26 Wed 14/05/2008 23:51

As we go at the moment, we're about 17 days out from Amukta, but I think that may improve. We're motoring at rather slow, walk the dog pace generally along 020M. Wind about 3-4 kts very slowly veering and I expect that it will eventually become a westerly with a bit of grunt at the base of the line of depressions moving along north of about 40 degrees. We're just making our way around the back of the N Pacific high - a clockwise system with a hole in the middle (us right now!) and, once past it we should get going again. Very hot, the sea surface has tiny wind ripples and the remains of a very big and rather confused swell pattern that is slowly settling. Two rather tatty black seabirds following us all night - elusive shadows in the moonlight - and they are out there now, way in the distance. I must one day get the book to identify them - have tried several times but never found the 'seabirds of all the oceans' version.

Last night was beyond amazing - clear sky, the earth's disc, from the cockpit, black with lozenged, wavering, snaky patches of grey to occasional silver as they caught the moonlight. Hard edge to the horizon down moon, darker silvery slightly milky sky, first and second mag stars only but brilliant pinpoints through the usual slight haze. Up moon, sky luminous grey, brighter towards the moon itself. Masthead light tracing a swirling ribbon across the universe - its gyrations perhaps stroking other life forms way in the future as we look back way into the past. Berri's version of a wormhole.

The flash - was wondering if perhaps it may be the anniversary of an atmospheric test back there on the bomb range and, just to remind us humans about what we have done and continue to do to each other and to the planet, Gaia arranges a little anniversary display. A sigh of anger and despair, of resignation, of sheer disbelief that we continue to do as we do.

noooon 2426.20 16746.20

Blogg
dtd 2140 so dmg 138. Good one .

Now getting very soft. Kimbra predicted the motor from just north of here. She's pretty good! Drs Jasper, I think, is summoning me. I think I've earned it too - checkstay sorted and I think it's a neat solution that will work. Murphy, of course, intervened while sorting but now done.

Have I given you Jasper's website? www.waarisantares.com for them that can read it. Wonder whether they are still in Sydney on Berri's mooring.

McQ: Heavens Above Part 2

We are on the last of the Southern Hemisphere stars now... Can still see scorpio- one of my fave constellations, not sure how far north he stays with us??? And fully into the Northern Hemisphere Constellations now- my fave being Cassiopoeia, or the 'lazy W' (or M, depending on the name of the handsome young man you are sitting on the beach with, gazing at the stars!!!) but I always thought it should be glaringly obvious, but I am not sure if we can see it yet or not, which means probably not, still too far south!!! Can you believe we came all this way without a heavens picture??? I got out my Toghill's Celestial Nav (brilliant book!!) the other day, but of course being an Oz book it only covers Southern constellations... so if anyone can tell me if we are north enough for Cassiopeia yet, that would be great and also can we see Pleiades by the mast (ie high up) at around midnight Sydney itme??? Mum, any chance of a heavens above guide (for both hemishoheres, for completion) simple, just pics of the constellations, to go in the AM parcel???? (As we head N and it becomes more daylight, this publication would become reference only, I do get that!!! but its always good to absorb new knowledge!!!)

My Ali: just a thought, if you take Imaginary Me on your next WLA you should maybe consider taking Real Marc too so the punters of Holland Park don't think you are talking to yourself, and he should be able to help you through any little doorways away from any ugly people!! Otherwise, hope you and IM get on- shes pretty well behaved, so no leading her astray now... xxx

hugs and love to all on a beautiful sweltering pacific morning McQ xxx

Blugger 2408.18 16741.17

Difficult to imagine perfect sailing conditions but these get close. The downside is the current, still negative 1.5 kts. However, not a Golgafrinchan telephone sanitiser, not a marketing executive, not a snake oil preacher - just no-one else around, 15 kts on the beam, gentle sea, Berri pottering along at 6kts SOG, 7.5 log. Lizzie whizzing and keeping the batteries ahead of the drain and Kevvo in charge down at the back and in happy commune with the Lizz. The electric autopilot has died again - not sure whether I have successfully resurrected it but it's asleep.

Absolutely no news of the outside world except barest details of tragedy in Burma and Chinese earthquake. Nothing, but nothing else - no US primaries, no olympic torch, no wars, no climate change....which reminds me, I have a short wave radio - must try to get it operating while things are relatively calm.

H - glad K is safe - little does she know! We are now north of Taiwan - I think - so getting closer to Beijing. The dried fruit you found for us is sensational - no other word for it. Thee rock melon and the pawpaw soften up beautifully but the kiwi goes to mush. The rest as expected.

Doug M - tks for reminder about La Perouse. A bit of Australian/French history that could so easily have gone the other way. Do you have a short version of the story as you have found it that you could send a link to Speedy for the website?

MJC - yep, and thanks, but that's the maths for the deflection, which I've always understood. What I was trying to get at is why this huge - gobsmackingly enormous - chunk of the earth's surface is effectively going backwards and taking us with it. Obviously, it curls the 'wrong' way intuitively (for us non geeks) when it gets deflected by Australia or Asia and becomes the Brown Snake or the EAC but why does it move in the first place?

Nearest Sailmail station is now Hawaii @ 1924 nm, then Brunei @ 3260, then Firefly NSW @ 3461 and then Sailmail HQ Friday Harbour WA @ 3545. Will be a notable milestone if we ever get to connect to them. Lots of time for Jim and Sue and the Saimail team. Perhaps an Accolade, Speedy, By Appt. to the world wide Sailmail team for wonderful, dedicated hugely efficient service around the world. Just reaching Hawaii sometimes, but this is the first time I think that I have ever been effectively out of range.

We're now north of the Tropic of Cancer. Hoooley dooley - next big milestone might be the Arctic Circle @ 66.5N. Am about to go up the mast to create a mousing line either side to get the running part of the staysail halyard over the lower spreaders and back to the quarter so as can use it as a check stay when things get violent again. It emerges from the mast inches below the inner forestay so is in just the right place. Will consider a tang when in dutch. There's a lot of boat speak for the nautically challenged!

How I see it.

We have been given dire warning, indirectly, by someone whose opinion deserves the utmost respect, that this is a foolhardy gig. While I agree with some of the points made, I see them differently. Here are a few:
- to get through this year you need to be up there now. I don't agree - We have the annual stats from the NOAA website for the entire passage and the ice doorway starts to crack open at Point Barrow at the earliest in mid june, more likely early July. I have timed this part of the journey to get us up there round about then. Once up there, we are utterly dependent on a set of circumstances occurring that would make the next stage possible. We need to be able to get around Point Barrow, we need an open lead to the east and we need the prospect of an offshore (southerly) wind to keep the ice to the north and to give us a boost along the Alaskan coast. Lack of any one of these is a showstopper and we wait at Barrow for as long as seems sensible, then come home. However, if all 3 do occur, we have to be there to take advantage.
- we need a crew of heavies. Why? Just more mouths to feed and no real benefit as far as I can see.
- we need an ice strengthened boat. Yes, would certainly help, but I decided quite deliberately not to try to strengthen Berri on the basis that anything we could do would be largely useless and we'd be a lot more careful knowing that we don't have it.
- we need a cage around the prop. Yes - and this is something I intend to investigate in dutch, but again, it tempers any go/no go decision if you know the extent of the risk.
- the coastguard won't allow us to proceed. So be it. they know best and we'll come home. However, the stories from people who have recently been through, or failed, indicate that the local authorities in both the US and Canada were extremely helpful and encouraging. Further, we have a number of very experienced local contacts, fishermen and marine scientists, all of whom have been positive and helpful and will continue to advise us as we progress. No one has yet tried to talk us out of it.
- the boat needs to be big and strong enough to winter in if we get stuck in the ice. Yep - and Berri isn't and that's the bottom line. I do not intend to risk getting stuck but I know that a wind change at a critical time is all it could take. The Canadians have an excellent icebreaker service up there and, while use of the icebreaker would represent failure to me, it may be available to get us out as a very last resort. We will need to find out a lot more when we get to Dutch - we need a friendly voice at the Canadian Hydrographic Service, for a start.
A real problem might be that Berri draws about 6 ft and there is a lot of shallow water along the way. Also means we cant use shallow water to escape big ice. But a much bigger boat went through last year, East to West, with no difficulty, owner a farmer from Minnesota, but I don't have a link to his article. For us. will depend on whether last year's ice melt was a one off or the sign of things to come.

So we're not going into this blind to the risks, or obstinately disregarding them. We will take all the advice we can get and I am prepared to pull the plug at any time the signs are negative. Once around the corner at Barrow, the die is cast to some extent, but I think it is far less risky, again using the NOAA data, to be going West to East. But we don't know until we get much closer what the ice predictions are for this year and I have no internet access out here so am relying on Kimbra's knowledge and judgement for advice.

Finally, please, everyone keep it short from here. We are out of effective sailmail range for at least the next couple of weeks and I'm using my dwindling number of expensive iridium minutes to send these and to pull in and read your gems. Thanks!

McQ: Heavens Above Part 1

Yep, no worries folks, all 'thank you's' send them this way... for those in UK, once again it looks set to be a scorcher of a summer... now, of course, we all knew this because EVERY summer I go to sea to be cold and wet and togged up in thermals all year, ensuring no hope of a tan, it is a blinder at home, and likewise, when I stay at home, like last year, its rubbish!!! So hope you are enjoying your lovely sunny days!!!

Ali: you know how I love all adventures, big and small!!! I miss you loads too darling. Maybe you can pretend I am there on your next West London adventure, talk to me and stuff as if I am, perhaps???!!! Just don't get lost in the Windsor Castle, you and imaginary me will never manage to find our way out of there!!! lots of love Coriander xxx

Malcolm: brilliant coriolis chat, brilliant, perfectly understandable, not a greek letter in sight and much more akin to my 'nearer the poles the faster you spin' adage!!!

Its a beautiful clear clear night, the moon has just set but we are still lit up from horizon to horizon by bright twinkling stars and swirling galaxy- amazing!!! There is not a cloud in the sky, not even a dark, inky blob anywhere. But the strangest thing just happened- we just had a 35 degree wind shift (lift) for about five minutes but just can't figure out as to where it might have come from!! mad!!

Love
McQ
xxx

We interrupt this broadcast......

To give a couple of hints and tips about messaging. This is not about discouraging people from sending messages. They are after all extremely important for the jollity and sanity of the crew. All messages put in the Gustbook are transmitted every 24 hours. Unless they are disqualified by size, in which case they are edited (more time consuming this end) and go later. Now and again the sinuous link that is sailmail cannot get through. Alex, then has to use the satellite phone to download the email sent from here. This costs $12USD per minute. You can see the problem. So the trick is; don't use too many words (50 maximum);don't use carriage returns let the Gustbook do that for you (that goes for emails as well). When you send an email here via contact please put in the subject line: 'message for berri'. That will be hugely helpful for sorting.

Don't insert blank lines as spaces like the one above here.
Because they all have to be removed manually, consuming more time. So keep them coming and sign them off without a space like this. Thanks Speedy.The preceding message (excluding the picture)contains 190 words and is 2 Kilobytes in length and we can only send 6k at a time.

Professor McQ: 2008 Year Zero...

Hey folks,
This afternoon I read two New Scientists!! Now, you might wonder how we hapopen to have New Scientists Magazines on board- well, Alex has been saving his copy and Guardian Weekly too (for crossword!) for a few months so every so often we have new reading material. So, I'd never read a New Scientist before today but what fascinating stuff!!!! My little brain is still trying to compute all the knowledge i have acquired this afternoon. Its mental!! I always wanted to be a professor cause It means you can get away with being a bit eccentric, I think!!! but I read an article by a man who is a Professor of Theoretical Physics, which, from what I can gather from the article is a recognised branch for Physics they don't know about yet!!! Imagine!!! Well, now I know all about the Large Thingummy (HAdron) Collider. I'm still trying to get my head round it but some(scientists) think that we have unwittingly invented the first time machine with the LHC...and, logically, it would be impossible to go back further in time than the first time machine, this means that this could be prove to be year zero for time travel. However, while we don't yet have the knowledge or technology to utilise our makeshift time machine other people forom the future, say 50 years time, might be able to and thus come backin time to now. Mind boggling stuff. Truly, my head is whizzing!!! So we might get some visitors, cause obviously year zero would be an interesting place to visit on a time travel itinerary!! But this begs the question, if they can use the LHC to get here but we can't use it to get there (the future) how can they use it to get back to the future?? Or indeed could they show us how to use it to go to the future??? And then, if we did go to the future could we not come back armed with info about how technology has advanced etc and then is the future still the future or just part of the extended present??? Or would it take until that point in the future that we came back from to utilise the information that we have obtained to make it work, in which case the information must surely have come out of nowhere, but just loops about in space between now and that point in the future, since that means it never really gets developed??? Are you still following??? Its all properly bonkers. Maybe I will hypothesise more articulately and write to the NS and they will make me an honorary professor in something!!

Today I also threw overboard some rotten potatoes. Rotten potatoes smell of fish, if anyone wanted to know that. And then on the menu for this evening was beef in red wine casserole and non-rotten potatoes.

Lots of love
McQ
xxx
ps Marcus, I have a GRAND idea for our birthday party.
pps Carie, hows things????, send an email via speedy!!! Whats going on in the village? Are you in the village, even???? Singapore??? France??? What you up to??? Is no 10 ok??? Miss you. xxx

noon - almost 2217.10 16557.43

Bleergry
This will morph into noon pos. now 0800, just crossing 22N @ 16656.30. Tropics end @ 23.5N...90 miles. Been headed a bit - now pointing firmly at Kamchatka. This will sort itself over time.

Just morphed @ 1140 dtd 2278, dmg 118 or about 121 for 24 hrs.

Speedy - Hope you had a good Burf and caffeinator has 'sufficient' horsepower!

The characteristics of the sea have changed - Temp is trying to go from 33 to 31 deg which might be a sign that we are getting close to top of current. Swell pattern now all from NE - big underlying swell, perhaps 3 - 4 metres @ 50+ metres with smaller wind waves on top, much shorter wavelength, same direction and occasionally meet and amplify underlying swell into short very steep breaking wave. Then confused slop on top of all that. Berri slightly easier as travel veehicle because corkscrewing not so savage with everything more or less lined up. Still need to brace with both legs, eyebrows, earwax and one hand and do everything that has to be done with the other hand. Like, for instance, getting damp trackies to progress upwards from wet feet which stick to material - massively energy sapping but there are techniques - can, for instance, sometimes sit on (damp/wet) floor and work them upwards - or, if Berri really heeled, downwards because feet are then above head level...GRIBs show change in wind and weather from about 24N. Nice to get off stbd tack - and maybe get a look at the barnacle colony that I'm sure is thriving under berri's port quarter above the antifoul. Photos of the last lot on the old website under 'arrival in Hobart' or similar.

We have been offered a set of NWP charts via a friend - Kimbra in charge of chart acquis'n and is investigating. Sensational offer but can't post details without permission. But thanks by the bucket load. Janx spirit duly and gratefully teleported.

To-do list for Dutch growing daily. Will post it when we get closer.

P & E O'C - noted. I hope you're several days too late.
P McQ - re AM - any chance I could have one too please? Never ever owned my own copy, so wd be a first. Obeisances as required.

For the Funsters - apropos of nothing in particular:
Ode to Tomato Sauce:
First you shake the bottle
None'll come, then a lott'l
by Ogden Nash. Not Shakespeare, just whimsy!

McQ: Starboard tack, Jumblies and Cormorants

We have been on starboard tack for as long as I can remember, heading north, E/NE trades, beam reach, close reach, some combination thereof but starboard tack. We are going to carry on like this for a good few more days, then the wind is going to ease and gently veer and we are going to gybe as it goes behind us and then it is going to fill in from the W/SW adn then we will screeching reach up to the finish, (Aleutien waypoint!!!) in a matter of 22 days...
This is of course, given the predictable nature of the sea and the weather gods, EXACTLY how its going to happen!!!
But certainly my starboard eye is looking forward to being on port tack, as is my starboard leg (it feels like its shrinking, or maybe the port leg is stretching!!!) and the starboard eye gets the brunt of the waves so is a wee bit bloodshot and gunking up worthy of Papi after two days on a coconut. Anyway, trying to keep the salt out of it, a thankless task, but am trying nonetheless!!

Anyone who sails will know how intensely irritating a waterproof jacket hood is... for a start anything that obscures you beoing able to feel what the wind is doing on your face, is pretty unhelpful. If you are going up wind, it just keeps blowing ooff unless its tied up so tight that you can't hear or see anything. extremely frustrating and at the moment the staroard side of my hood keeps irritating the starboard side of my irritated eye... all very frustrating!!!!

Right, offski to deck, to salinate.

Lots of love and hugs
McQueen
xxx

ps the Three Chimneys is the my favourite, favourite restaurant in the world and the best in Scotland, so I expect and hope, Philippe that it was expensive for you but that it was worth every penny? and hope you tried the marmalade pud... for everyone else, its hard enough to get a table so I urge you not to go!!!! It might be my fave but its hardly worth bothering with that long, off the beaten track hike to get there... and the marmalade pud is definitely not worth the effort!! (but try it if you do go, and go once and once only and make sure its before I get back!!)

pps Rach A: can you believe its a whole year since it was May last??? Anyway thinking of you and how great you are. love you. cor x

ppps: Mum, any chance of a copy of ancient mariner to Dutch, inscribed by Web of course- if you think that could be there by 12th June when we leave?? I left mine at home and the copy on board is only extracts and it is a whole book of poetry and I keep getting distracted by Lear and Anon (Jumblies and Cormorants) xxx

PpppS Andarks by appointment as supplier of all relevant accessories to McQueen too...They are probably glad I am away at sea as I can't harrass their fabulous selves for discounts from here!!!

Hi Funsters!

Hey Funsters - right on about bottles. The only ones we have on board are the tiny ones with Tabasco sauce. I like your idea of a diagram of our communications. The sailmail website is www.sailmail.com and that will give you lots of info. Jim and Sue Corenman and Stan Honey wrote the software and you might be able to contact them through the website. Stan is a very famous sailor and a really nice guy - google him. You might also like to check out the Aleutian Islands, and volcanoes along the edges of tectonic plates....Goood luck with the test!

noon 2016.45 16640.49

dtd 2396 dmg 123

Prob best day's run so far. Still headbutting - really clobbers the vmg.

About to have Daily Con - today with the Apothecary, the excellent Dr. Jasper. Not much else to report and too hot anyway, though does seem at last to be getting a bit cooler. Sea temp has been 33.4 - 33.6 since Solomons if not before.

On shaky ground here, but ponder this, if you will. Seems to me that we are working our way across an immense body of water that appears to be moving westwards. What perhaps is closer to what is really happening is that the body of water is trying to stand still while the earth rotates underneath it, leaving the water lagging behind and giving the impression to a little boat on its surface that the water is moving to the west. So tiny Berri is trying to keep up with mother earth, while tangled in mother earth's skirts all flowing backwards because inertia and low viscosity 'unstick' them from the base rotation. And that has to be the silliest attempt to explain coriolis that I've ever read.

Just passed a lobster pot float - in 5000 metres of water - so probably not attached to the bottom. Had lots of growth on it and the only place it could realistically have come from is one of the Hawaiian Islands 2000 odd miles up current and up wind. It might make it to the Phillipines or Taiwan or South China any time in the next few years, or get diverted up the Japanese coast and around to where we are going - in a few more years.

Two seabirds - one twin tailed, delicate and beautiful, the other, which I was able to photograph, basic grey brown petrel or gannet or ..Otherwise, nothing obvious, tho the dinos are still around and glorious at night.

1952.07 16636.11 Things distant...

Things distant yet near - Wake Island, the GW crossword (got soaked seconds after I had unwrapped it - such is life in the old bus shelter). Things near yet distant - Speedy, Kimbra, H, K & E. Things at the very very edge of the universe of contemplation - an eclipse from HMP.

So the dim glow of Wake is way behind us and the open ocean to Amukta ahead, 2207 miles or 22 days @ 4kts. Not a prediction, a fact! Will be a very long 22 days but every boat length gets us closer. We're still going well, in the trades, further west than planned, but that's not necessarily bad given the prevailing winds further north. Another 3 degrees north and we'll be out of the tropics. Tiddly pom! I wonder how intense the stream of depressions up there are at this time of year.

Note for Marty A if you're reading this - the sexy masthead LED nav lights right next to the vhf aerial completely clobber the vhf - interference on all channels. Can't use vhf at night unless using aux or no nav lights. Interesting and certainly worth knowing! H, perhaps you could give him a call - might save someone else some grief?

Just about to cross 20N

Elementary, my dear Watson - 1915.49 16626.10

One for the sleuths; at 1254 UTC on May 11 2008, an aircraft passed directly overhead Wake Island (and Berrimilla). It was very high and tracking about 255 M. Who was it? Probably a commercial flight from Hawaii to Singapore?

We are passing 12 miles west of Wake as I write, and directly downwind. No wafting PBX smells, no nothing. I can see the loom of lights - but that's about all. Tried to call them on 16, but no answer. I wonder if they know we are here. Easy to see how the early explorers could have sailed on to reefs at night - La Perouse for one.

Noon 1812.50 16617.30

dtd 2519 so dmg 120. And we are still bucking current. Hard to believe. 15 deg between heading and COG and 1.5 kts speed difference between log and GPS SOG

Happy Birthday Speedy - I'm about to have the first Official Consultation. Still heading for Wake - might just slide to the east. Too hot for any more - will resume later.

Grind, grind, grind...when you are traversing a quarter of the earth's surface at not much more than walking speed, time tends to drag. Wonderful sailing but such a loong way still to go. About 15k in a marathon, mentally. You start to wonder why you are doing this and then you see the night sky again and you know.

We are definitely heading for the Amukta Pass through the Aleutians at 172W. The passes near Dutch are treacherous, busy and to be avoided - google Akutan and Unimak for some gruesome details - 9 knot tides, vicious waves when the wind is against the tide, lots of ships. Dutch is very close to the great circle route between the US west coast and east Asia, so lots of ships use these passes. Too hot again - back later.

Later - sun has just set and we've just altered to pass Wake to leeward - to the west - by about 10 miles. 35 miles to go and I'll give them a call on VHF 16 in a couple of hours.

Banged my head - again! - on the top of the companionway entrance. Hooooowl!

Bog 1750.58 16613.16

Bog
Wind has increased, but manageable. Our sewing job on the small headsail seems to be surviving being rolled in and out and it's the perfect sail for these conditions. Looks as if we will go very close to Wake - but still 90 miles away and plenty of time for adjustments. Some tiny signs that we are getting closer - the nights are noticeably cooler, so sleep is easier and the Great Bear is tickling his tummy on the masthead early every evening. Soon we'll be directly underneath him.

Speed has an official birthday tomorrow - Consultations and good wishes all around please. There will be Consulting going on out here for sure.

Interesting patch of water we are crossing - the divide between Wake, bomb test HQ and the bomb test range in the Marshalls. Would have been well travelled in the '40s and '50s and some famous names - Oppenheimer, Teller, Szilard, Strangelove, Fermi, Beeblebrox and probably some of the rocket scientists too - von Braun, perhaps. Was Einstein ever part of the test team?

McQ: just stuff

Well, it was with slight trepidation that I was looking forward to this evenings meal- Big A was in charge, his turn to cook, and given his fondness for rotting bacon and the fact that I saw him examining the mouldy cabbage earlier, well, I didn't fancy my chances!!!

However, I am pleased to report, that the bacon barely tasted too piggy and there was only the merest hint of foost in every cabbage mouthful (nothing that good old tabasco couldn't sort!!) and the whole concoction, with the addition of beanz and toms and pepperoni was really very good!!!

The ocean is beginning to resemble the Pacific that I remember- humungous swell, pretty regular and long, with a fair old sea on top of that. There is still a long way to go before it is as big as I remember, but we were also further north and it would have been Jan/ Feb time then. As is will do nicely though for us, thank you very much. Wee Berri is surging across the sea, with Ray back in charge, we are just trying to coax Berri across and through the waves without too many rig shuddering moments- she's doing great though, loving it infact, I would guess. Its due to build over the next 48 or so hours so might be an opportunity to try the trysail... in the meantime, we are chomping away at the miles- funny how, not so long ago 20N seemed almost inconceivably far off but now is less than 4 degrees away. crazy stuff.

I am caked in salt- have just mopped it out of my eyes but the rest of me is still caked, my skin has that slimy greasy feel that you get when you have been doused continually with salt water for some time!! Mostly today this is due to being on deck on watch for mere minutes and four huge waves slapped against the hull, then up in the air then down my neck. Unbelievable!! Though at the time I did ask the ocean very politely, no swearing at all, as to whether that was really necessary and whether I really deserved such a drenching. Wherever I moved in the cockpit, the waves would follow and get me, all the rest of the watch- you had to laugh!!!

Thats all for now folks.
Love and hugs,
McQueen
xxx

Of breeding and perhaps a colour index for hydration

My father, bless him, who taught me to sail, was a naval pilot in WW2. He told me the story of one of his Captains, who was a respected horse breeder in his spare time, and who was writing his annual flimsies - reports on the conduct and efficiency of his officers, written on very thin 'flimsy' paper. Of one particular officer, he felt it appropriate to write, copied to the officer and the Admiralty : 'I would not breed from this man.' Only bettered, I think, by Dorothy Parker and 'No Leica.'

To all my three Consultant Physicians - DRs. Jasper, Dr. Pete and Dr. Steve, - your potions and elixirs have matured superbly. It is a shame you are not all here to sample - and therefore perhaps evolve and improve - your offerings. However, emphatically, I would breed from you all!

Now - to the smelly, daggy stuff - mostly for Belmore South. Do we wash? - no. Do we smell? maybe, but you wouldn't notice if you lived here. I have been wearing the same two shirts since we left Sydney - I rinse one in salt water every couple of days and squeeze it out carefully while wearing the other. Unlike McQ, I don't wear knickers because they do dreadful things to my bum when salty. Just the same two pairs of shorts, rinsed likewise. I shave every three or four days and my whiskers have almost stopped growing. The bum gets treated daily with Savlon and, when sore, as now, with Betadine and I'm being rather careful to sit on it only when essential. We sweat rivers - Niagaras - especially here inside the Cone - and we drink lots of water. I pee into a plastic bucket, (instead of the energy sapping alternative of actually fighting my way forward, opening the two toilet valves, going through the process of pumping out and flushing and closing the valves again) so I can actually look at and assess the colour of my pee. Really useful as an indicator of general health and hydration level - if it looks pale and straw coloured, it's perfect for Sydney, but I'm drinking too much water for out here (or perhaps better expressed as drinking far more water than necessary for survival out here). If it looks dark golden, it's about right. I don't do supplementary vitamins, so no odd variables there.

Hope all that's useful!

noon 1616.29 16550.34 Anyone know anyone at Wake?

Bliggy
DTD 2639 so dmg 121 yeeehaaa! Absolutely wonderful, exhilarating, once in a lifetime sailing. Berri just below her limits, half headsail, 3 reefs, balanced, Kevvo in charge and surging along, over, through the waves - all brilliant blue, silver, hot as hell, sun almost directly above but to south so no shade. When she doesn't quite get over a wave, the nose goes in, white water cascades back down the deck and off we go again. Mast flexing forward rather more that leaves me comfortable but does not seem to be stressed.

This wind due to increase over next 36 - 48 hours, so sea state will be pretty horrible by the end and we will certainly have to slow down. Thinking possibly the trisail if it does build to uncomfortable state - never used it with new track and would be about the right size so good practice.

If anyone knows anyone stationed at Wake, looks as if we will certainly pass to the west, possibly some distance away, but will depend on how this develops. Would love to wave if anyone wants to come and find us...the website will indicate our position accurately enough for a practice exercise. If any likelihood of our being in range, we will be on VHF 16 or can do any HF frequency if advised. Iridium phone number [please use 'contact' to email for number-ed]- probably won't get to it first time it rings - ring back in a couple of minutes and unless we're in pearshape on deck, we'll be ready.

Questions from the Funsters!

Hey there Berrimilla!
We brainstormed a whole stack of questions and came up with the three most popular...
1. Have you seen any sharks yet?
2. At night when there is a storm, what does the boat do and what does the water look like?
3. What do you eat? Some of our favourites are: pizzas (Monait), carrots (John L) bbq chicken and mashed potato (Sonia). It's a bit hard for you guys to go out and get something for dinner. What do you do if you don't like what's on the menu?

We're enjoying seeing your position on googlearth and are looking at your site at school each day- talk 2 u L8r, LOL. We have a BIG test next week. Every student in Aust. in Year 3,5, 7 & 9 are doing this- we'll let you know how it goes!
Funsters at Belmore South.

(in the interests of clarity-these are the questions posed by the Funsters-ed)

MCQ&A!! answer to the Funsters

Exactly... WEST equatorial current not southwest!!! grrrrrrrrrrr....
Anyway, just have to tolerate as nowt we can do!!!

Q&A:
1. No Sharks, as A says. I have only ever seen one shark at sea, near the cost of Japan on a drizzly, grey day. And I saw a basking shark in a bay in Scotand once, it seemed to be nearly as long as the boat I was on (36foot) but I was quite little!!!

2. As for A. The most scary is a lightning storm though. When you think that the metal mast would very much like to be a giant lichtning conductor it is even scarier!!! At night, oin a lightning storm there is usually lots of rain and when the lightning flashes the whole sky lights up purple. mental!!

3. Food... yep, bit hard too go to the shops- if we don't like the menu, which is a variation on tinned brown stuff or tinned red stuff then we add lots of tabasco and hope its dark so we can't see what we are eating!!! (and remind ourselves that out here food is fuel!!) I always miss steak and salad and ice cream most!!!
Monait, we have bread mix and pizza tomato sauce so we could make a sort of pizza, we have pepperoni and tinned sweetcorn that could go on top, but as alex said no cheese left!!! John L, We had some carrots in our veggie box when we left but most went rotten- surprisingly quickly!!! We have tinned carrots now though. And, well, Sonia, BBQ chicken, out here, thats in a different world!!!!

Lots of luck in the BIG test, everybody, Love McQueen xxx

noon 141505 16529.34

Boggle
And we've changed back to our sewn up sail in 20 kts, supposed to be rising...Sail seems to be working fine but appendages all crossed bigtime. 2 reefs, glistening day, sea that lovely iridescent turquoise - quite steep, lumpy, little breaking tops with spray blowing off them in downy jewelled wisps. Best we can comfortably do is direct track for Wake - the Americans won't be pleased if we arrive on their beach, so we'll divert around as we get closer.

Later - much too hot for more that 5 minutes in this little hell hole - I've just noticed that today the sun is to the south of us - no shade in the cockpit. Yeeehaaa! Belmore South, this is important for a couple of reasons. Can anyone work out why?

1352.54 16522.56 More Funsterism

More on current - I had taken the EAC into account in the original back of envelope calculation, but ignored the equatorial current transit, thinking (actually assuming - silly child) the effect would be negligible. But it all gets taken into account by my conservative average of 4 knots overall - we'd be averaging close to 6 but for the current and we're getting about 4.5 now, in it.

More Funsterism - and storms at night: Of course, it also depends on what the sea state is (what sort of waves, what shape they are, how high, how far apart) which depends on which way the wind is blowing, whether there is a current and things like that. And finally, on the direction you are trying to sail relative to the wind and the waves...But phosphorescence in a storm almost - almost - cancels out the scariness! You seem to be surging along in huge cascades of diamonds, vast fans of blasting sparkling spray, sometimes just diamonds, sometimes rubies and emeralds as well as the drops and the dinos take on some of the colour of your red and green masthead lights. And in very special storms, dolphins are sometimes swimming along as well.
Food - we filled about 10 trolleys at Woollies and Coles - almost anything that is canned, plastic packed or waterporrfed or otherwise opreserved. But no glass bottles! (Why?)so we have biscuits, cans of stew, cheese (but doesn't keep - we have no fridge)bacon (also has to be eaten as soon as you open the pack - did you see my description of eating it when it's rotten?). Yesterday, McQ cooked a hash of bacon, tinned stew, creamed corn and maybe other stuff. Looks like dog food, but it tastes ok! And we brought some spuds, tomatos, a pumpkin, onions and red cabbage. Only spuds and onions left. And some eggs, which we hard boiled to preserve them.

Enough for the mo - I am having difficulty sending these long ones so will try to keep them shortish.

Hi The Funsters - 1337.38 16518.36

My take on the current is the simple spinny one. There is a westerly flow of water across the pacific at the equator, the northern half being diverted up the Japanese coast and the southern half becoming the east australian current. We have been either directly headbutting the eac or diagonally traversing the equatorial current and have lost about 800 nm as a result, which we won't get back as we will be too far east to pick up the japanese current. Poo in buckets but that's how it is.

Funsters - Hi! What year are you? And good luck with the test Is this something the new Government has set up or has it been happening for ever?
Sharks - sorry to disappoint you but I've never ever seen a shark from the boat - at least nothing that I could definitely say was a shark. Sharks (except basking sharks, perhaps) don't usually swim on the surface - they chase other fish for food, deeper down. But I don't really know enough about them to say any more. We have seen lots of dolphins - hundreds - and there are lots of different types of dolphin. Also three huge fin whales - second largest animal on earth - near the Australian coast. And th greenish gold fish I described a few blogs ago.

The boat in a storm - wow - what a difficult question to answer properly. Last time, I talked a lot about paintings by an artist called Turner and Mrs Harrison's classes did some lovely work using copies that they found on the internet. Turner gives you the 'feel' and the scariness of a storm and an idea of what the light is like, but being there is always different. Technically, the boat pitches, yaws and rolls as well as going up and down on each wave and it does this all the time, even at anchor, but in a storm everything is magnified and much more violent - the boat feels as if it is corkscrewing savagely and crashing through or over waves. The wind is unbelievably noisy - it shrieks and howls in the rigging and across your face in big storms and you also hear the rain and spray hitting your waterproof hood rather like a jackhammer. It is almost always black dark in a storm at night but you are in a little cocoon of light from the boat's instruments and from its masthead light. Imagine being in a car at night - the lights of the instruments on the dashboard glow inside the car and tend to reflect and cut off the light from the outside. The sea surface is black, woolly and shapeless and often it feels so thick that it is wrapped around you. As th boat crashes along, it throws huge surges of white water and spray out to the sides and these often reflect the boat's lights so they glow. And then there is the phosphorescence - one of the true wonders of the sea! It is caused by tiny animals called dinoflagellates and we were sent a good description of how it works in our first website - I'm sure my sister can organise a link for you. Lightning is something else again. McQ might add to all this when she wakes up. This is getting too long - food in the next one

McQ: I like raisins but I HATE CURRENTS!!

Wednesday afternoons, years back, oceanography lectures at NOCS with Professor (I think) Harry Something-other, (sorry I forgot your surname). He was American and a brilliant lecturer and I used to really enjoy Wednesday afternoons... until, that is, the day that we learnt about the Coriolis Effect. No longer was my simple but understandable spinny explanation that I had in my brain, satisfactory, no, this day saw the coriolis force become a series of equations that took pages and pages and pages to decipher. I recall lots of something about standing on ice (an analogy for a frictionless surface would be a guess, perhaps??) and throwing a ball in the air and then some fiendishly complicated differentiation (probably) followed by some fiendishly complicated integration (probably) followed by more fiendishly complicated integration (probably and so we aren't back to where we started) And there in front of me, six curly pictures of integral signs, rho's, deltas and x,y,z's to describe what used to be a simple spinny concept in my brain.

Anyway, totally digressing... I remember, too, a day where a slide went up depicting in 3D the surface currents and deep water currents across the oceans- it looked a bit like a London Tube map wrapped around a notional sphere, but with arrows clearly showing which currents go where (totally to do with good old coriolis in fact, so not digressing so much after all) And they, suprisingly enough go round and round, replacing each other. There were two pics, one for atlantic side and one for pacific side. What I definitely DO NOT recall is the Pacific one showing one great big current flowing from Canada to Tasmania, forever. I am sure it is impossible!!! Should there not be a generally north flow on the western side, in the northern hemisphere, to start with, and then the rest of the ocean currents follow round???

So, Professor Harry, MJC, Simon R, Andy F, anyone in fact who knows these things, please please explain why oh why oh why have we had at least a knot of current pushing us SW ever since Sydney (EAC excepted)and when will it stop????????????? It just can't keep pushing us SW forever!!!! I don't believe it!!!
(It isn't calibration error as boat speed at 6knots and SOG 4, heading north, we are only covering 4 mins latitude in an hour so its got to be current, surely!!)

Meanwhile, I'm going to stick to raisins.
Lots of love
McQueen
xxx

noon 1237.47 16450.27 28 days at sea

Dtd 2867 so dmg 101 and dmg overall 2952 out of 5819nm. All approximate...

At about this time in any long journey - for me, in a marathon, it kicks in around 25 k - one becomes conscious of distance travelled, which focuses the mind on distance yet to go and, for me anyway, there's always a tendency to anxiety and depression. I've never started a marathon, let alone anything like this, knowing absolutely that I would finish it and there's always that corrosive doubt travelling in company - what if...Then, in a marathon, perhaps around 37-38 km, certainty takes over and while the body slowly eats itself, there's an end and an achievement in sight and the pain is diminished. We're not anywhere near there yet on this gig.

As you may have gathered from my last, the downer is upon me. Everything is now so finely balanced and the feather brush of an sparrow's wing one side or the other could make the difference. So it's grind it out, metre by metre and keep grinding.

Have just finished 'Frozen in Time' for the second time. Fascinating book - the victorian ideals of adventure, imperialism and self sacrifice examined through a 20th century analysis of what went so desperately wrong. And there's an untold story behind it that I did not notice first time around. The victorians were pioneers in so many ways, some of them, like imperialism, no longer recognised as acceptable. But they were industrial pioneers as well and the hidden story seems to me to be that of Stephan Goldner who supplied the canned food for Franklin and many other Admiralty ventures. He must have been an interesting man, honest or dishonest, principled or unprincipled. How must he have felt under the criticism he must have endured? Was he stubbornly convinced in the face of the evidence, that he was right - canned foods do preserve the properties of the fresh version - or didn't he care as long as he made a profit? How did he get started, did he go on to found an industrial giant or did he die in poverty after the danger of lead poisoning perhaps killed his business? I'd love to know more about him and will follow up when I can get back on line. There's a project lurking in there somewhere.

And I think there's a burst on 'adventuring' germinating somewhere as well. Time for daily Con - I feel a need for the Alchemist today - I need gold! Dr Steve, extract the elixir!

On which - real gold to talk to Leroy half an hour ago. Perspective all over again. Onya mate - keep kicking the can for us! That's an Oz expression - hope it doesn't offend any one else.

In the Slough

Having a severe attack of the Desponds - sounds like something out of 'Pilgrim's Progress' - but it is 0300 and the time never to think about all the scary things in life. Circadian rhythms gang up on you at this time of day and make it all seem much worse. But it does seem to me that our actual chances of making this one stick are very slim indeed. We will need to be lucky in so many ways. The first decision point, if we get that far, will be at Dutch - do we go on? Will depend on ice predictions and local advice but almost certainly a 'yes' to that one. Then again at Nome and a 'yes' a bit less likely. The point of no return, it seems to me, will be at Barrow and the decision will depend, again, on ice reports, advice about the availability of diesel and other possible supplies if things start to go wrong further along the track. And we have to get around Point Barrow by the end of June, early July, at the latest, for us to be able to see the eclipse and get out at the other end and into a safe port.
So - current plan - go through Aleutian chain via Amukta pass @ 172W. Arrive dutch whenever - am compiling to-do list. Kimbra arrives 12th june, aim to depart by 14th. Then 700 odd nm to Nome which we could mostly motor as long as fuel in Nome. Then same again, roughly to Barrow - need to find out about faciities if any in Barrow. Does not appear to be a harbour or anything except anchor offshore...Thence - if reports favourable, to Point Barrow where the ice piles up and where we will have to make the big decision.

Stars from horizon to horizon - most unusual, rivettingly beautiful though still hazy and so slightly fuzzy. Hard to believe that this calm and beautiful night covers the scene of so much violence and destructive force - when was the last Noocular test? I expect that this bit of ocean is where the three Mutant Ninja Turtles originally mutated - and all the fish swim backwards to preserve their night vision.

Before we left, I bought a cheap and nasty 12v fan - the sort you plug into the socket in your car except had no plug, just leads. Wired it into Berri's lighting circuit and it's been a little gem - just circulating enough air at night to make sleep possible. It's a noisy little beast and its stand has long since collapsed but life would have been hell without it.

McQ: little us

Crikey folks, its tomorrow already- where do the days go??? It has been a typical 'Simpsons' sky all day today- light baby blue with blobs of white cloud all over and it stayed like that for most of the day. Another magnificent sunset, presided over by the merest fingernail sliver of a moon way up above. The sky fully glowed bright bright orange for ages and the sea was lit up, flickering blue, then green then pinky red all the way from us to the horizon. Magic!!

Earlier we saw this big dolphin leap out of the water a bit ahead of us and went right across from starboard to port gliding through the air, landed and did it again, a bit away to port, literally flew through through the air at afair rate of knots!! We wondered if something was chasing it??? Which makes you stop and think: here we are quite happily trundling along across the sea, occasional fish, flying or otherwise, some debris on the surface but completely disregarding the fact that not one metre below, and then miles below that, a whole ocean world is vibrantly thriving!! Its good to be reminded of that once in a while, as we traipse across the roof of someone's home!!! Just to remind us how small and insignificant we still are out here!!

Love to all
Bol
xxx

Noon 1106.14 16414.36 May 7th

We crossed 11N @ 1032 sydney time at 16414.55 E. Tried to call Pascal but perhaps too late. So we drank his health, as the brains behind all this. Also tried Leroy, likewise. Will try both again over next day or so.

For Kimbra to consider first, then maybe ask Tom

Thanks to both. Tom, no plan as yet for a particular pass - thought we'd leave that as a decision that may be made for us. Would there be any advantage in going through say to the east of Seguam @ 172 E and then NE along the chain to Dutch or even much further SW at 180 degrees and east of Semisopochnoi? That would seem to get us across the Aleutian current the most efficient way. Would there be wind on the other side, or a nasty lee shore? Or should we just time the tides at Unalaska? I have rough tidal times in my digital charts but no directional flows. I assume the ebb flows SE from the Bering into the Pacific and v.v. the flood. Also some limited Argos tidal stream info.
The Aleutian current seems very similar to the East Australian Current - largely coriolis induced, flowing along the continental shelf - good to know it's there.

Tom, if ok, I will try to contact you by satphone when we get closer if there is anything else we need to know. But I think we can work it out.

K - could you please contact Brian Shilland on (number sent via email-ed) to decide whether you could carry a new sail up with you as excess perhaps. I spoke to him on the satphone this am and agreed we don't need a new one unless things go pearshaped between here and dutch in which case he'd make one and try to get it to you...

WooooHooo-ish 1021.31 16416.44

The first almost cloudless night for ages and ages. Still humid and some haze but the universe is out there with attitude. Because of the haze, the stars don't have that magic clarity and definition you sometimes get out here but wonderful to behold. The Milky Way - that slash of dolphin phosphorescence across the whole sky, with (I think) Saturn just below it to the SE, Squornshellous Zeta up high and the Frogstar lurking green and slimy in the Coal Sack. Kakrafoon just rising in the east and I've just heard the first bars from the band...No sign of Prostetnic Jelz and his fleet of yellow ships filled with ruthless poets, but we do have McQ down here offering strong competition - if you can't find a Vogon, she's clearly in good trim. Early each evening, we have Polaris ahead, under the great Bear and climbing every night, with the Cross astern and dipping. Orion in all his splendour out to port and dear old Betelgeuese doing his red giant act in one corner.

We'll cross 11 N in about 6 hours. Too early for a full on WOOOHOOO but perhaps a little anticipatory one. We keep being headed - average track at the mo back to a bit west of North. Interesting to see how far we can climb if the wind drops a bit and the seas abate.

1015.48 16417.18

MJC- So it is Bikini! I had a feeling it might be but has no name on my chart. We're 90 odd miles SW and should pass it about 40 miles to the west. Will advise on nighttime son et lumiere. All googlable, but I think it was the first H bomb test, in about 1954...We'd be passing 40 miles dead downwind of a very big bang. I seem to remember a photo of old warships anchored in the lagoon being tossed in the air by the early part of the explosion. And, I suppose, Wake just up the street as the base for it all. Eerie - I've been to Woomera and close to the Monte Bellos but somehow not the same historical grip as this one. Did I read recently that they have just allowed the original Islanders back again?

Brian - thanks for very kind offer - I think the old sail is fine, but the UV protector is dead and all its stitching. And it's the UV protector that seems to be holding the leech line - no reinforcement. Tacky! Oh what a shoddy pun! I'm sure there will be someone in Dutch that can fix it. So as long as we actually get to Dutch, we should be ok. But I have learned a big lesson. We should have taken it for a sail before we left.... Your big sail is great - just the right size - and it works really well - but there just ain't no way to stop the leech buzzing once it's rolled in a bit. I think it must be something that happens to them all. Sends me bananas, but I'm learning to live with it! I'll call you on the satphone tomorrow.

Duncan - lanolin is definitely part of my daily routine - industrial strength stuff that we use to waterproof everything electrical and grease shackle pins and the like. And my hands. Savlon for the gunwale bum though.

Not much to report - had the three or four most profound consecutive sleeps ever in the last day or so, but now up and around again mid off watch sleep time. My arbitrary 11 degrees N half way point is about 200 miles too short in actual straight line distances, so we won't celebrate just yet - nevertheless a big milestone. I'll try to call Pascal once we're past 11 N.

Corrie McQueen: Poet Laureate

I have written a poem (Though Alex declared,'That's no poetry'):

Lurching around in a monstrous sea
Lurchety, lurchety, lurching we be

Lurching around in a monstrous sea
Lurchety, lurchety, lurching wee B

As you can see, in each verse there are, as the Qantas safety checklist lady/voice would say, 'subtle differences'

You repeat the two verses continually until one of the following;
a) you distract yourself enough to realise that you are now almost dry from the last wave that smashed you in the face
b) you get smashed in the face by a new big wave and come back to reality
c) you lose your marbles
d) you decide, in a moment of clarity, that these words must be written down as a blog for squillions of readers and generations to come to have the benefit of such profoundities...

Brian, that's so kind of you to offer us a new sail, thank you, as Alex says we think its ok. I was wondering though if maybe (for the good of McQ, AND the project) you could come and hide out in our forepeak for the rest of the trip, instead. and do my sewing detail for me when required??? We can disguise you with orange hair and Alex will never know that I am not doing my own share of sewing!! I think that would be a far more productive use of your resources!!!

Lanolin for the boys, vaseline (and until 'The Incident' WD40) weapons of choice for the girls...

On a slightly more serious note, this evenings sunset was something to behold, totally and utterly breathtaking, one of the most amazing I have EVER seen, stunning red sky with streaks of bright gold and orange and blue- I have photos that almost, almost do it justice.

Lots of love
McQueen
xxx

~This blog was brought to you by the letter 'k' (karine Polwart and Kings of Leon on the ipod) and the number '18' (roughly average windspeed)~

McQ: Puffings and biscuits

Got distracted by the profoundities of my last blog and forgot a few things (is it ok to make up words like 'profoundities'??)

Mommy, I am soooo sorry I forgot about Puffins, how could I??? Of course, of course I can positively identify a puffin- they are brilliant little birds with multicoloured beaks and they taste soooo yummy smoked!!! (Don't be alarmed, Vegetarians/Puffin fans, it is a private joke between me and Pam McQ!!)

Puffins are awesome little creatures: they have podgy little bodies that defy gravity, especially with those little wings... when you see them on the water it is impossible not to stop and watch them and urge them on, 'go puffin, go, flap those little wings' and they do- those little wings are flapping at at unbelievable rate but you still wouldn't believe they would manage to get themselves into the air... 'go, little puffin, flap flap flap,' and then when they finally get airborne, you just feel so proud for them!!!

Do they have Puffins in Alaska??? I hope so. (we are obviously miles and miles too far south to see puffins yet!!)

Funsters: great to hear from you and know you are following us. Alex tells me you are going to send some interesting and intellectually stimulating questions for us- I'm looking forward to it and I know Alex is too, since it means he will get a break from answering my questions:

Me: Alex if you were an animal what would you be?
Alex: [sigh]
Me: I'd be a tiger, what would you be, if you had to be an animal?
A:[sigh again}
Me: If you had no choice?
A: bacteria
Me: [looking puzzled] Ok, why?
A: so I could live forever
Me: ok
[Pause]
Me: If you were a biscuit, what would you be?
A: [sigh]
Me: I'd be a ginger nut, what about you?

and so on...

lots of love
McQ
x

Of romantic, classic and Baroque and Boring

Or a slightly different take on 'Hi Mermaid...' - you can go and find the original if you are interested.

Robert Pirsig wrote a book called 'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance' beck in the early '70 s and it was the cult book when I was at Uni. He used Zen as a contextual basis and motor cycle maintenance as a metaphor for life and how it is lived. Lots of bits of it that I remember, but the difference between the romantic and the classic attitude to life has always stuck. The romantic is the person who sees a motor cycle as a glorious sculpture of chrome tubes, alloy gizmos, glossy paint and a sexy leather seat. The classic view of the same object is as a groovy collection of moving parts that just happens to constitute a motor cycle.

We have both extremes in the boat. For McQ, this gig is one big, coool, mental as anything Adventure. For me, it is a series of planning lists and milestones, each of which has to be ticked off in order to see an eclipse in august. And get out again safely. Everyone fits somewhere on the bell curve and, of course, we all carry , inevitably, part of the other. Pascal, I think, might be in the middle somewhere. Leroy and most of his colleagues out at my end, Speed - interesting - probably out towards Mcq even though he's a brilliant inventor of very clever gizmology. Kimbra - dunno - towards the middle? But enough speculation.

And on to some more. In Consultation with Dr Pete - onya mate - I've just been listening to the Bruch and Mendelssohn violin concertos - I bet for the first and only time they will ever be heard in this part of the ocean. I do not understand music - As the way out classicist, I love it for the virtuosity and the skill - wow! how did he get that violin to do that?? and the conductor - all those people, all so together...but I still get some sort of emotional experience from it, as long as I am not distracted and have time to actually listen to the music and not the boat babbling away at me. Someone Who Knows once told me that the Bruch is Baroque and Boring. No bloody way! Flogging leeches, again, unfortunately, got in the way just enough too distract. Going to have to learn to live with them for a day or so if the Grib is right, then this 18 - 20 kts will ease and we can roll out the sail again.

McQ: Life should be about challenging oneself...

I have just been on deck thinking: I am incredibly lucky to have, through a series of fortunate and bizarre coincidences, the opportunity to be here on this trip. Alex has put so much time, effort and personal resources into this that it is a huge privilege to be part of it. It is great to sail with someoone who knows his boat so well and is so knowledgable: I think that is the thing about sailing that captures my interest so intensely; there is always, always something new to learn. No one knows it all when it comes to sailing. I believe that anyone who says they know everything there is to know about sailing probably doesn't have a clue!! It truly is fab to be here and I really really hope that we manage, one leg at a time, to achieve all the little goals we are setting ourselves...

People sometimes say, 'Isn't it boring being on a boat and seeing nothing but sea for days on end?' Far from it, apart from the daily jobs to keep things ticking over smoothly: there is always something to be done to keep you occupied, the sea itself is beautiful, a constantly changing visual landscape all around. Mostly blue, (or grey at the moment) but often every other colour imaginable from vivid ochre-red to insipid pale grassy green. Stunning, not boring at all!!

All the little jobs to do are made all the more challenging by the fact we are generally lurching about or at the very least continuosly moving!!! Making a coffee at the moment requires attaching yourself to the galley by a strop and just as you put the coffee in the mug, we lurch over a wave, get airborne, land, slightly wonkily so the strop cuts in to the kidneys and the thin film of WD40 underfoot means you start to slide down hill and that the instinctive handholds become millimetres too far away, but we save the coffee!!! Despite all the 'grrrs' and 'hmmphs' that are required as a soundtrack to this procedure, boy is that mug of coffee appreciated!!!

Life, I think, should be all about challenging oneself and success, I believe, is the achievement of personal goals that we keep setting ourselves and challenging ourselves with.

You can tell we've finished sowing, can't you????!!!!

I hope everyone is having a happy and enjoyable Tuesday 6th May too.
Lots of love to all
McQ
xxx

noon tue 6th 0908.18 16420.38

dtd 3075 so dmg 207 in about 24 hrs as we didn't send you one yesterday. Sail finished, will try it when needed and see how well we did. If there's a sailmaker in Dutch - and we get there - we'll have it all undone again and properly sorted.

Not possible to say with any certainty where we will go in the next few days - wind backs in squalls for hours at a time and we're all over the ocean. I think we will pass west of the atoll more or less on our direct track, so a bit of a climb to K's waypoint 1. There should be enough grist in t'mill for the ETA predictors to start to get some accuracy. I'll stick to June 3, although I think that's optimistic.

Hot in the HellCone - Pirsig next time perhaps.

0830.34 16416.40 Berri to the Funsters!

Go the Funsters! Great to have you on board. Is there anything you want to know about what we are doing? We can try to answer your questions if you send them to us, but we have to keep it all short so that we can actually transmit your questions and our answers over the radio. They go from the internet to a computer in a sailmail station somewhere in the world (we're using the one in Honolulu at the mo) and the computer converts them into digital signals and sends them over the radio to our modem in the boat and our computer converts them back into text. All rather slow by mobile phone standards and we are only alloowed 10 minutes per day on the radio. I can use a satellite phone to transmit as well, but that's very expensive.

Kimbra - got yours re DB - noonsite prob has the details. Would like to have Hbrmaster's phone # and vhf freq if poss. DB prob v busy. We may not be able to get as high as your GC courses, especially if the wind kicks in further north so could end up west of your waypoints. I have looked at your files and that seems ok. I have the pdf arctic pilot #9 but hard to access - if you have time. cd you please just check the unalaska stuff and make sure there are no potential showstoppers.

H - well fed! and well done. Hang on to the books - can't remember who or why at this stage. The sea here is dark grey blue - not the bright iridescent deep ocean blue but that may just be that it's mostly overcast.

End of 0200 - 0400 night watch. Took ipod on deck but never got it out - spent the time thinking about Robert M Pirsig. Next blog maybe, but it will be a 'Hi mermaid...' blog if I do.

McQ: Love and War...

Now, I am not Australian (though I would very much like to be!!) but I do know that wee Berri is quite special to have such a superb piece of kit on her bow, that is Love and War's old furler and sail. It's funny though that it is our headsail and headsail furler but L&W's little hankerchief of a staysail and furler!! Well the whole system has been doing us proud until we realised yesterday that the leech was coming apart.
On closer inspection today it appears that the stitching is rotting under the UV light, so today we have meticulously and lovingly sewed it all back together. I only had one little tantrum (to myself) during this sail fixing- most who know me know that if there is one way to make me have a grump it is to put me on a boat that is lurching around violently in the ocean, and give me a back to front and not quite happy palm, needle and thread and make me sow a sail!!! I get so frustrated cause I like things to be neat and perfect and it is pretty impossible to do that along the entire leech in this sort of lumpy sea!!! Anyway, our little sail got flaked and bagged at failing light and we shall finish her tomorrow, hopefully with no battles and she'll be good as new- she's almost finished and looking good.
Kimbra- thanks for such detailed weather info- it al looks pretty positive really, thanks. I expect we will end up a touch west of your route due to sea state/ sail choice/ wind but it doesn't seem that's a bad thing in the long run. Either way, really really helpful, thanks.
Speedy, I forgot to thank you for the crossword too- brilliant distraction!!! thanks hope everyone is well and happy too on dry land...
must go take my vitamins whist I remember as I have forgotten all day today.
very tired and ready for bed now!!!
lots of love
McQ
xxx

0748.21 16405.12 later May 5th

Kimbra thanks for 'stuff' really useful.

Flogging dead leeches all day - sore fingers 'n thumbs. And a sailmaker's needle is a fearsome thing to behold and to use. Stitching rotten along the entire length of the leech and leech line had burst out in a couple of places and not long in others. We mended the bursts with double stitching - really hard work and hard on the hands, and then put a reinforcing line of stitching all the way from the clew almost to the head - will finish tomorrow. Also small compression hole in foil tape where tape passes through feeder when sail fully hoisted. Must be fixed. Knackered.

We seem to be making progress - as long as the wind isn't too strong and the seas therefore too lumpy and steep, we can track about 015 M which would take us between two Marshall Island atolls and on to Kimbra's first waypoint. Too early to plan yet.
When I said no more islands, I had forgotten about Wake. Used to be a military base and probably still is.

0658.29 16350.39 May 5th

One should never set oneself deadlines - or even targets - in this game. It's still 2 and a bit days to half way and seems as if it has been for days. There's no real pattern to the trades yet - perhaps there wont be. Nasty - not vicious - squalls 25-30kts with an associated short steep closely patterned sea state - about 3-5 metre waves, very steep, only about 10-30 metres apart and on the beam for our preferred course. Uncomfortable to bloody uncomfortable. In between, moderate sea, 15-18 kts and reasonably workable. Was hoping - as you do - that we'd do better that the 4-5 kts more or less north that we have at the mo.

Kimbra, average track seems to me to be just a bit west of N magnetic, and the sea stops us getting much higher.

Was playing with the concept of the flogging leech. I am told that the Chinese used to pay their doctors only when they were well, as the Doc was then doing his job properly. Perhaps in Hogarth's London, the rich and dandified sent out to have their Leeches flogged when they (R & D)got sick. And flogging my Consultant leeches out here just means attending to more and more of their potions and elixirs. Dr Jasper, have started magic potion for endless daylight and very good it is too. I just hope it's efficacious.

Wildlife - was leaning over the side a bit, adjusting the jib sheet winch, and saw this greenish gold shape in the water, quite deep. I first thought we must be dragging a sail or something but it was a fish, perhaps 2 metres long, greenish on top, gold stripey sides and vertical yellow tail. Several more, smaller. A few,indeterminate seabirds.

Ian and all at RORC, thanks for good wishes and all the best to you for a successful season. If Berri hangs together for long enough, we might see you for Fastnet 09. Berri wants her dogbowl back for a reunion.

Speedy, tks for propane warning . I didn't know(WD40 uses propane-isobutane as a propellant and not the sort of gas you want in a bilge, 20% in air is explosive - ed). Suggest prize for GB should be a copy of your 'arry and the pursuit of excellence mp3. He'd understand, as that sort of teacher.

Must get out of this sweaty hellhole behind the Cone.

McQ: Burds and, if there is space, theirpocket warmers...

I saw a bird this afternoon. Now I am not especially good with birds but this was definitely a new one, and it was black. Except that might just have been the colour it looked as it was silhouetted in front of the sun! It had a pointy tail and looked like a smaller version of the bigger one with a pointy tail that we saw the other day. Pretty average bird really I am afraid and can't give you any more distinguishing features. I think the only three birds that I could positievly identify are a Pelican (big, black and white, biiiig beak, my favourite bird too)albatross, huge wings and super graceful and the blue footed booby, (blue feet, doh!!), oh and maybe a dodo too, but since they don't fly and are extinct then I think its highly unlikely that we'll see one of those out here in mid ocean, unless of course the foredeck witch brings one in a tux next time she comes for a dance.

This afternoon Alex hardboiled all the remaining pocket-warmers, though, that said, I suppose they don't really become pocket warmers until after they are hardboiled. Anyway, this was cause there are more than we can get through before they start smelling like rotten pocket warmers since we never got round to vaselining them at the beginning. So we now have lots of hardboiled pocket warmers to get through, we left them to cool too and vaselined them, and since theres no pockets on my shorts and its way too hot to need to warm our fingers and they are now cold the EU certainly wouldn't let them be called pocket warmers, so maybe we should give them a new name: I know, we shall call them eggs, yes, eggs, from now on pocket warmers shall be known as 'eggs'

Maybe I'll write something sensible tomorrow...

lots of love to all
McQ
xxx
ps DB: I haven't uttered a word to Walter Walruski 3rd (for that is his full name) yet. Don't worry.
GM&L: What a remarkable book, incredible, a fantastic read, thank you- if ever I think wee Berri feels small I shall be grateful I am not chained to a sack of coconuts instead!! Also I am blaming you entirely as have done nothing but read in my off watches for two days when I should be sleeping and am now exhausted!!!
CB: Have lots of thoughts on plans, can't wait to discuss, whats happening at your end in the village???
JS: I love my pink watch with blue flashing lights- thank you!!
FF: Is it Neist Lighthouse at the top of Skye??

1400 pos 0536.35 16401.25 - headed and being taken a bit east again.

DTD 3282 dmg 110 from half way in 324 miles, there should be open water - no islands - between us and dutch.

There seems to be a lot less time on this one for idle musing. It's all work or sleep, unlike in the southern ocean, where we set a sail, trimmed it and left it for days at a time.

And no sooner do we put our little pug nose out past the squally bit but the Examiner turns up again and decrees that the stitching along the leech line of our small furling headsail should die. It's a pre loved sail, came with the furler and looked fine before we left, but the U.V. might have got to it - or some other rats in the boot room. Anyway, not a catastrophe and potentially fixable, over time, with the sailmaker's needle and palm. Tedious though. We're bobbing along under engine, storm jib and 2 reefs just watching the wx for 3 hours, then I think it's back to the big sail and fingers crossed it will last the distance - furlers seem to flog their leeches something awful and no amount of tweaking seems to fix the problem, consequently high stress area.

Well done Barrett. Obvious really, I guess!

Anyway, we are certainly in, or in striking distance of the trades. I've no real feel for what to expect when we do get there in terms of the combination of wind and sea state. I just hope we are not headed too much and can sail reasonably free so as not to overstress the headsail any more than necessary. And soon it will be out with the needle and palm.

Big sail back up - hooning more or less north at 5+ kts. Passed an island 60 miles to the east - 10 miles across, has an airfield but no name on my digital chart. Anyone?

Today's boat job - just hardboiled 34 eggs - we didn't vaseline them before we left and I don't see why we should throw them away. When they cool, I'll vas them just in case. Egg salads for the future.

Just had a full can of wd 40 discharge into the bilge and all over the floor, lethally slippery and not pleasant. Poo!

0459.00 16414.45

Just a quickie to say g'day. Amazing how the mood changes once the rain stops and there's been some sleeping. About to cross 5 N and into the trades, I hope. And half way is tantalisingly close - 361 miles - just over half a S2H. When McQ wakes, I think it might be time to open Kimbra's goody bag and find the one for tropical squalls...been there, done that!

The autopilot seems to be back in action after sloshes of WD40. Still a bit recalcitrant. I think it may have had water in it at some time.

Sun just risen, one solitary seabird - indeterminate, but it's been with us for days, it seems.

Noon + a bit 0335.18 16412.59

DTD 3392 so dmg 83 and none of them fun

Nastier and nastier, said Alice. And so it came to pass. Almost solid tropical downpour with 25 - 30 kts for the last few hours. Dark grey slightly translucent sky merging into silvery craggy moonscape sea with soft white texture as the surface seems to float above itself as bouncing raindrops. Vis about a boat length, but there's no way you can look into wind without goggles. On the assumption that we must get north to get free, we're motoring as fast as seems reasonable in the conditions - about 3.9 - 4 kts OTG - must remember to keep the fuel tank at least half full to avoid bubbles in the uptake line. Will be hard to top up in these conditions - wild gyrations even with the main up and a couple of reefs to steady her. We must get at least 100 miles further up the meridian....YUK! Later - now sailing again - conditions no better - Kimbra says we have this until Monday, worst tomorrow. Bleeeah!

Captions - we both liked the last one (will Alex tidy up...) because it related directly to the pic, but we decided that no 9 (there's bound to be a tin opener) wins. By a whisker. Highly commended was the reference to Fenwick.

Kris - I hear you are playing anorak games with Speedy - have you told him about your 0500 beer in Berri?
DW - belated happys. Might see you in Dutch.
Ann - illegal (I'm told) and certainly negligent and insane not to have a rifle if you are ever likely to meet a hungry bear. Of the various options then available to you, you could try talking it out of eating you as your opening gambit, if you want to. Nice to have a fall back though, as bears can outrun humans. We might easily get stuck in the ice somewhere and have to walk out. We will have a rifle, as a last resort.

0237.59 16400.04 Sillyoloquy

Polaris Lives! or rather, lurks. He's still in the murk layer but I can just see him. He's such a seemingly insignificant little pinprick for such an important place in our universe. A bit like the good Taoist leader - he's out there, leading, but not noticed by the punters - and therefore, presumably, neither loved nor hated, like lesser leaders. I grew up conscious of him from as early as I can remember - my dad, no doubt, had something to do with that. It's still a bit odd looking for him way below the pointers instead of above.

Ploddin' along. Still 5 days at least to half way at this rate. For those of you living normal lives, you really just live the days, go to bed and the night takes care of itself without any help from you. Here, we live the nights - really live them, often minute by minute, watch by watch - as well as the days and it all seems to take so much longer. So who's complaining? More living for one's dollar perhaps. This gig is different yet the same as the last one. Things distant yet near - near yet distant. Sei Shonagon's perceptions are wonderfully acute and they remain relevant after a thousand years and across cultures.

Time passing - I wrote in the last logs about boats having their own language, grammar and syntax. I live and feel and hear this boat and I'm part of the pulse of the living entity. So, it's really difficult to lose myself in Ipoddery or books or xwords because it cuts me off from the message, the data stream, the story as it unfolds. And time passes more slowly.

Noon 0212.28 16401.42

dtd 3475 dmg 106.

What she said! I thought I was dreaming, but I seem to have this lightbulb sticking out of my head...

McQ: The Equator

Well, it was just as I remembered: First the gigantic pink neon sign comes in to view, 'Welcome to the equator!!!', it flashes. Then you get closer- it is just like any other border crossing, a magnet for the fringes of ocean society, a hub of vice... To the left, pineapples being shaken, coffee being ground and the fish market, unscrupulous fish trading in other fish (one squid for 3 flying fish, as we passed) The sea snail magician dude was still there doing his same trick on unsuspecting punters, to do with water going clockwise or anti-clockwise down hte plug hole and crossing the line as often as he could get away with!! Down a back eddy, round an undercurrent and you come face to face with a snarling big fanged, translucent and etiolated sea creature with his own lightbulb above his head, just like Nemo or Blue Planet, and trying to sell lumps of coral for extortionate prices; 'why so expensive?' 'Have you any idea of the depths I have gone to to get this?' The Northern Pacific Hotel and the Southern Pacific Hotel, joined by the aquasino, open all season (that is all the time!!) The only drinking establishment to venture into is 'The Old Grog Barrel' where the regulars go for watered down rum and local scuttlebutt: The Landlord, goes by the name of Admiral Vernon, will pass on messages to Neptune- Have some rum and thank you for a safe passage so far, Neptune. Not, in general, is the equator a place to stop, so soon enough we are well through, a quick glance back to a gigantic yellow neon sign in the sky, 'Thank you for visiting the equator' and with a flicker and the accompanying buzzing film-sound-effect its gone. So fast that we might have been dreaming...

Serious for a mo.

Yesterday was May 1. That means that the eclipse on Aug 1 is 3 months away - 91 days in fact. In that time we have to get to Dutch, fix some things, reprovision, get lots of advice, charts, warm clothing etc - and then get up to Nome 600 miles or so north, wait for favourable ice reports at Point Barrow and go north and, if we're lucky, around the corner and across the top at least as far as Cambridge Bay by Aug 1 so that we are in the path of the eclipse. I think the Haughton Mars Camp people - Pascal and his crew - leave Devon Island around Aug 15 so we need to be up at Beechey by then if possible. Talk about water under keels!

Dutch fixes: the laptop; perhaps a strip and refurbish of backup watermaker motor; the ST 4000 tiller autopilot (which seized yesterday and I'm awaiting advice before taking it apart - where are ya Matt Reyes-McGyver?); major repack of boat to squeeze Kimbra in; maybe fit checkstay points on the mast - seems to be flexing forwards rather a lot and I'm not used to bendy masts so feel a bit unsure of what is reasonable flex and what should be stayed. We have to buy a bear rifle, guinness, other medicinal compounds and soul food. Cold weather diesel and maybe an extra external tank. The rest will depend on what happens between here and Dutch and what facilities there are up there.

So, so far so good but it's a finely balanced enterprise - massively so - and we still need a lot of luck. Keep 'em all crossed for us please.

The Backing Group - Kimbra

Hello everyone out there. Alex would like you to get some idea of what goes on in the background. The answer is loads and we are blessed with a great team of people Worldwide. All of whom help the project in a variety of ways. Weather forecasts (Wx) are essential and we depend on Kimbra Lindus (who will join Berri for the Northwest Passage sector of the voyage from Alaska). Here is a typical exchange between the forecaster and the boat:

Kimbra:Wind should be more SE for next day. Use it to move NE-ish against current if poss. Stronger gradient winds should be starting to fill in from the east over the next couple of days! Lightish to the west. Still wet north of equator before trades.
Alex:Your predictions spot on. Tks for little bottles. Grib says here more or less same to 5N then wind increasing to top of Marshalls to about 15 kt still Easterly. Plan is to go straight up the meridian if poss to top of M's then what do you suggest? We could try for height or just keep going in the pious belief that we'll get into w/sw further up.
Kimbra (today):Short-range: Congrats – you’re about to get back into wet stuff for a few days. Worst of it is to the W & NW of you, doesn’t look as bad to N & E in the big pic. Shittiest on Sunday. Gradient winds should pick up to 15 kts avg from Fri arvo thru Sunday, then another lighter patch @ 10 kts, depending on yr progress nth. Direction mainly E, but will start to feel a bit of NE by Mon – initially assoc more with rain system to W than trades proper.

FYI – tropical cylone in Bay of Bengal. Light years away & heading NW to land. No probs. Low developing NW of Taiwan approx 25N 125E. Also heading NE to brush east coast Japan with gales. Models don’t show any swell/wind in your parts from it. Did you know Japan Met Agency forecasts cherry blossom blooming dates?? To within 4 days!

0129.21 16353.23

Dollink - imagination in recess at the mo - you could post this as is if you like...We're back in amorphous grey - squall following squall following squall. So far, no Vlad sharpening his stake but still a pain. Can't see Polaris yet - he's still down in the murk line around the northern horizon. The equator has receded into the background radiation - Half way is less than 600 miles ahead...Was thinking - might interest the punters if you post my notes to Kimbra and her replies - apart from anything else, saves me having to explain and therefore airtime. Iridium costs money! and we're just about out of sailmail range of Oz and only marginally in Hawaii.

noon in the North 0027.07 16344.47

dtd 3581 so dmg 116 - mostly motor, but we're sailing again and looks like Kimbra's wx change on the horizon.

Nauru - tiny island - once the main source of phosphates for fertiliser all the world's farmers and no doubt lots of other less productive things. Phosphates come from guano - bird poo - and the island must have been hundreds of metres deep in the stuff - just imagine the time, the numbers of birds, where have they all gone? The island now just a barren spiky rocky wasteland mostly but with a big population. They originally invested well - skyscraper in Melbourne for one - but I don't know what has happened since.

Still sweaty hot - we have the hatches open and the Cone open so there's a breeze through the boat that makes sleep possible, and also sitting here.

D - thanks for the xword - it worked - McQ has done a lot of it in her watch and now I'm going to try to finish it.

0002.27N 16340.26 DownunderMars becomes TopsiderMars

We crossed the equator at 20.25.53 UTC at 16339.931E on what, my diary tells me coincidentally, is Ascension Day, National Day of Prayer and Workers Day. That seems to cover quite a lot of us. Neptune was properly placated with a couple of tots from Brian Shilland's little plastic bottle of S2H Bundy and we opened Kimbra's goody bag to find a tiny bott of pink champagne, a party hat and a party whistle each. Yeeeehaa! McQ put a message in one of the little bottles and off we go again.

We toasted all y'all and moved on to thinking about half way. This leg of the journey covers almost exactly 90 degrees of latitude - a quarter of the earth's surface - so I have arbitrarily decided that 11 N, 660 miles away, will be half way. Actually, great circles, tacks, island groups and all the other complications of navigation will conspire to move it all around.

Just had a lovely call from Speedy. Onya mate! He's sent us a crossword - Kris, you've got competition! - so I'll try and pull it in.

Anyway, Milestone no. 1, about 10k in the marathon - just warmed up!

Love yez all.

0013.18 16337.11

Instant return - just received an sms from Carla suggesting that my flashing light yesterday evening was an Iridium satellite. The timing fits - but the satellites I know I have seen don't usually flash. So still a bit odd. This one's even odder - the Rat finally loses it - was looking forwards past the forestay at the bank of murk that is always down there on the horizon and wondering whether it was solid or just fluff. I saw a flash - strobe like - just above the murk - say about 5 degrees elev - more or less dead ahead. It was so fast I'm still not absolutely certain I saw it. Bright white light, seemed to have area like, say, a parachute flare, not a pinpoint. Not lightning - just possible a freak reflection off some part of the boat - or what?

14 miles to go. Examiner has removed our wind, so motoring at 4.5 kts. About here, we can start to gauge the standard of planning. We are approaching half way and by looking at the various heaps and containers I can see how we are going. Medicinal Compound will be marginal but that was deliberate. We will have lots of food to spare, enough diesel as long as we don't for instance, lost the mast, ordinary bog paper ok, elephant's b.p. ok, McVitie's digestives marginal, toothpaste, sailmakers' twine and so on. This, of course, ignores the contingency factor - like loss of mast - and assumes progress more or less as we've been making.

Talking of elephant's, must resurrect Alison Chadwick's lovely descriptive metaphor for our sort of progress. Next blog perhaps.

Hi Matt - yep, McGyvery would be good to have around. I'm not bad at it, but there are some things that defeat me. All sailors need that capacity for intelligent improvisation based on planning and experience and lateral thinking and we generally do ok on Berri. Unlikely we'll get to Devon before the eclipse - more like mid august - but, AGW, it will be quite a reunion!

Chris - definitely harder, but in subtle ways.

50 miles from the Equator 0050.22 16329.25

50 miles to the Equator, but the Examiner is poncing around with her stockwhip and slashing away at our tiny gradient so things have slowed a bit. Maybe another 12 hours. We're almost abeam Nauru and about 200 miles west.

Life's little mystery for tonight - I looked up towards the masthead and, just to the east of us, elevation about 80 deg. I saw a flashing light. Only about 4 or 5 flashes, seemed to be moving very fast just south of east, did not look like an aircraft strobe. Probably was, but could it have been anything else?

now 40 to go. will try to send this via iridium.

McQ: Feta Brain

I came in here to write a blog, but was immediately consumed by blasting heat that stagnates behind the Cone, so now I too have Feta Brain and am completely incapable of thinking of anything interesting and sensible to write. Instead, here are a selection of random thoughts that have passed between Left Ear and Right Ear recently:

Will we wobble when we step off the boat? I haven't wobbled since Portugal '02

The last time I was in a boot room (a real boot room in the arctic, but on land) there were lots of nice boots and a cabinet too. On the cabinet was a sign that said 'This establishment prides itself on being a bear free zone, therefore please leave all firearms in the cabinet'

Can an onion, bacon, sweetcorn and a tin of tomatoes be used to concoct a semi interesting pasta sauce?
Can we assume that a tin labelled 'Tom' contains tomatoes? (No, of course for I labelled the cans!!!)

What was Hemi really afraid of and since there was one in the North and one in the South, was he stuck and unable to go anywhere?

Southern Hemisphere McQ Out...xxx

noon 0123.18 16316.42

dtd 3697 dmg 125
Too hot for bloggery. VoA 0.01. If you know what packaged cheese looks like when it's been in the sun - that's my brain. All the oil has leached out and I'm left with the crumbly bits. Imagination on slow time. I might try to fly this out later by satphone to test the system.

We will cross the equator around 0400 tomorrow Sydney time - 1800 UTC today if cheese brain is correct - unless we break something. I have just done a stocktake of the medicinal compounds available to sustain my addled soul - there's enough, but only if I'm careful. I can have one consultation with one of my physicians daily, with a long Con thrown in at times of extreme stress. Physicians are Dr Pete, the Barber Surgeon (Google Mary Rose) who makes it in his bath, Drs. Jasper, the Apothecary, who makes it in his boat Antares (waarisantares.com I think, but you have to be able to read Dutch) and Dr Steve, the Alchemist, who turns water into gold in his lab. I think they all use Cooper's home brew kits as their base and it's remarkable how close each comes to perfection! But then, any juice in a storm...

Today, I consulted Dr J for the first time - his brew is the youngest - and I pronounce it Good. I think Kimbra may have another little treat lined up for us for the equator in the goody bag. Yeeehaaa!

Many thanks to Steve L at AMSA and to Gerry for prompt response and follow up.

Every day, I try to do a job for the boat and one for me. Todays for the boat was to try to fix the cheap and nasty 12v fan so that it directs air in the right direction. For me - I put the arse back into a pair of shorts with sticky back and sailmakers needle, and I had a go at getting my mp3 player to charge - limited success. And I will try to crank up iridium for this message when it gets a bit cooler.

On the hoof.....

We're still very much on the hoof, making up lost ground to the East to give us some height once we get headed by the trades. MJC, water T has been 35 deg since pre Solomons - down to 34 in last 24 hrs. Another fishing boat a couple of hours ago - as before, steady bearing...these guys are lit up like PuDong for Chinese New Year and it's impossible to find their nav lights and so work out who is give way vessel. We assumed we were and kept well clear.

Keith Cowing has just given me an acute attack of the stage fright willies by telling us where he is sending all this nonsense. Hi everyone who's aboard via Mr C. In case you are not familiar with why - the story begins early 2005, way down at 45 S half way across the southern ocean to Cape Horn. Lovely clear night - unusual down there - and I was idly considering that we were probably the two people on earth who were furthest from any other human. And it occurred to me that perhaps once or twice a day, our actual nearest neighbours were the ISS 10 crew, 320 clicks or so above. I asked the question 'Anyone know anyone at NASA?' and the rest is history. We had huge fun trying to do simple science with Leroy going up the Atlantic. This gig is a direct result.

102 miles to the equator. I am now reasonably confident that we have enough diesel and water and it's just a matter of grinding out the metres, one by one - we're at about 6k in my version of the marathon.

Moments in the maelstrom

Some things stand out in the memory. We have a masthead tricolour light (red, green and white,for the nautically challenged). In the middle of one of the really severe squalls sometime in the last few nights, I was hand steering, Berri was surging and crashing along at nearly 8 knots, rain in sheets, spray rushing past, all reflecting both the cockpit instrument lights and the tricolour and surrounding us in a glowing pulsating cocoon. All together, freckle clenched exhilaration. I looked up, eyes slitted against the rain, to check the wind indicator at the masthead and there, streaming away from the masthead and away into the blasting night, was a lovely string of ruby jewelled water reflecting the red sector of the tri. Living moments.

Tonight is almost clear - Omar's bowl of night in all it's gorgeous magnificence. Old old cliche, but it really does bring home how infinitesimally, gobsmackingly tiny we are in the scheme of things.

Tiny blog - AW

first almost clear night since we left. Universe in full spreading magnificence - gerzillions and gerzillions of little twinklies and - wonder of wonders - N hemisphere stars - Great Bear, upside down ahead at about 15 deg, Orion out to port and the Southern Cross astern. Real sign of progress. Cant see the Pole Star yet...

McQ: Inspired by Chichester...

Another day, another night, and another change of accessories: as it gets dark and you swap your hat and sunnies for headtorch and feet (boots)... all good out here, still hooning along in the right direction and less than 200nm to the equator and present opening time from Kimbras goodie bag!!!! YAY, how exciting!!!!

You know what I was saying yesterday bout pressies for Neptune, well since nine this morning he is the proud owner of a fantastic slam floppy sun hat... a bit of bad luck for me!!! but a pre-emptive gift for the Boss of the Sea, perhaps???
At least my fave hat has gone to a good cause- I am now down to the old faithful Royal Honkers yacht club and my new UK mcWilliams cap from Larkey... which I have been firmly attaching to myself!!!

J'nie-AMAZING to hear from you, don't worry about your reply being long, we are just so far from radio signal in Oz now that its hard to send and receive and we aren't quite quite in full Hawaii range yet. not too fussed re FB, unless wee cashie had anything of interest to say???? send to Speed if any news. Also, think Alex messaged you with suggestions but for your friend- Victoria, Hi, some more books by female sailors: Claire Francis's book, must read, Dee Caffari- Against the Flow, is out, not read but Dee is great so should be good; Emma Richards, might be called Around Alone, not read but there is definitely a copy at RAv D, Adrienne Cahalan, Around the Buoys- just read this, good and Ado is a lawyer AND a sailor- Imagine that!!! Lots more will spring to mind I am sure but if there is one round the world book that ought to be read, and I know he is not female but you can't beat Chichester's book Gipsy Moth Circles the World. Brilliant!!!!

At this end, we are learning the Ancient Mariner....!!

lots of love to all
McQ
xxx

noon 0321.32 16243.25

DTD 3822 so dmg 98

Of Magic, Superstition, Female Sailors
Sailors have - I think - always been superstitious. Probably because we're out here completely powerless in an indifferent magnificence that ignores us completely and it's comforting to feel that there's something however insubstantial going for us. In 1998, before the Sydney - Hobart that ended in tragedy for some of my friends, Gordon Smith, one of Berri's crew, brought on board a recently minted Oz 50c coin showing George Bass and Matthew Flinders and commemorating their discovery of Bass Strait. We stuck it on a little bulkhead where it's been ever since - now black with corrosion and almost unrecognisable even as a coin. We won our half of that race...And now, on our Magic Bulkhead, we have one of the ISS Expedition 10 badges with Leroy and Salizan's own design for their mission. Plus Isabella's little Magic patch of RTW Berri sail and her tellales that went half way. And her new telltales are operational on the shrouds.

All seems to be working so far! For some that didn't, google H. L. Hunley submarine - first ever to sink another ship, the Housatonic (American civil war) but the crew drowned shortly after when the sub foundered. The skipper, whose name I have forgotten, had survived an earlier battle because a silver dollar had diverted a bullet. They recently raised the sub and found the coin on his body. Sad.

Soo, if you think like I do, you'll go along with it, but know full well that it's all the luck of the draw and planning...

Jennie - some fantastic female sailors have written books - try Kay Cottee, Adrienne Cahalan, Naomi James, Clare Francis...Don't know whether Annie Gash did, but worth a look.

0339.37 16243.16 On the Upside of Wallow - for a change

As you can see, we're being pushed west by some pretty solid current, but there's lots of north there too, thanks to Carla. Carla, so sorry I forgot your birthday - was in my mind the day before, but perhaps Vlad and the drums got in the way. Anyway, you got your birthday wish and we got our wind which we've still got. I have teleported you virtual 6 pack Dr Coopers finest. If my aim as bad as for Keith's, it will have smashed your petunias, but I hope it lands softly close to or in your fridge.

Some good news - wood again firmly touched - donk has been running for nearly 3 hours and no sign of oil. Not yet convinced and will examine carefully when cooled. Also watermaker has made nearly 12 litres in that time. I have put 4 directly into the tank, after tasting it, of course. Sooo...we're aboout 200 from the equator and I think we'll have enough diesel and water should not be a problem unless we really get slowed down. And I forgot - I can dismantle a watermaker and put a handle on it for manual operation - so there's backup. And about 800 to half way.
Later: donk looks ok - small seepage around oil filter, but definitely not enough for concern. Everything to remain crossed please - for the duration.

McQ's Dad - make her do some real work for the thing! A few poems! Pshaw! If you happen to be in London on June 4, Peter is launching his latest HWS - 6, I think - at Royal Thames YC at lunchtime. Berri has her very own chapter.

Comms 0411.26 16250.25

A Rubaiyat night. Fluffies, 1st mag stars, halfish moon, dinos going off with abandon. Sooooo nice to be free of the freckleclenching anticipation of the next joust with Vlad the Impaler - for a short time anyway.

A word or two of explanation to reinforce McQ. We do not use satellite communications from the boat for this blog. Way way beyond my tiny budget. Instead we use a fantastic, almost free system called sailmail - www.sailmail.com and worth a look - that uses stone age technology (HF radio)and some sophisticated digitals to transmit to and from earth stations, which then put our messages into the email system on the internet. At the ranges we are working, transmissions can be desperately desperately slow - 200 characters per minute sometimes - and we are only allowed 10 minutes connect time each day as it is a shared system. If we time transmissions to the best radio propagation times we can just manage the volumes we need to send and receive but, of course, other people are trying to use the same frequencies at the same time and it's not always easy. Our last download took me 4 tries and used almost all our daily allowance. Fortunately, it is averaged.

The purpose of the exercise is to get our stuff on to the website. Receiving your stuff is a privilege but not essential. Both depend absolutely on a clever and gentle soul called David Speed, our web dude as McQ calls him. He volunteered to do what he is doing, which he does as well as having to feed his cat, run a business, cut his lawn and get harassed by his bank manager, so we have to look after him too. Among other things, he edits and pastes your stuff into a single message that he sends us each day.

So - the golden rules - please keep it short, about 5 lines max, and not every day - around once or twice a week as a guide. I know that's a dismally long time for facebookers, but hey, that's how this thing works. If you must go longer, Speedy will be the arbiter of what we actually get to see. At this end, we have to limit what we write as well - about half a screen is our guide at the mo.

All of which said, it's always great to get your messages.

noon 0510.37 16307.20

dtd 3920 dmg 109 so McQ wins today's sweepstake.

DMG since we started about 1900 miles, so about a third of the way.

Thanks Kimbra - spot on so far. Could you please do a series of potential waypoints from the equator to Dutch starting at about 164 E using your wx files? I'll stick them into the laptop and we can chase them.

Wind has just died. Damn!

Some news from the waterfront, so to speak. I swapped watermakers after expenditure of buckets of sweat and the backup seems to have the correct output - close to 4 ltrs/hr - so will give us more water for the bang. Or the buck. Or the diesel. And Whizzy Lizzie will actually cover the watermaker's 4-5 amps as long as we have breeze, so no need for the engine. Wood firmly touched, of course.

Caroline - cool and froody - glad you like HHGTTG. The Vortex is THE place to be - Berri's cockpit to a T. And isn't 'smalls' a knicker euphemism?

Carla - yay! thanks for both messages - prob too much crap around to see the ISS this time but you never know. The best passes are the high elevation ones - gets a bit murky towards the horizon. And I LOVED the delicate irony of 'applicable'. Keep em crossed! Wind just hanging in at the mo, and 600 to go to the trades - minimum 6 days of keepin' 'em crossed. Cd get uncomfortable but -hey! its in a good cause. Don't know how to sms you back and anyway v expensive, so we'll keep going this way? Perhaps you could let Speed know about the passes as well and perhaps put the link to the predictor on the website? Love ya too!(Speed having a think about this - Ed)

Later - was transmitting this very slowly and hit by huge squall, unexpected. Rushed on deck, 40 minutes of intense sweaty work dousing furler, re running preventers, tweaking main, hand steering, slowly abated and back down again. Tx aborted so time to add a bit. Been an interesting day. 2 reefs early to accommodate big squall, left them in. Mod to furler to sort drum problem, tweaker on the jib sheet to avoid having to move the car every time we take a bit on or out, watermakers swapped, first attempt at starvation rations (not really, but reduced anyway) indicates that if, as a survivor, I work this hard, I'll be the first to be eaten when the others get hungry. Raging thirst already and made a cup of tea. Think I've earned it.

Love yez all.

McQ: 04o52'45S 163o03'35E Nearing the Pink Neon Sign...

Hey everyone... not far to go now to the equator- less than 300miles, so thats 3 days, at least, but not far in the big scheme of things!!! Then another 300 after that to some steady trades apparently- thats only one hobart/fastnet, which of course is a good way of measuring ocean distances (unless of course you are doing the hobart or fastnet!!!)

I have completely forgotten what I was about to say, oh yes, this will be my fifth equator crossing (at sea level) 3 by sail and one crossing we swam cause there was no wind!!! mental!! In alex's case there have been two by sail and (nonchalantly) '4 or 5 by aircraft carrier' so fortunately neither of us will need to be subjected to a Neptune ceremony... been there done that. Of course though, we must not forget neptune and as is traditional we must give him a gift or two as we pass. I wonder too whether the pink neon sign that lights up and says in giant letters 'you are now crossing the equator' will still be there??? It has always always been up in the past (Its true!!!), but funnily enough, just won't seem to photograph!!!

So we must think of a pressie for Neptune... It is supposed to be something important to you, so the remains of that last pack of cigs that I left in Sydney would have been ideal, except they probably would have got smoked by now or gone to Neptune by way of water damage by now!!! So, what else? we finished the gin already. We could give him a beer but we might not have been abstemious enough for that!!! Diesel, is pretty precious but I don't think the idea is to assist in polluting all his wee fish and their friends!!! Water now, perhaps, but that might just be silly, as would passports. I have no money so can't give him dollars!!! I think I am going to have to settle for a few snakes and a tim tam- lets hope Neptune has a sweet tooth, indeed!!! Any other suggestions welcome!!!

Am marginally distracted cause can see big momma of a squall out the window so will be back in a bit but best go standby on deck ready for some activity (and prepare to get very wet too!!!)...

Lots of love
Cor
x
ps. If anyone wants to write directly (via our web dude)to us but not to be posted on website that is fine; click on the contact link but please keep it to text only and 5ish lines max as that is all our system can really cope with. much appreciated, cheers.

stuff 0524.20 16310.16

Izz - Cortes' men would have said the same, but in spanish, unless I've got him mixed with one of the others - pizzaro perhaps. One of them slogged across the isthmus from the carribean to the pacific midst much hardship. didn't some DWM like tennyson write a poem 'alone on a peak in darien' or something similar?
Malcom - tks for purse seiner - that's what it was for sure. But I thought they hunted in pairs for some reason. Also for colour of lightning. Question - we've had a 25 deg difference between hdg and course over grnd as if east current 2-3 kts - is it so?
Mind games 1: played this in the atlantic too - if every ship that had ever been in this patch were here now, all around us, what would we see? Lots of WW2 warships, including Jack Kennedy in PT 109 perhaps, some early explorers - chinese junks, portugese carracks, other SE asian craft...not much modern shipping passes here, I expect, and, of course, the fishermen. A bit out of the way for the polynesians too.

mind games 2: I sometimes occupy the neuron with silly sums in the small hours, just to keep it awake and not hallucinating. My best marathon time was a bit under 2.42, or about 9 knots in round terms if I've done the conversion right. That means i was running about 30% faster than we're sailing now. Looked at at night, the water rushing past always seems to go faster but it still seems awful fast. Today, of course, I'd find it hard to keep up with berri.

We've been moving all night - about 6 kts in 12-13 kts easterly with occasional softish squalls. Havent run the engine significantly yet so no news there. more sums - there should be about 150 ltrs of water in the tank - so if no watermaker, we're on 2 ltrs/day each to Dutch. Grim. Am going to practise - mug of tea for breakfast, powdered milk, 4 sugar lumps, perhaps half a litre. 750ml Con at noon with liferaft rations, and a litre of water at night with more rations. Already feeling thirsty.

Huge squall just took my entire day's sweat ration to get sail in, reefs done etc. Furlers are great but they do have their idiosyncrasies.

And we have another purse seiner with us. This one has a helicopter on the upper deck.

noon and potential disaster 0708.15 16314.54

Please note this post is from yesterday - DS


dtd 4029 so dmg 62

And the engine appears to be leaking oil. For a day that started rather well, things have deteriorated. Can't find the source, so maybe old oil but unlikely. We only have 5 litres spare, so we have a problem if it is a real leak. Will call John W on monday.

Cross yer fingers, eyelashes, testicles, the lot...

Some catastrophising 0642.00 16310.04

Pace the examiner and Vlad the Impaler, who I can hear in the distance sharpening his stake.

We have a smidge over 4000 miles to Dutch. The next 700 or so of that is potentially windless. We may or may not have an engine. We have about 300 litres of diesel and 5 litres of oil. We need about 3.5 amps to run the computer and instruments. The airgen can carry that - mostly - when we have wind.

So - lets say 40 days to Dutch. We desperately need wind - to motor 700 miles would use all our diesel but we can work the little breeze there is and squeak along. Yesterday we did 60 miles - so perhaps 11 - 12 days to the trades.

Seems to me that the best bet is to monitor the engine very carefully and use it as necessary to get through the holes and up to 5 deg N and - I hope - some real wind. We need to keep about 80 - 100 litres of diesel for the N pacific, so we have perhaps 200 litres or 100+ hours of motoring @ about 4 knots = about 400 miles of the 700.

Really skinny but manageable as long as the engine lasts. If the engine really has the dickies, then it's a long sail with very limited comms and whatever the airgen will give us to run the systems. Water will definitely be a problem.

David, your polarity lecture worked. Silly really in the light of the rest of this note, but we now have the fan in the system with the lights, so I can use the cig lighter socket for other things like charging the mp3 player. Yay!

McQ: The foredeck witch dances no more...

Today has been brilliant, so far, except for a wee blip which I shall mention in due course. We are currently storming along at 6knots in the right direction too!!

I think the two hour night watches might have something to do with my general level of chirpiness this afternoon!!! Three hours in not much wind in the squalls and pitch black is a loong time on deck on your own and its definitely the third hour that does it- thats the hour when you hallucinate (more than normal) and go loopy (loopier than normal) and the foredeck witch comes out for a dance, and if you are really really tired she might start cackling too... (she is harmless so long as you can distinguish that she only exists in the mind)

Now, these squalls that I complain about so often, well actually when there is zilch wind in general a squall that picks us up and shunts us along (in the right direction) for a few miles at 7knots is quite useful, despite the misery of rain and lightning that comes too!!! but this morning was different, whilst chugging along at 4/5 knots with the gradient wind, we don't really need or want any squall assistance/ setbacks and this morning all the squalls around us just kept missing us and we just stonked on through at a goood steady pace, perfect!!!... our navigation at the moment is 'head north' pretty simple really!!

Then we had our wee blip at lunchtime when Berri sailed into her own personal wind hole at the same time A discovered oil leaking from somewhere in Katie the engine. hmmm, not good. Can't find the prob but tomorrow is a school day so we will try and summon the engine-oil-leak-expert-man to shed some light. I guess we just monitor in the meantime and if we really can't use her in the long term, it will negate the diesel woes but we won't be able to use the watermaker, if we can't charge the batts and might be a wee bit thirsty at t'other end, after a looooong trip!!!!

fingers crossed...

lots of love
McQ

Tropical storms 101 0730.09 16313.14

We're down to 2 hour night watches - not really survival mode but an acknowledgement that 3 hours of concentration at night is too hard to sustain. Hallucination, green monkeys, out of focus compass readings sending the remaining neuron into a dozy spin.

Filtered moonlight. Vague silhouetted shapes of cloud. Lightning all around, actual flashes or the glow as it plays around inside a big black fuzzy ball. In the flashes, the shape and form of the cloud is clear and often conducive to some serious foreboding. So, you sit there and watch the one in front getting - first of all - just thicker and darker. Then you can make out the filligree proscenium that defines the leading edge and suddenly your brain snaps into focus as you realise that the long - horizon to horizon - curved soft grey line is the squall line and it's curving towards you. Rather exclusively so. No lightning, but you hear the first, musical roll of thunder - a gentle Gene Krupa riff mixed with a bass steel drum - and then the rain and wind hit as you go underneath the now very hard curve. 25 knots and horizontal rain. The wind has backed 60 - 90 degrees over the last few minutes. And whammy - the roar starts, the boat leaps ahead - headsail only and about a third rolled in - 7 knots and surge and dinos flashing past in glittering cascades. And the lightning - flat flickering blasts of yellow green inestimably bright light followed about 5 seconds later by a much more positively heroic riff from Mr.K and his accompanist. Never thought I'd hear the music in thunder but you bet it's there. The drum roll at the gallows, perhaps, but with its own beauty...Lightning in the S Atlantic was more purple mauve than this - anyone know why?

And gradually it folds - the wind abates, the rain just drenches instead of sandblasting, and your back to the same old 2 - 3 knots generally north, dropping to nowt too often for comfort. And no airgen in the light stuff. Too early to speculate but I think we may find making enough water in the light stuff could be a problem especially if we run short of diesel.

McQ: Oh when, when will this bobbety bobbing end???

Oh when will this end??? 5 degrees north apparently...anyone advance on that??? weather gods/gurus??? anyone??? If I wasn't so superstitious I might think about whistling!!! Actually its not that bad whilst we are moving and there is something to be said for gently lolling along at 2-3knots, lots of time to contemplate life and stuff in general. bit like slow food maybe, gotta be good for you somewhere along the line. Its when we stop that it is soooo painful and in this precariously fragile balance between just the edge of enough apparent wind to move and not that all it takes is one slop of a wave in the wrong direction and one lull or gust in the wrong direction at the same time to bring us to a standstill. And then its just the thwack thwack thwack sound of the dacron sail material flogging about, which is just torturous, and if that's not bad enough, you become acutely aware that every flog of the sail is a potential rip....

Well, I guess if we had wanted to magically get There in no time at all we would have gone in an aeroplane, or on a magic carpet. I always wanted a magic carpet- mine will be red and blue with silver tassles to hang on to on the corners. It will be big enough for two people and the back edge will curl over our heads to keep us dry if it starts raining... oh and we will travel almost as fast as time itself...

Sorry, reality, reality, many thanks Duncan and Carla for CB instructions- both made perfect sense, to me anyway,!!! I'll be practising in daylight!!! Wholly agree that a double sheet bend infinitely more useful but thought a CB good as ends can be siezed making it flat. Anyway, totally irrelevant now, just nice to have refreshed the memory on such matters.

Time for a snooze and must get outta here (from behind the Cone) before I drown in my own sweat... sounds kinda drastic that, but that's how it feels!!!!

Lots of love
McQ
xxx

Bleeeeaah! 0800.58 16310.39

No wind. None. Rolling, glassy, humid calm. Hot, no generator so no fan, sweat running in little Niagaras inside the Cone here. This will be a short one.

Motoring - diesel now the most precious resource - at about 4 kts. North. O great Zarquon, where are ya? Philandering with Gallumbits on Kakrafoon, no doubt. Get back down here and preach at us - harangue us - blast us with your orotund loquacity so the wind blows us along. We don't have to listen, after all.

We were surrounded by fish before starting the engine. 15cm ish, flat, silver, seemed to be spiny. No birds. And, ominously, I saw little purple jellyfish in the water, so no swimming either.

Noon 0813.24 16316.16

DTD 4091 so dmg 81. Amazing and bloody hard work!

This will probably (did!) morph into the noon position. All rather knackering out here. Tiny breezes, 4 - 6 kts, between rainsqualls so lots of messing around and concentration in the soft bits and a real rollercoaster in the squalls - flying along at 7+ knots, phosphorescence at night spectacular - the dinos, not the algal bloom that sets the sea surface on blue green fire, so sparkly and bright and they are in the toilet water at night too. Fun.

Every mile in the can has been earned - and I wouldn't dream of predicting an equator time - could be a month. Running the engine for 3 hours every other day to charge and make water so we get 12 miles or so ever couple of days at least.

Small drama this morning. Coming on watch at 0600. I noticed another vessel on the horizon to starboard. Steady bearing, and we were the give way vessel according to Colregs. I watched it for a bit then altered to starboard. No apparent change in bearing, so perhaps he's altered towards. Another alteration to stbd, again no change. This is always a matter for concern. Watched some more and by this time he was in binocular range - just. Odd looking silhouette - seemed to have 2 masts and some sort of sail but turned out to be large fishing vessel with big crane over stern scoop and huge net hanging from it. Still coming straight towards us and I then noticed small boat in the water. Serious concern at this stage - maybe he's friendly, maybe not. When they got to within about a mile, I phoned AMSA and left a message just to leave a report somewhere in case anything got pearshaped. They turned away at about half a mile. Phoned AMSA again to clear the report. Now they've disappeared into the grand daddy of a rainsquall to the NE which we will get into shortly.

Gerry, I thought the AMSA number I have is the duty officer's but it isn't. Could you give them a call, explain the need and get me a number that is permanently staffed? Just in case. Their 1800 number doesn't work from the satphone.

Berri to Mission Control

Hi Pascal - laconic as ever! Will we need an insertion Consultation before we turn right? Tks for talking to El.

And Keith too - bet you thought we were kidding as well. If you still have those shirts, could you please keep one for Pete?

Some silly questions - just because:
1. Was Xanthippe a) a Brazilian footballers girlfriend b)a horse c) a universally hated Vogon poet or d) none of these?
2. Why did Xerxes' men shout 'Thalassa thalassa!' or wasn't it Xerxes' mob at all?
3. What, under almost identical circumstances, did Hernan Cortes' men shout and where?
4. Why am I asking these silly questions?

Plan B - here we are, stuck, sort of, in the first hundred metres of the course not having fun. Original proposal was to go east of Nauru through the Marshall Islands and then north to Dutch. The quickest way out of here is straight north so perhaps now, west of the Marshalls, around the back of the N Pacific high and thence to Dutch. Just to keep you all in the loop. We are trying to get every metre we can under sail but not much joy. Using the motor when there just isnt enough wind to give the autopilot steerage way. Was hoping to use Midway for emerg refuelling stop but it's now part of a National Monument and visitors are not allowed without a permit from Honolulu. Pity. Osaka? Sakhalin? or just conserve the stuff.

noon 0935.20 16305.45

dtd 4172 so dmg 74. Poo

Pretty much what she said, basically. We're stuck here in the bottom of the ITCZ with 870 miles or so to go to get back into the trades at about 5 deg N. Almost no wind between squalls and whar there is is too soft to push us through very lumpy short sea. Hot, humid generally not cool and froody. All you followers of Zarquon out there, if Mr Quordlepleen will permit, a wind dance on the tables please.

870 miles is just about exactly all our diesel so can't motor all the way. We are trickling north, the shortest distance to get out of it, at about 4 knots with main sheeted to windward and the engine at about half revs.

Was going to bang on a bit about the Polynesian settlement of the South Pacific - from the 8th to the 11th centuries they moved from Samoa right across to Easter Island and possibly Chile, as far north as Hawaii and south to Rapahiti only 1400 miles or so from the Antarctic. They used big double canoes 60 - 70 ft with probably several families plus crop plants, livestock and water and it is thought they could sustain voyages of several months. But - fascinating, this - they used the prevailing winds to get out to each new chain of islands but there was an oral tradition with specific route information based on stars and swell patterns so some of them must have been able to go back the other way. How did they do this, and be able to remember and pass on the information? And they settled an empty New Zealand last of all, probably by following the SE trades back from somewhere to the NE. Imagine putting yourselves, your uncles and your cousins and your aunts, plus your pig, your pet chihuahua, aunty's parrot, breadfruit and other plants perhaps and just setting off more or less downhill. And discovering NZ?

McQ: Grrrr

Grrrr, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, grrr. We pop out of a squall, the wind dies, we bob and bob a bit more, it is very dark, nothing to distinguish sea from sky. in the murky gloom, though, is the definite shadow of the next squall line, so we bob a bit more, waiting, nothing happens, get tired of bobbing, dare we unfurl some headsail???? Unfurl some headsail, stop bobbing so much, squall hits, 30knots, over on our ear, get rid of headsail. grrrr, get very wet- this is huge big blobs of wet rain that gathers at your neck and creeps down your back to make your almost dry knickers wet again, grrr. more rain- a torrent from the skies, feels and sounds like god has dropped all his marbles and pebbles on top of us. yellow lightning that was in the distance now strobe lights up the near surroundings and thunder sounds ominously close. grrr. this is so painful as the whole process keeps repeating itself continously. to top it all off we are going in completely the wrong directoion- for those who aren't sailors it is impossible to sail directly towards where the wind is coming from (in this instance, and often, where you want to go!!!) So we have to zig zag our way there- so whilst we are making progress, slowly but surely, it looks and feels like we are not. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Some good news: Alex meticulously set the fan up from the 12v charger and now we have air circulating inside... awesome!!!

hopefully we'll have stopped lurching around and I'll be less grrrrrrrr next time, till then,

lots of love
McQ
x

Blogle...

Grey - thick grey, like rabbits' fur that you feel, that you can touch, that its wrapped around you. No form, no structure, just dark grey and the boat is flying and the rush of water you can feel but not see and then it goes dark. Really dark. And the boat leans further and the noise of the wind starts to howl and the rain crashes against the tiny Berri dodger you are trying to shelter under and the generator goes into overdrive and the headsail leech starts to flutter then roar and you're in a tunnel of dim light and reflected sheets of rain - all around is noise and confusion but you can only feel it and the windspeed goes up - only 25 knots but the effect is magnified by the blackness and the noise. Your knuckles go a bit grey too.

And then the lightning starts and the cold green clammy fingers squeeze your heart and your guts churn....

Just been there and there will be more of them before tomorrow. But the phosphorescence is back - subdued but intense to leeward and barely visible astern. Wonderful.

Trouble is, the wind it now taking us way way left of where we want to go - local effect of the last squall or a change in the gradient? Don't know and to tack would be premature. We're only sailing at about 55 - 60 degrees off the wind because we don't want to pound into the seas and potentially break something so a tack would not help much anyway. Early days but might be a need to think about staying west until we get above the ITCZ. Kimbra is checking for us.

McQ: Carrick Bends

Hey folks,
I am so frustrated!!! Earlier I tried to tie a Carrick Bend but, no, I had forgotten!!! Can you believe it??? It would have been the perfect knot for what we were trying to do but we ended up using a double sheet bend instead- anyhooo, you know how I like to acquire knowledge and learn new stuff (and relearn old stuff that I ought to know!!, well I was wondering if anyone coud explain how to tie one for me- I have a red bit of string in my left hand, with which I make a bight and then use the tail to make a loop, with the tail towards me- should the tail be over or under the loop?? then I have yellow string in my right hand which I think goes fover under over under, anticlockwise, but it doesn't seem to work!!! can someone explain properly please???

I saw a tree today,about half the size of the boat...berrimilla ii not mirabella v (that would be a giant sequoia!) and it properly had a branch hanging out that was about as thiick as a winch (on berrimilla not mirabella, again that would be a giant sequoia!!) and its mangled dangling branch made it look like azombie sea monster!!! Fortunately we didn't hit it.

Anyway not much else to report just now and its far too sweltering hot and sauna like here behind the Cone of Silince to think really, must go find inspiration for some carrots for dinner and check on deck for stray sequoias...

lots of love
McQ
x

Blerg-Noon 1050.51 16300.01

DTD 4246 so dmg 113 and total distance made good 1573 in 14 days (I think...)

Lots to tell - 1st BVS 10 was the bucket or so of water that came through the open hatch above my bunk as I was deeply asleep last night. Followed by several more soakings in rain showers and just plain sweat in the Cone - a really evil place in the tropics - no breeze and HOT. Can't stay here for too long this time either.

Small drama with the furler - it came off a much bigger boat and the furling line is all wrong for Berri - both diameter and length, because our sail is much bigger than Simon's so more line needs to be on the drum. So we devised evil plan - roll it all up, add some extra turns to ensure all the sail can be furled and still leave turns on the drum, then cut the old line and tie in another, thinner one. All went fine except that I forgot to make sure that the new one was long enough for the job and - thank you mr murphy, - it's about 2 metres too short, so McQ has sewn and whipped a tail on to it for the time being, then we'll replace the whole thing on a calmer day.

A series of warm blasting rain showers with their own little wind systems one after the other all morning but we seem to be away again in a clear patch heading for the equator near Nauru.

A little bit more....

In about 68 miles we'll be north of the australian mainland - Berri for the second time - first time in the South Alantic. and through the Solomons Gate and out onto the course proper. In Marathon terms, 42185 metres to go, one at a time. Out here, 4315 miles - the numbers have a sort of symmetry! Also one at a time.

balmy day, wind all day. Lovely. Moon now up, stars dimmed and the sea getting a bit lumpy. Just had another bath in the cockpit - days really sweaty.

More on the Polynesian migration later. Stuff to do on deck.

Comms getting flaky

dtd 4359 so dmg 109 and we're past the first quarter in straight line distance. Wooohooo. Consult we shall, shortly.

Comms getting flaky as we get further from Oz sailmail base station so may become a bit more irregular. Next in line is Hawaii base stn, but too far out for at least a week.

Creeping forwards

It's like walking around the world only slower at the mo. Sparkling day, little fluffy clouds around and - wonder of wonders - just had a little shower of pearly iridescent rain out of an apparently clear patch of sky - not a cloud anywhere close. All sorts of ideas come to mind, but not for a website that's read by kiddies!

I'm seething, boiling, incandescent with frustration about our flaky piecemeal satphone service and trying to be the gentle restrained understated inoffensive boot room rat cos I expect there's another side to the story somewhere. I have a 500 minute voucher from Xsatusa that was activated a week or so before we left, to make sure it worked. I detected a problem then and thought they'd fixed it and did not have time to check. They hadn't. Seems I was given - or mistakenly used - the wrong number or SIM card (I have two SIMS, one for the Arctic) and about 30 emails later, I think I know what the problem is but no one over there in Peachtree City Georgia seems to be getting the message and doing something about it. I will publish the whole series of emails if/when we ever get back into post stone age comms again as a case study in how not to run a service desk. Partly, admittedly, caused by my inability to use their support system properly from out here, but that ought not be a show stopper.

Anyway, it's taken a lot of emotional energy and the creativity quotient for these bloggy things is a bit down. Midday Con should help.

Found Robin Williams' 1000 years in a day ABC production broadcast on Dec 31 1999 - when Berri was holed up in Skeleton Bay trying to dry out - and given to me by H on mp3 cd before we left last time. So can't Ipod it as far as I can see and using Keycorp's mps cd player departure present to listen to it. Wonderful stuff - starting with Sei Shonagon in the Japanese Empress's court in about 1002 - her lists and observations waspishly relevant today. I've always liked 'Things near but distant: paradise - the course of a boat - relations between a man and a woman'. And then another fascination - the migration of the Polynesians from the western pacific across to Easter Island, possibly Chile if the recent chicken bone can be believed, and down to NZ, the last place they are believed to have settled, in about 1100.

More on this later - the questions it raises for me as a sailor are profound and more that just technically significant.

Love yez all.

McQ: It's a beautiful thing

What a glorious day!! We motored much of last night through barely any wind and at some point we discussed that if the wind hadn't filled in by dawn we would put the Donk off and probably wallow for the day, diesel being the resource that it is. But just before sunrise the breeze started to fill in on a flat calm sea. Before long we were sailing, in the right direction, slicing through the ocean at 4.5 knots... not a bad start to a birthday!!
The wind stayed in all day and now,the following evening/day (0400) it is still there. We are sailing upwind in around 10/11 apparent, mostly. Full sail up and storming along at nearly five knots on starboard tack. For the most part we were being pushed a bit left but this afternoon the wind gently gently veered for us and our little black outline of a boat with a big black arrow at the front was pointing to the the little red dot that is our waypoint on the computer screen. sweet!!! Wind backed a touch again now though and we're pointing left again... good birthday wishes and vibes etc from the wind gods, can't last forever, and it is no longer birthday!!! At least we are moving and have been all day, especially considering we were gearing up for a wallowing!! Its a beautiful thing!! Kevvo was in charge most of the day, though we did have a wee moment when his concentration waned and we tacked by accident.... I wrestled the tiller from him but by the time I unlashed him, it was too late, we were fully hove to, so the only solution was a donut... hmmm.

Saw one of the more spectacular sunsets ever this evening. the whole sky was yellow and orange and faded pink and blue behnd some clouds, but it was the sea behind us, it started off pale pink and as the sun went further down, the pink turned into a silvery lilac and by the time the sun had almost set the sea was a bright vivid violet colour- awesome!!!

Made a birthday thai red curry for dinner this evening, which wasn't bad if I don't say so myself- though i would suggest pumpkin and chickpeas (garbanzo beans, garbanzo beans!) offer an unusual texture sensation, but the pumpkin was going mouldy and needed eating and chick peas were the first tin to hand!!!! Lots left for breakfast!!! I even partook in the days birthdya consulting too!!!!

Soundtrack for the day has been 'scribbled in chalk' and 'screamadelica' (yep, indeed I am on 's' on the ipod!!!)

BVS additions:
Lightning: the most vicious thing that has been discovered- needless to say I hope never to have to compare face to face the viciousness of lightning versus polar bears to find out just which has superiority in the vicious scale.
Consulting: not vicious unless it involves lots of gin

not much else to report at moment.
lots of love
mcq
x

Blogy

More thanks everyone for birthday wishes. Get 'em in while you can!
Kimbra, Speedy suggests we go through website unless super urgent. I'm not logging in much during the day now anyway as we only get one download from Speed Central.
Kris, thanks for Mr Lincoln. Shame we seem to have departed so far from those principles and doesn't learning by heart spoil the experience? Snow in April - wonder if that has any significance for the ice further north. I remember that beer too!

Planning failures - can't believe, for instance, that I didn't put in the cockpit floor. No dramas there except wet feet tramping through the cabbage patch in the boot room. Or find and put on board the sextant plotting sheets or even graph paper so we could make one. Means we are entirely reliant on the calculator if we ever need to use it.

Things that are both near and distant - the course of a boat - time to resurrect 1000 years in a day from the Berri cd archive. Stone age technology already - I remember buying my first cd player in 1984. A Sony brick, but then an amazing bit of gizmology. And Andy, who helped design it.

Grand birthday - wind all day, more or less right direction, 2 Consultations and Thai curry with pumpkin and noodles courtesy of McQ for dinner. And presents. And boobs in the rig for Michelle. A cornucopia for an old git.

We've had the place to ourselves since leaving the Oz coast at Port Stephens except for one light astern a few nights ago. And we hit something earlier this evening - big soft double bump but dark and could not see anything.

VoA now so low it almost needs a spoon. Water temp 35.

McQ: The BVS

This blog is dedicated to my friend Ali, who would be designated Chief Viciousness Rater should she accompany me on a future voyage.

For those who were lucky enough to receive the regular installments from 'The Arctic Adventure' Chronicles from my trip to Spitsbergen in 2006, you will be fully up to speed on the Bollinger Viciousness Scale, for everyone else, here is a quick guide...

The BOLLINGER VICIOUSNESS SCALE

The Bollinger Viciousness Scale is a scientifically proven method of rating, well, just about anything really, according to ferocity. It was first developed in 2006 in order to convey in simple terms just how ferocious a variety of Arctic wildlife can be. For example, at the top of the scale is the Polar Bear (very vicious when hungry)and at the other end, the Beluga Whale, totally un-vicious. Every other aspect of arctic wildlife can be included in the scale inbetween- Afurther example: the Walrus: appears vicious but is really big and cuddly and smelly.

Recently the usage of the scale has been increased and now an official Southern Hemisphere section has been developed. This can be used as an independent rating system or still with integrity as part of the original BVS.

Here are some examples relating to wildlife which we have seen so far. Items annotated with an asterisk and 'not seen' indicate that we have not seen any examples and thus can not accurately rate them on the viciousness scale, but merely speculate where they might lie. Certain items, therefore, have been included for the benefit of Mrs McQ who was asking for statistics on things we have seen (other than clouds, which incidentally are a BVS phenomenon in that they can lie anywhere- yes, anywhere, on the scale!!!)

*Cruise Ships: not seen, impossible to rate at this stage in Southern Hemisphere, could speculate relative to Arctic
Dolphins: not vicious at all, saw about 10 the other day who hung around for ages in a tight knit group- we think they might have been babies at dolphin how to swim school Fin Whales: potentially vicious, purely due to their size, but probably not. 3 seen All manner of birds so far: none seem to have any vicious tendencies Bits of floating polystyrene: 3, one with a weedy beard growing from it. Not vicious towards people but extremely vicious to the environment Flying Fish: vicious in a gory horror movie sort of way with their bony wings flapping about, but harmless really (unless they get stuck in the drain holes. 4 seen so far on deck, more in the water.
Other flotsam/jetsam: one white plastic buoy: not rated on the vicious scale. too inert.
*Other yachts/ tuna. none sighted but presumably equally un-vicious *Fishing boats, none so far, potentially vicious, (From prior knowledge: especially those with spears when you drive near their nets (from a previous experience in the south china sea))

Now that everyone is equipped with a basic understanding of how this works, we will update the scale on a regular basis as we encounter more and more new things.

DISCLAIMER:
It is the middle of the night and there is no wind McQ x

ps j'nie thanks for message but no email address???? is it just your full name at gmail.com??????????? x

Where to start?

So - first, thanks Malcom and a mile or so to go till we cross Bligh's longboat track. Would've been a Dr from Dublin job in the old days.
Second - best EVER birthday present - WIND and 4.5 knots in the right direction. AGW, we should be a quarter of the way tomorrow.
Thanks for all the birthday/buffday wishes - glad you're back Caroline! - and Hey Carla! AstroAlmostAssymetric! Don't suppose you're left handed as well?
Last night, 1800 - 2100 and 12 -3 probably rate high amongst the most miserable and unpleasant watches I've ever spent and that's saying something. Hugh, you bastard, you wished it on me. May your parts shrivel and your pansies die! We sailed into a small circular system - probably a low, but no gradient - just as it got dark. Grey, fluffy amorphous sky - no shape, no structure except every different softly textured grey had its own ominous black line along its lower edge and everywhere you looked, solid grey/black walls - rain - much softer once you get past the frontier, but soft miserable dripping rain - runs down the main, along the boom, rivers down any crevice in the party gear. Massive lightning flashes all around and there ain't much that's more scary for this little black duck than lightning. And all windless except in little bursts from everywhere, mostly associated with thickening of grey texture. So - unroll furler, get it all sheeted on, re-run main preventers, trim, turn off engine, perhaps 10 minutes of really hard work and humid, sweaty and aforesaid rivers not helping and Berri starts to come alive again. For about 3 minutes and then you feel the first little lift of the headsail luff and the main starts to soften and it's gone. Roll and slat and curse. I guess the examiner is in a dirty mood - so undo it all again, restart the engine....

Jennie, you have to include your email address in the text or ask Speedy to forward it - which he'll probably do when he reads this anyway. Isn't like normal email - everything goes through the squeezer and shredder before it gets sent to us and all the crap that hangs off office emails 'This email is for addressee only...' etc gets assigned to where it should have been in the first place.

Have just transferred remaining diesel from cockpit to tank so we now have floor to stand on again out there in the garden. Yay. The equation - we have about 300 litres left, @ 2 ltrs/hour @ about 4 knots = about 600 miles of motoring. We will have to cross the ITCZ (doldrums) which will be about that distance on its own, so there will have to be some wallowing waiting for wind somewhere up there.

Just crossed Bligh's track.

The Boot Room Birthday Rat.

Noon.......

DTD 4468 so dmg 77.

Birthday personals:

Ethel and Alec - onya!

H & K in the 'Jing and E in Melb, thinking of you. H, thanks for Horatio telescope and clocks - counting seconds is where it's at!

Kimbra - that was the cake to build the Opera House on! Yea - went well with The Paddo Quack's best brew. Which actually came out of a round the world recycled bottle that we must have used for gin at some time in its history. Way to go. And the pink balloons too - Michelle C, if you're out there, we had two very elegant pink boobs in the rig, just like your kites, spreading the message to the dolphins and Bligh's ghost. Hope you are going well.

And The Paddo Quack, OTK Pete - great brew mate. Thanks. Second consultation for the day has just occurred. This is a very long and tedious leg - big hole in the middle and not a lot of wind.

And some stuff for the fixers - if anyone (in Oz) is in touch with Paul Fisher and/or Marty Andersen at RPA, could you please pass on that the manufacturers instructions and the base fitting for mounting the Airgen tower are nowhere near adequate. Was down the back in bumpy sea doing the usual and nudged one of the tower supports and the whole tower came off the rubber compressed fitting at the base and fell forwards. Potentially dire consequences, luckily avoided, but at the very least there should be some sort of through bolt arrangement to anchor the thing to the rubber base. I now have it lashed down to the windvane bracket and have devised a more permanent fix with hose clips and a couple of shackles through them at the base of the tower to allow the base to be tied down firmly to the windvane bracket.

Meantime, we're just headbanging away at this rather difficult stretch Hotblack Desiato diving into the sun we are not! We need an infinite improbability event to shift us into the wind 200 miles ahead.

McQ: hmmmm

Just coming towards the end of a tedious and painful watch, which followed on from Alex's equally grim sounding watch!! For the first 36 minutes it poured torrentially and every time I tried to olook forward to see what was happening ahead i woulod get blinded by rain, even if i could see past the rain it wouldn't have made much difference, just murky gloom and the odd flash of orange lightning in the distance. We were motoring at this stage and the wind picked up to 14 knots then went back to zero. The rain finally died out and the wind fiolled in at around 10knots from the NW, random and somewhat unexpected direction so gave it 3minutes 21 seconds to make uop its mind that that was definitely the direction it wanted to blow from.
So set the sails and Kevvo and engine off, nice. We stonked along at 6.5 knots for about 6 and a half minutes then the wind died and kevvo went loop so stuck it out hand steering for a bit till wind was zero a nd boat speed zero. grrrrrr. Donk back on then off, then on etc etc and now the sky has gone crazy again- no moon in sight tonight!!! It looks as though, if the sky was a giant bit of paper then someone has gone mad scribbling all over it with charcol and realised they over did it so tried to rub it all out with a really squidgy eraser and has just left huge blobs of smudgy grey mess across the sky. Sea inky black too. not so nice. And the end of watch downpour is going on again so i might just stay down here, warm and dry, tucked behind the Cone of silence, seeing if I can talk enough drivelo to you guys to last till the end of the watch with out having to get soaking wet on deck again!!!!

Actually, should probably go check we're ok up top, at least we are going in the right direction!!!

Oooh its someones birthday tomorrow, I wonder if there will be any presents????

Lots of love
McQ

Bath Time

DTD 4545 so dmg 117 total dmg from start 1274 - almost 25% Prob at 25% thursday. Time for arrival time prediction contest. My prediction is June 3rd, late evening - only because that will be the third anniversary of our arrival in Falmouth last time. Any other takers? Prize to be decided depending on location of winner.

We've been going, stopping, motoring, flopping for the last couple of days. Hot and tedious and hard work. Water temperature 34.5 deg. Just been through a rain squall - a bath for free! Got it all off and rinsed the salt and accumulated boot room grime, scroff, parrot feathers and the rest from the bod and rinsed the clothes I've been wearing since Sydney. No knicker changes here - no knickers actually. Motoring/flopping at the mo. No wind, nasty chop, hoping for breakout into easterly airflow later tonight or tomoz. Cloudy, 8/8 low Cu with rain squalls - ITCZ stuff - very humid.

We've been followed by 4 gannet like birds - 4 ft ish wingspan, long thin body, tail pointy in flight but a tight fan when used as an airbrake. Mostly light brown/creamy grey, one much darker on top of wings, one lighter all over and speckeld over wings, beaks long and pointed, more or less the same colour. One looks to be a younger one, has darker stripe around chest. They have been with us since Chesterfield several days ago.

Still trying to get the Xsatusa satphone working. Speed will call them Monday, meantime, you should be able to leave SMS messages via iridium.com on the other phone, 00881621440078 if you want to. I'll check it once a day. Again, a limit to how many we can receive at once.

I'm behind the Cone and sweaty. Need to break out for a bit. Kimbra, could you please send me your email address? Also Kris.

ta.

The Boot Room Rat

Idle perspectives

I bet none of you were thinking, as you chomped your breakfast muesli or sucked on your Guinness and bacon sando that today is the anniversary of Oliver Cromwell's sacking of the Rump Parliament, in about 1653. What the hell does that have to do with the price of fish, you may well ask, but it was one of the series of decisive events that resulted, after the Interregnum, in England's becoming a parliamentary democracy with a titular and more or less powerless monarch . Whose birthday it is tomorrow. Onya Maam.

And the day after is the day the Boot Room Rat, the Senile Old Fart, gets another number carved into his tombstone. I guess around about here in peoples' lives, the perspective turns from looking forward to remembering the past. Maybe it's to stave off that moment, as well as all the stuff in my cliche'd rant the other day, that I do these things. Brings the short term into sharp focus and fuzzies the longer. Noice - I like it.

We're still pretty much stopped out here. Hot and tedious, kite and main slatting and Berri just making way. Reluctant to burn too much diesel while we're still in the starting gate - ITCZ still to go and we may really need it. Kimbra - any idea where it may be at the mo? Gribs indicate that we ought to have breeze here but...Email me direct if it's easier. A bit Monty Python - I've lost me ITCZ - anyone know where its gone?

Anyway, today's Consultation will be dedicated to Cromwell, warts and all.

McQ: Pootling along... anyone seen Mo????

Hi Everyone,

Pootling along, not very fast, not much wind, its sweltering hot already (0900) though it has been pretty warm all last night. Kite flopping about a bit in the sea, which is vastly more calm than it has been, amazing- it abated so much in about four hours yesterday... I find that quite fascinating, that the sea can build and recede so rapidly. still the occasional chop though that catches us out.

I remember having various classroom sessions on racing yachts and tactics and weather and trim etc... The guy doing the talking was mildly bonkers and always had a picture of a man frowning in the top left hand corner of the whiteboard and in the top right was a happy smiley face, then there was wind, tide, boats, arrows for this and that etc, but anyway, the guy on the top left was 'the accountant' who is 'always there' and the one on the top right was Mo(mentum) 'our friend' Now on this trip there may well be an accountant in the background but we are not bound to his whims and right now we are desperately trying to find Mo....!!!! SHe's a bit like a plot, not good to lose but once she's with you, you don't want rid of her...

Kevvo a wee bit unreactive on the hunt for Mo Mentum, so Teflon Al currently hand steering trying to find her...

Last night was wicked... there was a full moon so it didn't really get dark all night, the moon just arced over the top of us and was just setting this morning as the sun was rising, It was very cool, look left and in the distance this bright orange huge moon was just dropping down behind dark shadowy clouds,(the shape of the clouds made the moon look like it had wings and appeared to be a giant snitch from Harry Potter. Look right and the sun was rising, the horizon bright yellow all across and fading into that early morning bright blue cloudless sky... it was brilliant... only lasted a minute or so together but great sight to behold!!!

Right must stop chattering and go take my turn trying to make wee berri go faster...

Lots of love to all
McQ

PS younger, less wise sibling, I need your email address, I have to ask you something, can you let me know. hope all is good at the photocopier, lots of love, older wiser sibling. x

Oops!

As soon as I got the SOF head out of the immediate, I realised that I'd ignored the fact that the fifth member of The Team, Kimbra from Hobart, is slaving away in the west Oz boonies and doing some really useful analysis for us from the NOAA website. Sorry K! The memory gadget survived the crash, so I do still have the files and I've backed them up on the spare laptop. Assuming we ever get out of this hole andthin audio range of the polar bears, Kimbra will fly into Dutch to help us get through the Examiners Arctic nasties.

Sleeep.

The shuffling crowd

So - out here under the tropic moon, we have The Team. A Senile Old Fart, too gaga to realise when someone is kidding, plus The Bollinger Chick - a mixture of Fenchurch and Pollyanna on speed perhaps and, just to make it mildly tricky, The Examiner, who lurks about the place in technicolour virtual reality. The Examiner goes in for polka dot pink patent leather, diamond studded stockwhips and a nasty line of evil tests for aforesaid SOF and BK. Right now, she's taken away all our wind except the memory of what it was once like to have any (she's also into homeopathy and snake oil)and told us we have to move this old barge in a generally north northeasterly direction and we're trying - wow are we trying. Little kite up and flopping, kevvo straining every stainless sinew and SOF and BK sweating in turn on getting the kite to work just on the memory of wind. It doesn't, but that doesn't stop Herself in pink polka dots from declaring that it absolutely does. And the tropic moon just sits up there and laughs at us as we roll and flop and slat.

The fourth member of The Team - Mr. Speed Himself - is down at the pub in one or another of the Chalfonts beset by another Miss Whiplash as he tries to keep his pint from spilling on his laptop and cutting us all off. But that's another story.

As you will gather, we have slowed down more than a bit. Barely moving is the go. Frustrating, but what would life be without challenges?? Fiona, I guess it was a bit of a cliche'd rant - serves me right!

Kris - no 3 letter words in today's cryptic but an interesting puzzle. Any chance you could send me Lincoln's Gettysburg address? I think it's only about 350 words. I've been listening to famous speeches on the ipod but no Abe. One of the all timers in wordsmithery and I miss him.

Some of you will know the feeling at the start of a big marathon or a fun run like the City to Surf in Sydney. There are 25+ thousand of you, all packed tight together shuffling forward to get past the start gate and into the race proper. You've started, but you haven't. That's the feeling for me - that twanging, apprehensive, adrenaline flushed excitement, dampened by the knowledge of everything that can go wrong. We're only just out on the course, although we are already 1000 miles closer to Dutch. Our world is fragile - our links with all of you depending on so many implausible wormholes in space and all the planning. So I retreat into my head and work my way through the possibilities. I don't think I will feel we have really got over the start line until we can hear the polar bears barking. Or whatever they do.

A day in the life of...

From things you have said to me, I know that some of you out there are minutely interested in the daily life of a boot room rat, so here goes:

We are working 3 hour watches. If I tell you that I do the midnight to 0300 watch, you can work out the rest. Night watches are loong and really quite arduous because we have to stay awake and at least minimally on the ball, monitoring everything that goes on in the boat - battery levels, Kevvo, lizzie, sail trim, heading and vmg, all the different and important noises and vibrations that tell us how Berri is travelling, plus the speed at which our toenails are growing and, I guess, for McQ, counting the hours until the next hair management session. (It's not too bad at the mo, but fully salty...) All this through the din of an ipod faffing away. More on this later.

Izz, somewhere in the BBC archive there is the Mike Morpurgo program - woonderful stuff and relevant - all about the concept of 'home' down the ages to us and Leroy in our respective vehicles...a link from the website perhaps?

Watch changes are when we speak to each other - usually shorthand communication - kevvo behaving, kettle's on, 'night...

I'm generally awake during the day and I tend to do the boat chores because I know Berri so well. For instance, I've just adjusted kevvo and the inner forestay and opened a beer. The Consultation process this time is quite different because McQ very sensibly doesn't drink alcohol on boats so we don't have the evening happy hour. I usually have a contemplative Consult with Dr Pete - or Drs Steve or Jasper - though Dr Jasper hasn't quite come of age - during the noon - 1500 watch. Stinking hot today and I'm wondering where we put the cockpit shade cover. I think we have just enough medicinal compound to last the course.

We take it in turns to cook the evening meal around 1800. Yesterday's was buttered vegies - home grown pumpkin with carrots, onion, red cabbage, spuds lightly boiled with lots of bacon, then drained and given a bit of oil and heat and served with melted olive oil marg and parmesan. Veg au beurre a la Boot Room Cinq Etoiles. I had the remains for brekkie.

Starting to ramble. Wind dying and code zero up and just moving us - sea still to high and rolling too much to work properly. The Examiner is back...next time, a burst on her new patent leathers.

Sadly, the programme to which Alex refers is no longer listed in the
BBC archive. It was from the "Something Understood" series and was
presented by Michael Morpurgo in July 2005. Michael's children's book
"Alone on a Wide Wide Sea" was initially inspired by Berrimilla's first
voyage. Izzy

Goldfish, protocol and crackers

The problem with having done this once before is the Goldfish problem. The goldfish has no short term memory, so every time it swims around its bowl, past the plastic mermaid, it sees the mermaid effectively for the first time 'Hi mermaid!'...'Hi mermaid!'...'Hi mermaid...' I want to tell you all about the proper protocol for cheese crackers but I think I have done it before somewhere. If I start to get repetitive, Isabella, just shout 'Hi mermaid!' at me.

Anyway - cheese crackers. Anyone who went to state school in the UK or Oz will remember lunch boxes and cream crackers (UK), Saos (Oz) or Ryvita and all the other proprietary names for hardened gritty cardboard. I don't remember them because I'm too old and anyway, I went to a slightly posher boarding school where lunch boxes were only for the other lot. Can't you feel me blushing with shame already? Well anyway, yer average cracker has a pattern of tiny holes in it - (why I dunno, does anyone? - research project for Belmore South perhaps?) - and the only way to pack a pair of crackers with cheese, tomato, devon (bleah!)salami, marmite or vegemite or some kind of dead fish or bird was with so much butter on each cracker that when you squeezed them together with your teeth as you struggled to bite into them and at the same time keep it all together, little worms of butter were extruded through the holes and ended up all over your nose, exercise book or wherever. This had a secondary purpose, in that all that butter tended to hold the broken bits of cracker to the filling as you tried desperately to wind your tongue around every little greasy crumb. Marmite and vegemite ones were specially good because the worms were stripey brown and yellow - true culinary art forms!

I've just been there - ryvita type crackers, essentially soggy cheese that all the oil has run out of and into the plastic pack and several millimetres of again almost melted olive oil margarine. And worms all over my nose, fingers, chin - everywhere. Yum!

Further to my last

My weatherfax alarm rather caught me mid stride - I had intended to say that all of you out there are our motive and our inspiration. We don't have an army of therapists and motivators to keep us in the groove and creatively visualising - you are that army. You, and a lot of people who have contributed directly or indirectly to getting us here - thank you all. And special thanks to David Speed who is our link with you and without whom a lot of the interest would be lost. We discovered last time that the impact of what we were doing derived largely from the fact that people could read about it in real time and the vicarious experience was a whole lot more powerful for them as a result.

So thanks, all y'all and hang in there and ride the razor with us. I hope it's worth the effort. In the Tao the best leader is described as the one to whom, at the end of the enterprise, his followers can say 'We did it ourselves'. Would be great if you all feel some real involvement in this silliness however it turns out.

Listen up - Alex

Right you lot - listen up and you can shout at me later. Some rather crudely potted philosophy - don't know whether I can get this into words that I like but it seems worth a go. I think I'm speaking for McQ here too, but she's asleep so can't ask her.

Lots of people have asked me why we do this. Are we mad, foolhardy, plain self indulgent or what are we trying to prove?? Lots and lots more people - more than I could count, if I ever cared - have said to me and Pete that they found the last one truly inspirational, fascinating, life changing - all that really good stuff, and they meant it. And there have been lots of people utterly gobsmacked by this one - totally uncomprehending yet fully with it and with us. So yes - at one level, it is completely hedonistically self indulgent but at all the other levels, it does things for other people too. Hardened crusty old achievers from all over the place along with them. The idea seemed like fun in the bar in Baton Rouge and Pascal and Pete and I could see immediately its power to involve and inspire, particularly kids. We are being followed by several schools, especially our old mates at Belmore South - onya guys! - and if just one of those kids grabs an idea from this and follows it and becomes a scientist or an astronaut of just finishes school we've achieved. If we can demonstrate that by starting small and without massive resources you can do things that are way out in left field (could one of you Americans please tell me what exactly that means?) then maybe there's a chance that other messages will stick as well.

As for something to prove - yesss! Absolutely we want to prove it can be done - small, unsponsored, individually powered and with our due amount of luck, we can make this happen. People have said that we are brave - perhaps, a bit, but by being brave you sometimes make your own luck. And if it goes pearshaped, some of those people will say we are just foolhardy. Perhaps that too. But it's all about preparation - the more prepared you are, the luckier you get!

Some of you will have heard about Francis (I think - might be Francois) Joyon. If you haven't, Belmore South, google him. A remarkable man who also did something much more spectacular than this but in the same spirit. Our hero for the day.

Must go and pull in the weatherfax for today. Hope that isnt all too pompous and presumptuous.

McQ: Sweet Dreams indeed...

What a phenomenal day!!! Its still blowing a hooley out here and looks as though it might for a bit yet- imagine that, hooning along on a broad reach with 25-30+ knots from behind for days on end. Thats got to be unheard of!!!! We're quite near a reef and we have a very confused sea- properly all over the place, a big undulating blue scape of hills and valleys and the odd Munro and Cheddar Gorge thrown in for effect, so have been driving for a bit (kevvo frustrates me so when his mind wanders and we end up pointing at Geneva, or somewhere equally inconsequential on a voyage such as this) and listening to my new ipod, can't really beat a bit of Eurythmics, as loud as MY ear drums can handle, Sweet Dreams indeed, and the lyrics are pretty apt all round- AMAZING!!! Ginney, if you are reading any of this, thank you for all my ipod music. Its ace!!!

This is just such a great trip and some fantastic sailing, we really are charging along at the moment on wee Berri.

Oh Crikey, I have just experienced the Cone of Silence, working, and it works, fortunately!! A huge wavd has just come crashing in!!! It's nice to be off watch for a change!!!!! I have stopped asking 'Teflon Al' as he is now known, for a dress code before coming up on deck as he invariably says its dry and shorts and T-shirts are fine and invariably I end up drenched... I might stick my head up just now and ask if he would like his wet weather gear passed up... but knowing Teflon Al that last big wave may well just have missed him completely!!!!

Lots of love
McQ
x

Alex - April 18th

Land birds around - not many - and we're still hooning, though the wind has died a bit for the mo. Huge fun, but I'm knackered. Months of planning and a full on week has been a bit wearying. But I'm in the routine again and actually getting some sleep. Berri still talks to me all the time but there's new vocab - Lizzie out the back has her own distinctive voice and grammar and the furler is a quite different dialect as well. Still have the normal creaks and groans and tiny sighs that all have meaning and importance and taken together, keep the running score ticking along in my head.

Kevvo having real trouble with these big waves that throw him off and the sideways motion gives him false apparents as well. Constantly up and down sorting him, but he does a great job. Easily the most important bit of kit if this thing is going to work.

Love yez.

2124.32 15742.39 - Alex

Well and truly on the way - we were visited today by one of these long tailed terns - brilliant white, long pointy tail, razor wings and they dive spectacularly for fish. But also a sure sign we're close to land. About 100 miles from Chesterfield island in fact, sailing along the south western edge of the reef and about 50 miles out. We should get around the corner in a couple of days.

A day of sweat and effort for the old geezer spent in the bowels of the vee-hicle unpacking and repacking the insides and then putting sponge rubber under the diesel containers in the cabin as they were moving around a lot and we don't want them to wear through. 'Er outside spent the time getting used to Kevvo's idiosyncrasies - he takes a bit of practice and getting used to. And, as she told you, getting her knickers wet.

Repacking because we decided we needed a second bunk to sleep in rather than as a storage bin. We'd been hot bunking one bunk but because Berri is so tiny inside and everywhere is knobby or sharp or generally uncomfortable in some way, there is nowhere for the person on watch to sit or rest the aching back except - in our case - a bunk full of boxes, bags and stuff. So it's all repacked and we got two bunks just like Pete and I had all them years ago. So it seems anyway.

Definition: hot bunking is two or more people taking turns to use the same bunk - you come off watch, peel off the wetties and party gear and hop into a nice warm bunk your oppo has just hopped out of. Except it's often wet and soggy and you curse said oppo just as s/he curses you at the other end of the watch.

Ann, you asked about phosphorescence - isnt any here, though a couple of nights ago I looked over the stern at our wake and there was a glowing trail with lots of bigger sparkles - more or less instantaneous. Very like looking at the milky way on a clear moonless night except its stars are static.

We've been up and down the reefing system all day - from 3 and postage stamp jib to full everything and now 1 and about half the furklwe - how did ha happen? - meant to be furler. Always exhilaration in these conditions, with the constant grey knuckle twinge in the hairier bits. The sail works well, Brian - thanks. Different though, and needs different techniques.

Time to scrape ze teef. Another blog soonish on Consultation and our complement of medicinal compounds. Very different from last time.

From Alex:

dtd 5006, dmg 134, distance made good from Sydney in first week 795nm and that's after ploughing through the east coast current - distance through the water is 907nm all give or take a mile or two. So knickers to the schedule - so far so good!

McQ: New Knickers Noon Pos: 2203.17s 157 45. 12 E

I can't believe we have been at sea for almost exactly one week!!! A whole week ago since everyone waved us off, a whole week since Carolyn came down to the CYC with last minute supplies of snakes and she had even located a bottle of diet Irn Bru in central Sydney. Its been a while since I drank any In Bru- you can tell cause my hair is less orange these days but I am sure saving that bottle ofor an emergency.

Thats also a whole week with no cigarettes, none on board so no choice!!! No nicotine patches used and no grumps I don't think!!! We'll make a non-smoker out of me yet!!!!

I put new knickers on this morning to celebrate all this and minutes after going on deck a huge wave come crashing over the top of me and I now have wet hair, wet top, wet back, wet shorts, wet NEW KNICKERS and boots filled with water. You can almost guarantee that had I not entertained the idea of clean knickers I would still be dry now. So I spent the rest of the watch trying to dry my boots out, accepting that dry knickers were a thing of the past. Just towards the end of the watch I felt I had succeeded on the boot front, using a cunning combination of sunshine, paper towel and rags as I watched them visibly dessicate before my eyes... Even the sea in my shorts, if not the knickers, had begun to evaporate and I began the clamber down below feeling a wee bit pleased with myself... but no, damn you Murphy and your Laws, just as I was about to through the companionway hatch, another wave came over the top again, soaking me through once more and re-filling my boots with sea!!!!! Oh how Alex laughed!!!!

We had better keep the pace on as I certainly don't have enough underwear supplies to change my knickers twice daily...

Lots of love to all
McQ
Ps thanks for all the messages: Geri & Luke, as soon as the weather eases enough to make reading a feasible possibility once again, and I have finished the HH's, Papillion is next on my list and I am v v looking forward to it.
x

Midnight in the boonies 2310.54 15747.39

Just pulled in Speedy's midnight special - thanks to everyone for your messages. H, hope you arrived safely in the 'Jing.

Seems our wild surf is slowing - I was standing on the cockpit seats hanging on to the dodger knees slightly bent riding this violently rolling, pitching, yawing corkscrew of a 7 ton surfboat with the moon ahead gyrating in the sky and the flashing white surf whooshing past the boat - Ben Hur in his chariot, a bareback rider standing on her horse in a circus - whatever the image, the power of the wind and the sea and the boat's ability to grab it and hoon with a bit of help from Kevvo was the stuff that brings a surge of happys to the heart. And now the wind has abated just a little, brilliant moon still up there, big waves still chasing us and we're 727 miles from Sydney. Wooohooo.

And I'm not exactly sure what the line on the chart actually means but I think we have left Oz and crossed the border into New Caledonia. Progress of a sort!

Just lost half my scalding cup of tea over my hand and the floor. Oww! Sat on the floor and dunked a little tower of McVities one by one. Way to go. Biskit dunking lessons in the last gig's logs somewhere - slight change to technique though as we now have a couple of huge mugs we bought in Falmouth last time and the whole biscuit fits in the nozzle so to speak and instant floppiness arrives if care not taken in timing dunk with boat's roll - total loss of biscuit and sludgy tea...Nice though and can be taken with a spoon later.

Airgen now keeping the batteries fully charged - makes life much easier. Must be the wind strength.

Kimbra - had memory gadget plugged into laptop when it crashed and suspect that's dead too, so I've lost your files unless I saved a copy on the home laptop which I daren't open in these conditions. Might need some advice as we go north of the border. Also lost your email address

And, Eleanor, yours too - email Speedy and let me know how The Plan progresses.

Every weather event must end sometime...2350.34 15751.26

Mixed feelings about this one. It's pushing us north way ahead of schedule but it's bordering on the iffy as far as sea state goes. 25 - 30 kts in the harbour is relatively trivial but out here, with 1000 miles or so of fetch along which the sea builds into short, vicious steep 5 - 8 metre waves with occasional bigger ones (always difficult to judge wave height from the boat) it is nasty and just a bit extreme. We have 3 reefs in the main and most of the furler in and McQ is hand steering. Kevvo get thrown off line and we're all over the place if we leave him in charge. Next step, if it gets any worse, will be to drop the main. Trisail a possibility but may not be too easy to get at at the mo. Mistake, of course.

Just found some more chocolate. Sun already gone, moon up somewhere tho I cant see it from here. Steely blue sky going grey with long black shadows behind us as the rain squalls build. Would be - no is - magnificent and indifferent, but also threatening. We're aiming for the west - leeward - side of the reef and Chesterfield Island. Should be up there tomorrow evening AGW.

1130 position 2425.32 15750.20 - there wont be a noon one

DTD 5140 so VMG 135. This seems to be due to stay with us for at least another day, then it gets a bit confused.

Those of you who were tuned in to the B1 log may remember the VoA temperature indicator.