In an effort to save weight and make room for a flexible fuel tank, I left Berri's cockpit floorboards in the garage when McQ and I left Sydney in April last year. Did not matter on the Sydney - NWP - UK trip because of the stuff in the cockpit and anyway we had boots on most of the time. Now, though, it does matter - the geometry of Berri's cockpit drains means that in these extreme rolloing conditions there's always a couple of inches of warm (32.5 deg - feels warmer than my skin but it ain't) water sloshing around on the cockpit sole. Bad karma - I can't stand having wet feet in my bunk and they were never dry. But this game is all about intelligent improvisation - in Falmouth I liberated a bit of ply from a chuck out to work as a floor for our inflatable and it just fitted up in the forepeak so I brought it with us and yep! it fits the cockpit floor as if it was specially cut - YAY!
In yesterday's post my congealed brain cell said that a BU was 5 days - it's really 6 as anyone would have known. We are at 11 deg N or 660 miles from the equator so a bit over one BU. Between here and there is the convergence zone and - if they are operating - the doldrums. The grib shows a doldrummy patch just ahead of us and I saw the loom of lightning over the horizon last night so things may change dramatically in the next couple of days. And the SE trades are blowing directly from the South so we'll be going to windward once we're through. Poo! But it is a mark of progress.Enter the Examiner, stage left, with sibilant hiss.
My sailmail propagation app indicates that we may be out of range for some of the time out here -we'd be one of the very few boats ever to have used it in this bit of oggin - so these posts may have to go via Iridium so will be very much shorter as Iridium isn't cheap for this old fart.
