Welcome to the Berrimilla blog
G's West and East got in a twist while doing the Google Earth
placemark. Alex does not do these Latest Position illustrations as
Berri's computer suite is a bit too limited and full of empties. The
SOF prize goes to G, definitely not to Alex or Pete.
Meanwhile, back in the old bus shelter, Old Fart no.1 asleep on the bench, raspy breathing a sandpaper descant for the rustle of dead leaves and food wrappers in the midnight gloom, the clatter of a rolling can dislodged from the heap of empties in the corner giving the whole symphony a jagged edge. Old Fart no. 2, flaky brow creased in concentration, prodding stone age keyboard with ET contraptionery hooking it into Foxy Rupert's wifi. Here we are, prods he, middle watch, 575 miles out of Cape Town, hoist by our own gamble of two weeks age, crunching through lumpy sea in the closest we can get to a course that will get us home, wind and current and Examiner united against us and Dec 5th a desperate fingernail's grasp away from being lost in the vortex.
An iteration of Old Farts across the sleeping bench later and two more cans added to the pile - we are just crossing the continental shelf. There's what looks like a big steep seamount just ahead - my chart does not give it a name, just lots of concentric contours but I think it might be something like Velmay. Massive movement of current around it - shame it doesn't trigger the phosphorescence. The best VMG we can manage, directly into the current and big, steep headbanging swell is about 3.5 kts. Cape Town Saturday schmatterday! More like Monday. Berri fantastic in these conditions - the occasional humulomungous crash as she meets a big steep one head-on but mostly just bloody uncomfortable hobbyhorsing corkscrewing along, meeting the sea and negotiating it with minimum fuss and no pounding. Kevvo driving.
Anne, just opened your jar of honey. MMM! Tks!
Posted by I & G in the UK.
We have been trying to work our way south for the last thousand miles or so but have not been able to do so without going backwards. And so it is still. There is a fierce current, the Benguela, flowing NW from Cape Agulhas south of Cape Town and we are in it and getting knocked sideways at about 3 knots - about half our speed, so about a 45 deg knock. Getting south as far as about 35 degrees would have allowed us to manage this but from up here at 31.36 S there's nothing we can do but accept the situation and hope the wind changes as predicted by the grib in a day or so. Meantime, Namibia here we come. December 5th arrival in CT now looking very iffy indeed.
Otherwise, nothing to report except a juvenile Yellow Nosed Albatross. And a huge empty bulk carrier that altered course around us a couple of hours ago. Tricky when you can't call them up on channel 16 any more - we do have DSC on the VHF but I've never had a positive reply when we have tried to use it so no faith in it yet. With no AIS data, I have to make an 'all ships' call which is a bit less effective, perhaps, than an individual call using a ship's MMSI. Automated bridges fill me with angst. But it does seem that our new radar reflector is working.
Fenwick, ya dozy OF, hang in there for what remains of your dissolute life and the birds will sing again in the trees. Then we will come home and you can buy us a beer. Enjoy the Solomons.
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Sus, tks for stormsurf data.
Wet and lumpy and hooning but - the chainplate over my bunk end has started to leak so I'm going to have to deal with wet feet, or a plastic bag, or the foetal position for the next week or so - won't be too bad as hoonery set to terminate this evening.
2 more ships - Piccadilly Circus looks like an empty parking lot compared to this bit of ocean.
No incoming for the last couple of days so nothing to respond to.
Phil G @ Fleming, if you are reading this, I have about 15 minutes of video, all rather bland, and pretty crude as I've had to work out the software as I went. It might be useful if you can get hold of a copy of Adobe Premier Elements which is the app that came with the camera and I used to download etc. Will try to post from CT - feedback please and I'll try to go one better in the southern ocean. Problem is there's a lot of stuff hanging off the back of the boat so hard to get good coverage of Kevvo doing his thing.
A couple of weeks with nowt but ourselves and today two ships, one a big empty tanker heading NW, the other just lights passing in the night. Unfortunately, I can't get my AIS gizmo to talk to SoB so there is no identifying data. Another of those electronoc mysteries. Ships are an indication that we are getting close - only one and a bit BUs and in the manageable range. Soon, perhaps, we will see land birds and get the local radio stations on AM and then FM instead of the hassle with short wave to pull in the BBC World Service for Africa. The SW radio is now using the whole rig as an antenna and it works rather well but I need a proper antenna jack and alligator clip to stabilise the connection instead of the split pin and clothes peg I'm using. Your frequency list worked, Carol - thanks! And then I will find out whether my Australian Telstra SIM works in South Africa, as it should - but I'm not taking bets.
It's the journey, stupid! While we look forward to a friendly face, a cold beer and a shower, arriving will be a huge anti-climax. Back to the marathon analogy - standing in the finishing chute, emaciated, knees buckling, leg muscles twitching and cramping, blisters a dull burn, before even getting the finisher's medal, months of preparation pounding the streets then 42km of graduated effort and increasing pain all done and the let down is almost something solid you can touch. Success has its buzz, which may come later, but it is for me always accompanied by atrophy and a sort of mental entropy. Perhaps that's actually the driving force that gets people back out on the streets or in their boats after vowing never again. In our case this time, we are only half way home and we can't really relax and drop the bundle - there's a very big to-do list.
And anyone who has ever been out here on a such night of swirling luminescence as tonight can't fail to yearn for the uncomplicated serenity of it all.
K in Shanghai - I doubt you are reading this but Hi anyway!
We crossed Mr Maskelyne's brass line at 18.36.05 yesterday and we're in the eastern hemisphere. Wooohooo! The last Maureen's cake (Thanks, Maureen ;-)and a Murph to celebrate this morning and there's wind for a day or so in the right direction, then it gets pearshasped but these systems move very fast. Dec 5th still possible.
May not have been Maskelyne but it's a reasonable stab. Too far south, Norm, for Mercatorian status.
No ISS last night - 8/8 cloud. Poo.
And at the other end of the scale, we sailed through a swathe of ocean perhaps 3 boat lengths by one covered in a sort of greasy film and bubbles. In the Bering Sea and north of the Arctic Circle in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, breeching whales left these trails but always with stringy bits of mucous and flakes of skin sloughing around. I did not see the stringy bits in this one but certainly the greasy residue, so perhaps we are in even larger company out here. But I did not see a spout, so could have been a giant squid having digestive problems with a wayward nuclear submarine.
No birds today - hot and cloudless so they are probably settled on the water somewhere and will come back this evening.
And half a chance of a visible ISS pass tonight - I've adjusted for our actual position and I think we might crack it. I don't think I know anyone who is up there this time but still just a bit personal to watch (probably) our closest humans go by.
Later - We crossed the Greenwich meridian at 18.36.05 UTC. We have already had one celebration today at 1000 miles to go, so we have saved the last bit of Maureen's cake to sweeten the breakfast Murphys tomorrow. All the numbers in the GPS are now counting in the same direction. Feels good. But not looking good for seeing the ISS. Big cloudbank on the front of the next system barrelling in from the west.
Dusk but I think we have an albatross back with us.
Paul - "I hear there's a video record of that erudite gathering of scholars and philosophers at the Chain Locker. Thanks - can't wait. We re-enacted our simultaneous Consultation for the camera this evening, having not thought to do so on Tuesday.
For the second one, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fxdBDRK01U
This second video was made as a result of the Chain Locker Crew in
Falmouth celebrating 5 Degrees West in the bar last night. You'll see
them all (still upright) at the end of the video. Cheers, me hearties,
and thanks to Paul Harry of Falmouth Photos.
http://www.falmouthphotos.com/
Posted by Iz in the UK
From Gordy:
hi alex pete berri
just a quick one to let you know drinks were taken buy the crowd in the
chain at 1800 24/11 as promised good few in attendance carny paul pauline
tall paul shane tim the fish and a few from ponsarden photos to follow
sign off now ok take care guys
keep her going boys
gordy
A truly inspirational gathering of poets, philosophers and other seekers after the truth - onya chasps! We were right there with you in pious spirituosity!
Correction to my last - Fred Watson's red giant may have been only the size of earth's orbit - still no dried lentil. Idle thoughts about all this were followed by one of the longest burn up plumes from an object entering earth's atmosphere that I think I have ever seen - from our position 30.13 S 001.36 W time 0148/26th November, track roughly SE - NW, perhaps 320, altitude at the start about 30 deg and it flew almost to the NW horizon directly under Orion. Very fast, very thin trail, not a lot of light but spectacular.
Sue of the yellow piggy - erk! But thanks for storm surf info about southern ocean swells - I was close after all and they have been with us all day.
And we just crossed 30 S. A bunch of opportunities to listen to Vogon poetry and mother-in-law jokes coming up as we sit with our favourite medical consultant - there's the Greenwich meridian about a day away and 1000 to go in about 70 miles. Then we will pass Sydney just before we get to CT and maybe even Wollonging if we aim past it to beat the wind and current. Plus our albatross. Yay and wooohooo.
Pete saw a ship! So much excitement in a day - I am faint and trembling with whelm.
The moon has just gone down in the west and the night sky has come to life - all those potential albatrosses out there in the universal boonies - Berrimilla's own intimate 14 billion year slice of space-time. Gravity is in the eye of the beholder - s/he who first drew an outline that linked the stars into constellations. Orion's belt now satisfactorily defies its northern hemisphere creator and dangles upwards - Sirius, Castor and Pollux, Procyon and the rest of the mob in attendance and the Pleiades nebulating happily. I'd love to have a stable platform and a telescope out hers! Space is really really big and there's so much stuff to look at! Fred Watson, my favourite astronomer, told me there's a red giant out there with a diameter larger that our Solar system. Coo! Makes poor old Betelgeuese look like a dried lentil.
Carol, thanks - we'll do our best - these systems give us lots of cloud cover so iffy at best.
Scott - no chance we'll make Hobart for the post S2H shindig - most likely end January. Where are you these days?
Enough already. This is going via iridium.
As I write this, around 1830/24th, (yesterday) we are celebrating passing 5 deg W early this morning. I hope the Chain Locker mob is in session too, preparing for another six pints or so before dinner. Onya everyone!
We are a bit over 3000 miles from Cape Horn which is at 57 degrees south 68 west. South of the Horn is the 600 mile passage across to the Antarctic Peninsula called Drake Passage - Drake was never there (he sailed through the Strait of Magellan) but this passage spans a strip of the southern ocean that extends all the way around the world. It sits astride the westerly current and the band of fierce westerly winds that also extend around the world. Waves and swell in this band have an unlimited fetch so they can become really huge if storm conditions persist over long periods as we experienced four years ago. Here now in Berrimilla at nearly 30S, we are a long way north of this band of ferocity but I think we are just beginning to feel the big southern ocean swells that sweep up from the Horn and the intense low pressure systems down there and across the South Atlantic towards Africa. We have a SW swell with a wavelength of perhaps 150 metres, height perhaps 5 metres with the occasional wave that seems to be very much bigger. Someone will check the satellite data and tell me I'm wrong - always very difficult to estimate wave height from within. Anyway, they are not anywhere near big enough to lose a cathedral in the troughs as you could below 40S but perhaps the top edge of the influence of the maelstrom. A taste of things to come and the Examiner asserting her authority.
Much later - swell now dropped, along with what little wind there was - in serious wallow mode.
Later still - 0600/25th - the swell is still here, but smoother and so less obvious at night but can see it in daylight.
Deborah, thanks! - I'll write to you separately when the radio comes back, meantime you don't need permission!
Ron C and perhaps Carla - an odd sighting: position 29.18 S 003.01 W @ 01.56.30 UTC Nov 25th altitude about 45 deg, azimuth roughly south - a single white strobe, flashing every second or so without the usual flickering red and green and secondary strobes that usually go with passing aircraft. I saw about 10 flashes then it stopped - possibly a patch of high cloud - and did not reappear. It had the feel of being very high or distant and I could not discern movement against the background stars but it was really a fleeting glimpse anyway. Vogon mothership perhaps - do Vogons have mothers?
Malcom - many thanks. Warning noted - just like the Falklands, where kelp rafts are like solid islands, some of them anchored to the bottom and marked on the charts.
Sue - Pinkbok says Hi and what were you thinking of when you sent me out with these idiots? Hope the lurgy dissipating.
We crossed 5 deg West at 0045 this morning - We are now east of Falmouth and 4750nm south after 6314 miles! Gordy notified four hours in advance and we will celebrate this evening. Dank, drizzly, overcast, windless - just trickling along.
I've been checking Berri's systems prior to CT so that we can get recalcitrant gizmos fixed. Have just cranked up the SatCom C - an Inmarsat C device. The equipment seems to work and it logs in to the East Atlantic region but will not transmit messages via the Land Earth Stations predefined in the software so I assume there must have been some sort of amendment since I last used it (probably at least 18 months ago as it is power hungry so only used as emergency backup). Would appreciate advice if anyone knows - else will get on-line latest version of Easymail software from CT to check for changes.
Steve sent us a list of howlers from the current crop of higher school certificate exam papers in English. I rather like this one: 'The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.'
Shades of a softly Taoist Sei Shonagon and her list of things near yet distant - in her case 'The course of a boat'.
Alex
Kimbra's watch and we are almost as far north as we need to go to round the northernmost point of Somerset Island, just east of Cunningham Bay. So - in an hour or so we should be able to head east, then south east. No more ice visible, Cornwallis just there on the N. horizon and a lighter patch of cloud where Beechey should be, about 45 miles away. Worth just a tiny wooohooo! Pascal's dotted line is ok so far - we can't test the Beechey bit but we'll pick it up again soon.
As for clothing I thought a detailed list might be interesting. On deck, I wear my brown fisherman's super tough wellies, aka Sitka Slippers, with sock liners and fleece socks. Glove liners and insulated industrial rubber gloves. From the skin out, a thermal vest with long sleeves, T shirt, no knickers or thermals over the nethers (because they promote the most agonising gunwale bum) so a fleece mid layer known as salopettes, with a fleece hoodie on top. Sometimes a balaclava and neck tube. On top of all that, a Mustang survival suit or a float coat and Henri pants if it's not too cold. Goggles if it's snowing or windy.
And it has come to pass - at 1750 UTC Sunday August 17 we turned east, then south east at 74.12.10.3N 093.57.28.2W. Half way Consultation is occurring. Slightly bigger Wooohooo!
And keep 'em crossed please. Looong way to go yet.
McQ
oh how I wish the oreo cookie monster would leave me alone!!! he hangs out shivering at the end of my bunk while I am off watch, desperately trying to ignore him, though its hard as he looks so blue and fluffy and unmonsterlike and pathetic, then when I come on watch he sort of attaches himself to me and won't leave me alone, till I relent and eat cookies, despite my constant protesting!!!
To jump on the clothing bandwagon too, which i think I just win, I have on:
1 pair thermal socks
1 pair thick fluffy socks
1 pair ziploc bags (yes these count, they might be the most important items infact!!)
1 pair leaky boots
1 set of underwear, actually bikini top and bottoms\
1 pair thermal legs
1 thermal top
1 midlayer salopettes
1 fleece top
2 midlayer jackets
1 oilie bottoms
1 oilie smock top
1 pair fluffy gloves
1 pair sealskinz gloves
1 pair waterproof outer shell gloves
1 neck warmer
1 thermal balaclava
1 hobart beanie
1 windstopper balaclava
1 fleece hat with ear warmer bits
1 pair ski goggles
so thats 29 individual items...yes, 2 pairs socks, 3 pairs gloves and four hats... its making me cold thinking about it!!!
Oh how I sometimes wish the oreo cookie monster was a heater instead, then he could hang on to me all day and night long, and I wouldn't mind at all!!
Hope everyone well and warm
Lots of love
McQ
xxx
Kimbra's post
You've heard of gorillas in the mist, but today we've had belugas and snow! I've never seen a beluga whale before, but I have to say it was love at first sight. To me, these small whales are superficially more like oversize, white, friendly dolphins. As Alex said, we saw a small, loose pod of about 6 belugas around brekkie-o'clock this morning. One appeared to be stalking us, so maybe word has got around the whale-world about Corrie's close encounter off Barrow and they're out for revenge? Anyway, most cool!
The weather is also (still) most cool. So far, it's snowed on 3 separate occasions today. My Alaska keychain thermometer is still telling me it's 10 deg C, but I'm rapidly losing faith in it. My cold-toe-ometer is telling me that it's probably a little less than that. Cold enough to break out the hot porridge with dried apricots and maple syrup for breakfast. Yum.
While I hate fog, I'm really kinda fond of snow. There's not enough of it (yet!) for it to settle, and we're definitely not talking snowmen either, but it's very peaceful. And makes a nice change from the rain. It's starting to settle on the hills bordering Peel Sound, and dusting parts of them a light grey against the dark blue-brown rock.
Nearly around the top of Peel Sound. Another 50 NM until we hang right and turn east along Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound towards Greenland. So 50 NM to go to my mental halfway point, where we stop heading away from the edge of the world and start heading back to civilisation.
Anyway, my fingers are too cold to hit the right keys on this miniature keyboard, so I'm heading for my bunk. Wake me for dinner in bed in an hour or so...wonder what Corrie's cooking tonight?
Night all! K.
No footer
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Still hooning - genoa poled out, pointing at CT, averaging about 6kts. Soft spot due later today and much bigger one tomorrow. Dec 5th arrival still on the cards. Will depend on the behaviour of the high behind the one we're about to enter. Big to-do list for Cape Town.
Lots of birds following us - I have so many floaters in my eyes these days that looking at the horizon or trying to focus on a bird is a bit like reading newsprint - takes time and concentration, so a bit of jizzery later.
We should cross 5 degrees west tomorrow so we will have completed the huge arc to the west to get around West Africa and the South Atlantic weather systems and be back due south of where we started. We shall celebrate - if you're reading this Gordy, I'll blip your mobile with the satphone. The journey will start to become very different from here. There ain't no 'Beam me up Scotty!' once you get down into the southern ocean below Africa.
Later - since I started writing this, I've been hand steering for a couple of hours because it's too much for the electric autopilot as well. The wind is strengthening and I think freeing us and we may have to drop the kite soon. I saw our first Portuguese Man 'o War (Bluebottle for the Australians) quite a big one, deep blue sac with crenellated fringe on the top edge and half moon curve so they drift with the prevailing wind. And a white bird settled on the water - unusual as most of them here are brown or black - orange beak, white head, black slashes around the eyes, grey flecks on top of the body and wings and two long straight white tail feathers - hard to judge their length but at least as long as the body. Not in the albatross book but somebody will know what it is.
Later still - we dropped it in time for a relaxed meeting with the Grindy - was building a nice fat quarter wave so time to douse and get the boat upright again - lost perhaps half a knot but the knuckles no longer grey.
Norm - thanks! Wish we had one of those machines.
G'day to the Crosshaven RNLI mob and RNLI crews everywhere. I decided that today's breakfast Murph which I'm quietly savouring as I prod the keyboard, would be in your honour, especially as in the conditions we're told you are getting up there, you have probably been very busy.
Gerry Fitz - give the Fenwick a call - if he's not totally stupefied, dozy old fart that he is, he's got a really good story to tell you and you can use it immediately to edify your punters. Buy him a beer - he earned it and someone orta give him a gong.
If this is a short one, the HF radio is back - I never know from email to email whether it will turn itself on when I press the switch. It came back last night for long enough to send the grey rainbow thingy so let's see now..
How can I describe this night to someone sitting in front of a bright computer screen at home or in the office? It's as if we are inside a huge faintly luminous grey sock. Shapeless, untouchable gaseous void filler in thin foggy grey. We're sailing on soft grey-black velvet, invisible, shapeless but substantial, with the loveliest of phosphorescent twinkles in a rolling greenish halo of disturbed water flowing past. You feel the motion - it's experienced, without the usual frame of horizon and clouds to mark the boat's passage. The sails a darker mass in the void. Swooshing surging burbling water noise and the swish of the wind generator with its gentle undulating whine as it fires wiggly amps at the batteries, its tiny red LED glowing in the shapeless grey. Instrument lights at their dimmest grey - juuust readable but even with the acutest night vision there's only the feel of the change in density between velvet and gas at the horizon. Masthead lights brilliant arcs of pinpoint colour leaving painted trails on the retina - green light reflected off a masthead aerial making a surface patch in the velvet out to starboard. Sometimes it catches a ripple and turns it into glowing life for a second or two. The usual clunks and creaks that are the atmospheric noises off in any sailing boat. Gentle breeze on the face - tonight a caress but always out here with the hint of
Or just a dank and dismold overcast night if you'd rather do without the hype...
SJ - instructions not followed! So much for reinforcement - and the HF died again just as I'd downloaded the 3 liner with the half page of unnecessary crud attached. Grateful if you could advise no more emails possible unless relayed through you but phone ok. Iridium too precious for extraneous garbage. Murphyalatermate.
SJ - thanks mate and assumed as much - but never any harm in a bit of reinforcement!
Izz 'n'G Kool and gluey doods - thanks too.
The difference between magnatic and true will have to wait - not half such fun.
One for the mythbusters if they haven't done it already, or any competent mathematician who can find the numbers. I have heard it said that there is a significant chance that in any day you breathe air that has been circulated so comprehensively by the world's meteorological systems to the extent that any breath might contain a molecule from Nelson's dying breath, or one of Henry VIII's belches (or worse) or Nefertiti's sneeze or a dinosaur's bellow. Presumably, the further back in time the more likely. So what are the chances that a molecule in the air I'm breathing now was once breathed by a slave building the Sphinx?
Or in similar mode, the human body is mostly water, which is circulated in the same way - what chance any part of me was once in the bilge of Leif Ericsson's Viking ship on the Greenland coast? Or of the puddle that Raleigh spread his cloak over for Elizabeth 1? Or even part of Raleigh before she had him shortened by a head for being presumptuous?
Enough already!
Another concept is Velocity Made Good or VMG. This is a calculated number based on our course and speed over the ground relative to where we are going. It is almost always different from our speed through the water and our speed over the ground but it is the best indicator of how efficiently we are sailing the boat and choosing our courses. On the last tack, our VMG for Cape Town was about 1 knot - then came the wind change we have been crossing all the appendages for and we tacked and now VMG for CT is 4.2 knots - much better but still not good enough to get us there by Dec 5th. We need a constant VMG of about 4.8 for that. Our speed through the water is about 6.2 knots and speed over the ground is 5.4 knots so we are in an adverse current of about 0.8 knots. Our required course over the ground for CT is 130M and we are actually making 167M which explains some of the discrepancies. Perhaps another burst on the difference between Magnetic course (M) and True course (T) and variation in another post.
Deborah, thanks for ISS and Atlantis info. As you can imagine, a big news hole out here - can't even get the Beeb world service without major hassle. I'm about to try using the mast as an antenna. Big Hi to Andrew - the Needles in 90+ knots I can only imagine.
Another word of explanation: Our ISS viewing times are roughly the 20 minute periods before sunrise and after sunset - while the ISS can see the sun and reflect its light towards us if they are anywhere near us bur as the sun is below our horizon the sky is dark enough for us to see the reflection quite easily.
Norm - thanks - jeers and ribald laughter from the crowd is what gets one foot out in front of the other again and again in those last 6km.
Making today's 5 litres of water, slurping coffee having dunked and waiting and watching. The brownish 'albatross' was back yesterday evening - airy, imperious swoops and soars either side of our track, disappearing into the troughs, changing direction apparently without effort, steep banked turns out to about half a mile either side and very occasionally crossing diagonally from astern to ahead.
Will try to grab remaining smidge of propagation window and HF this.
Murphyalater
Sitting on the front of the high, VMG for Cape Town lousy but we are hoping that it will improve significantly as we get further knocked and tack. Just as the Pacific Ocean was trying all the way from Sydney to Adak in the Aleutians last year to push us back into our box, so it seems that the whole of this huge stretch of the South Atlantic is moving North West at about 2 knots - the North West flowing Benguela current is supposed to be much closer to the African coast. So we've done a lot of sailing, tried some tacks to see where the best VMG happens and there ain't no good combination of wind and current out here just now. The Examiner being snaky.
Malcom, thanks re isinglass - we've always used vaseline which works just as well but the trick is to make sure there's lots of it evenly spread on the shell and doesn't always happen. We only chucked two out of 4 dozen so not bad - so to speak.
Duncan - you've been busy! Red jacket out of hiding and operational. Needs design tweak - I shall write to Henri Lloyd and see whether they are interested.
Another avian visitor - bigger, just as graceful, light brown - just possibly our first albatross.
We have just been visited by a Spectacled Petrel - yesterday's prelim jizz said it seemed to have white round the eyes but unable to get my decrepit eyes into gear so not sure but today it came back and no doubt whatever. I bet there aren't too many people who have seen one - they are endemic to Tristan da Cunha. Stocky bird but with the most graceful soaring swooping flight, just like an albatross.
Apart from that bit of wonder and joy, it's been an ornery day. Things have conspired - the laptop dropped it's iridium settings again so had to restore it to yesterday meantime big wind change so out on deck to adjust, come back to laptop and spill Grindy's Medical Elixir carefully saved in unspillable spot even in these conditions. Or so I thought. And that series was just one of several so somewhat frazzly, without gruntle, po faced and surrounded on all sides by irk.
Later, a photo I would have loved to have been able to take. Sunset about an hour ago, sky still deep luminous silver blue, fluffy dark grey castellations of Cu along the western horizon, radiant new moon above. Enter, stage right, Spectacled Petrel, black silhouette soaring across the sky and the moon in full 90 degree bank and swoop directly towards me - silhouette changes to tiny circle with razor slash curved enhedral wings. Another steep bank and he's gone. Serene, lovely sight and suddenly I'm unirked, fully gruntled and happy.
I'd forgotten what it is like to be cold and wet and complacency was in the air - last night's little fracas was a useful reminder and I'm now properly waterproofed. Big tidy up just finished and we're back pointing at CT at about 4.5kts. Wind easing, barometer rising. Will probably get softer during the day.
no-foter
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Today I used the last 4 slices of bacon to make onion, garlic, bacon, olives and parmesan rat to go with pasta and ok it was too. Paul and Pauline, please send our compliments to your butcher - bloody good bacon despite the oozy water, beautifully packed and it has lasted since about September 7th. Finished the eggs last week.
Just surfed off a breaking wave at 10 knots - twin poling in these conditions is such an easy way to go - stable and mostly fail-safe. But we have the lower stormboard in and the cone of silence down. For those who don't know Berri, the cockpit is unusual in that it has no sill or barrier between it and the inside of the boat so if a breaking wave crashes over the top, the cock[it will fill and the water - a couple of cubic metres or two tonnes of water - could all do a Niagara straight into the boat, all over the electronics here at the nav table and potentially into our bunks, the engine, even, in a real disaster, the fuel tank if we happen to be filling it. So, we have stormboards, lower and upper - very substantial shutters that fit exactly into the 'doorway' or companionway and seal the inside of the boat from the possible deluge. The lower one is sufficient for these conditions but we often need both in the southern ocean. As backup, there is the Cone of Silence, a curtain of thick plastic sheet that hangs down across the navigation and electronics space when needed. This has saved our bacon countless times when random and unexpected water sloshes through the companionway. But it's airless and sticky and 'orrible inside it prodding the keyboard.
And - most notably crossing the Atlantic from Greenland last year - in these following seas we have twice flooded the engine with water backflowing up the exhaust hose even though we put a stopper in the outer end and there's a one way silencer box that should prevent this but after some agonising, I concluded that cooling water in the exhaust must pool in the box and in a steep and violent pitch, this water flows back into the engine, so we - Gordy did most of it - fitted a big valve between the box and the exhaust manifold. If we feel it necessary to close this, we take the key out of the ignition first and hang it over the GPS. Then - and only then - we close the valve. The key stays there until after the valve is reopened.
Time for the breakfast ritual.
Reminds me a bit of Arthur's instructions to Fenchurch about flying - I've lost the exact words...
Barometer still falling but I think we're about to reach the bottom of this one. Hoping to get to CT by Dec 5th for special invitation to friend's post Fastnet meeting. Just do-able if we can negotiate the high behind this little blast. We are due to meet it tomorrow near the top where there are easterly winds - adverse, for the nautically challenged - but I'm hoping we've finessed it so that we can head just east of south for a day or so until we see what's behind it. Big following sea at the mo - perhaps 3 - 4 metres and breaking where it is amplified over the swell - and Berri is rolling horribly. Sometimes in the really big ones we go through gunwale to gunwale with a bit of corkscrew as well. Very much one hand for the boat, one for yourself and don't you forget it. Pete wedged into his bunk with beanie and airline face mask oblivious. Cone if silence down and lower stormboard in, making water with the engine charging the battery. In these following winds, the Whizzer can't keep up with the discharge so we have to supplement its efforts.
Ritual: Every Wednesday, Pete collects bucket, soap, fresh water and towel and goes to foredeck, gets naked - pimply wrinkled old fart that he is - and throws sea water over himself, then washes the flakes off with soap and fresh. I tend to do the APC deal - uses less fresh and much quicker but each to his own. We don't really smell!
Random rewards - any time there is cause for celebration - passing 10 degrees, El Pinko reappearing, talking to a ship, whatever - we celebrate. Usually a somewhat stiffer Consultation with the good man from Cork.
And we also have Regular Rewards, the most obvious being every thousand miles knocked off the tally - a bit of a hiatus here because I switched measurement from Falmouth distance to Cape Town distance but today's the day thanks to Pete Goss and his 18 year old bottle.
Andrew and Sue - Hi
Love yez all
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Sorry to hear about Groupama but glad they are all safe.
We're in mini hoon mode twin poled sitting in the NW flow at the top of the low and pointing more or less at CT. Perhaps another day then into the high and we'll slow down big time. Cold enough now for a blanket at night. Been running along the same roll of squally cloud for about 24 hours.
Saw what looked like a small yellowfin tuna swimming alongside us for quite a while.
Carol G - Forgot to include thanks for book offer yesterday sorry. Got out the recliner and put it on the grassy lawn on the afterdeck but too cloudy for Leonids. Thanks and G'day to everyone else - Good propagation so will try to send this by HF.
We've got Kevvo set up on the back of the old barge with turning blocks and bungy cord for the tiller lines - several years of playing with it all and there don't seem to be any improvements left. Except - we have always used 6mm sheathed braided line for the tiller lines and these have always chafed in two places and they tend to jump out of the sheaves on the actuating arm when there is violent movement. This time we are using 3mm unsheathed plaited spectra and it works beautifully. Minimal chafe and because it is so skinny it doesn't jump out of the sheaves as long as the bungys are properly set. Found a roll of the stuff in Dave Carne's back office in Falmouth and thought it worth a go. Breaking load about 600 kg - easily enough for the old Kev.
The first half cup of water from the watermaker each time we use it is always brackish from the back pressure in its guts. Read the instructions! I'm sure they shows the proper set up with bypass valve etc but we haven't got room for all that stuff so fill a cup before putting the tube in the first bottle. It's taken us years to work that one out.
Salad oil, cooking oil or even yer extra virgin is great for keeping the marine version of the old one hole dunny working smoothly - if you have a can of sardines in olive oil, pour the oil into the porcelain and next time you go, you will feel the difference in the pump action. Otherwise, a tablespoon every few days keeps the pump barrel slidey.
At 01.54.56 UTC November 16th we left the Tropics. Wooohooo! I wonder whether Berri will ever be back.
When we set off on the first of these silly extravaganzas in January 2005, we were using the Firefly New South Wales sailmail station run by Derek and Jeanine Barnard and remained in contact about half way across the southern ocean to the Horn. Then we transferred to the Chile station and held it around the corner up into the Atlantic until it went off line for repair. I have just re-established contact with Chile and sent the last message through the station. Full circle, in a way. In between, we have been in contact with all but a couple of the 20 stations around the world - more, I suspect, than most people.
The world hasn't stopped out there - our first ship for what seems weeks crossed astern of us at about 0730 - I turned on the VHF and he actually called us - a first, I think - to check whether all was well. I asked him to report seeing us and watched him sail away. bound from Africa to Buenos Aires. Another first - there are fish all around us - about 2 ft long, jumping occasionally and rather more oval in silhouette than small tuna. And a bird at sunrise - could have been our noddy of some days ago - small, brownish, flapping, wedge tail.
Heaps of mail - Steve back from the bush: Carol G - yep, I've read as much as I could stand but frankly, I think most of it is nonsense - the evidence just doesn't stand up and I remember being highly critical of some of his sources years ago at uni while doing a paper on Cheng Ho. Duyvendak for a start. Happy to take it all apart but not via iridium! Cheng Ho one of the people I would have liked to have been able to meet for dinner, Babelfish engaged for the translation. Fiona - so there really is a universe! Gerry & Donna - g'day! Carol R & the Richmond Julia Creek mob - g'day and glad Macca reaches even the Queensland boonies! Brian and Jen - Yay! Good to hear you are still with us. Sue - thanks for Groupama and news of UK, Norm, Blue nosed and in order out here! Agree re Mercator. Would love to know exactly what was destroyed in Lisbon in 1755 - someone will have been to MC first - and anyway, its significance is a human construct.
In case you are wondering, stuff-all wind here, big hole as predicted, hot, humid and not pleasant but we are carrying enough spare diesel to motor for a couple of days and we're giving ourselves a little carefully rationed slingshot of our own. Should get some wind off the top of the low tomorrow if we are far enough south.
Later - 1730/15th with Dr Grindy standing by to assist with any medical emergency - there's wind. And fog!! In the distance, cold air over warm ocean under biggish cloud - wooohooo! Right at this moment, 6 knots directly down the rhumb line. GC just a bit too tricky to play with for minimal gain. Won't last anyway and there's still that businesslike low below us that should be through tomorrow and a high behind it.
Seems we might just have hooked our fingernails into the top of the low hoofing east below us and we're hanging on as best we can - wind dropping and fickle, twin poled and rolling in the swell. If we can hold on to it - lucky - and we look good for tomorrow as well, then a bloody great hole for a day and then the next low. They are further north than I expected which seems to be a bit of a helping hand. We'll see - we still have to get ourselves 600 miles south across their paths and the second one has attitude.
Hot and tedious out here. Another 45 miles south and we're out of the tropics - hoooley doooley. Then the difficult bit starts. But those 45 miles are not going to be easy either.
We've been playing with the sextant - or Pete has and I've done the Merlin bit - but at civil twilight I'm going out to see whether I can grab Jupiter to add to Pete's earlier sun sight. Lots of fluffy cu so may be difficult.
Later - Jupiter was difficult - but got something else yet to identify. Possibly Achernar but the sight may not be good enough to decide. And then remembered that we need a current almanac to reduce planet sights so no Jupiter anyway. Cape Town perhaps.
Later still - middle watch again - I can't remember ever seeing stars in the night sky from horizon to horizon - there's always a layer of haze low down and cloud somewhere. Tonight is almost Khayyam's Bowl of Night - a little thickening of the density to the north and the stars don't quite make it through but a soft transition from the reflected starlight and phosphorescent twinkles on the water to the real thing above everywhere else - Jupiter in the west with a brilliant trail over the water like one of those christmas cards of the three kings following their star. I sit in the cockpit, chin resting on a winch, Berri in gentle shooshle with the gap between the big dark triangles of the poled out headsails rolling its arc from Rigel through Sirius past Canopus. The gas cloud is a bright fuzz almost to Achernar. The Cross just above the horizon. I will remember these nights as long as my three neurons continue to converse through their torpid synapse. Clear, awesome, overpowering wonder at the beauty of it all and my own insignificance. I'm just a few gerzillion organic molecules soon to be dispersed again along with their momentary cohesion of consciousness, my track through spacetime infinitesimally tiny and irrelevant.
We're not really in the complicated system to the south - the fingernails scraped along the turbulence and lost it so we're just trickling along in the swirls of soft breeze stirred up by its passage. Tomorrow will be a hole but there's a chance that the next low - the serious one - will give us a boost as it rolls past us. It has at least 50 knots close to its centre about 900 miles to the south. I hope Groupama hooked into it and are riding their slingshot eastwards.
I'll send this with the 0700 position to save on iridium. Steve W has gone bush for the w/e probably with no mobile signal so we won't get any mail until at least then anyway.
For those new to Berrimilla's voyages, here is an explanation about Henry Knight. In the 2005 round-the-world trip, Alex and Pete passed close to where a young boy called Henry Knight died in 1853 and was buried at sea. He was emigrating to Australia from England with his family.
The co-ordinates for the sea burial were given as 2835 S, 02609 W. The story about the Knight family was passed to Alex by a friend who was a descendant of Henry's father. This friend gave permission to quote online from the diary of the voyage, which is now housed in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. I read a transcript of the diary when Alex was in the UK back in 2005 and it was a harrowing and moving account of a most appalling journey. Many passengers died on the voyage due to illness, malnutrition or starvation. If I remember correctly this was in part due to the fact that the provisions they had paid for were not made available to them on board.
The extract copied below was publshed in the 2005 blog on 29th September as entry 392. You can access it in its proper context here:
http://www.berrimilla.com/log/TheLog22.htm
5th February 1853
Then I put my pot of contemplating Murph on the cockpit seat and Berri rolled and wallowed and - SPBF - another dent in the pot and only a mouthful of the stuff left. Serves me right - how long have I been out here??
Still in wallow mode, giving the red sail its first southern hemisphere outing. Twin poled at about 2.5 knots dragging our barnacle colony along for the ride and to get fat. Maybe not for long. If the wind drops, we're over the side with a knife.
Norm wrote about all the named corners in Australia where the State boundaries meet - Doeppels, Surveyor Generals etc. - and noted that there is no name for the point where the Greenwich Meridian crosses the equator and did I have any suggestions? Best I can do Norm is Pi for Primary Intersection, AntiPi on the Date Line? Or perhaps Mercator Central which it wasn't when he was alive but now is on most Mercator world charts. Pathetic really, but the best I can do.
Whoever might have been out there during the night isn't there now. We will send Henry's box off downwind at 0900 and contemplate over a refrigerated Murph. We are 400 miles from him this time but it will get there - why else do we placate the old fart with a trident?
Cloud to the SW could be the top of the first low - hope so but we are still a bit far to the north. Watch and wait seems to be the go.
C. - Isabella told us about your very generous donation towards the iridium bill. Thank you! Very much appreciated.
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Meantime, sometime today we will reach our closest point to young Henry Knight who will be about 400 miles to the south. I am preparing a little box of jelly snakes and chocolate tied with Isabella's red and green ribbon to send down to him. It'll be a week or so before it gets there, Henry, and 156 years too late but it's a small tribute to you and all the others who have died out here.
Otherwise - ennui. Hot shadeless days, no other signs that humans live on the planet. And suddenly not so. I've just been up to have a squizz and there was a light on the starboard quarter. I watched it for a bit and it vanished. That doesn't happen unless the light was switched off - why? Scary these days and I'll keep the satphone handy. Time 0215/14th position 22.16.3 S 023.07.5 W COG 120M @ 3kts
SJ tks for Groupama post. G'day John McC - I remember and glad you found us again.
We've passed the 5000 mile mark on the GPS. We haven't seen a ship, aircraft, bird or heffalump for days and days and days. Port tack since about 4 deg N.
Another of those nights in which it it impossible not to feel that one is part of the universe. Not a very big part. As I peer myopically into spacetime, there seems to be depth and perspective in the huge slice that is 'now' under an almost clear night's sky. In the hazy clarity you can see how densely packed the place is - so many tiny stars in the gaps between the big ones - Orion, for instance, could be spangles on a cobweb across the lights of a city - other galaxies, other lives? Through the binoculars just gobsmacking. And we have dinoflagellatious twinkles all around us to echo the sky. Quietly wonderful.
We've passed east of Martin Vaz - also known as Trinidade I think, though my chart doesn't say so - and we are nearly level with Rio. 2 degrees or so north of the Tropic of Capricorn - and therefore Rockhampton. About 420 miles north of where Henry Knight was buried at sea in February 1853. We will pass closer to him and we'll send him some jelly snakes in the next couple of days. 2400 to the Cape. Crossing the Atlantic Trench.
And Donald Crowhurst spent some time sailing up and down out here and is believed to have landed on Trinidade as he constructed his fictitious log in that first single handed race.
I pulled in a big grib file a few hours ago to try to get a feel for the uncoiling mess of high and low pressure systems just to the south of us and we decided to believe the predictions and take a punt. At 25.07 west, around 1900 yesterday evening we altered course towards the SE to try to stay in favourable winds and cut the corner to the Cape. We are making about 145M at the mo, so heading between Tristan and Africa. If we've got it right and it all hangs together, about three weeks to Cape Town.
We hardboiled the last of the eggs yesterday. 12 slices of bacon left - quite talkative it is too and starting to de-laminate but not at all green.
Hey Gordy - and the other seekers after the truth in the Chain Locker - sounds a bit bleak over there. Our refrigerated Murphs would be a lot warmer than a pint of Doom from the tap.
Norm - yep, 3 x 3. Doubt whether there's a ghost but possible. Would fit with commercial aspects.
Brian, thanks - I like it too. I watched him go past at Charing X. Feb 1966 I think.
Izz - gotcha and tks for BoLpost
Hilary - good to hear. Pse tell Hillross to go ahead as per your note. SJ sent us SMH extract. Pre China hug for K. More later.
Laurence Binyon
posted by Iz - who didn't know the poem before Alex quoted it today
Armistice Day - a day of significant ritual for some. For me, it is Laurence Binyon's poetry -' and they shall not grow old as we who remember them grow old ' - hope I've got it right - and the memory of my father, who survived WW2, as a man who could not reinvent himself in his middle age and who, I now think, was sad and disillusioned. I wish I had known him better. And Dave and Mike who was in my seat and all the others I knew and trained and flew with long gone and still young in my memory.
And renewal and rebirth - Binyon again and his poem 'The burning of the leaves' - Prof, I owe you for that one. And too, your namesake and his heritage, scarred into history outside Bailliol College.
To the mundane - daily ritual list for Berri: The Murphy Consultation at breakfast, the Priming of the Fridge three times a day, the 0700 report to the blog and the expectation that there might be mail waiting as I send it, watch changes every three hours, the 1700 Consultation with Dr Grindy and dinner together. The daily walk around the deck, the routine of day after day slogging it out and watching the miles go by. Sticking ones head up and looking around the horizon for ships - and cloud formations. Gourmet cup-a-soup in the night. And just living inside ones head and remembering that, like storms, long days pass and each is its own notch in time, its half kilometre in the marathon, one that is done, gone, scored on the scratch pad of life out here.
And we're getting close to the shipping lanes out of Rio.
From the cloud patterns it looks as if we are dropping into the top of the S Atlantic high. The barometer is rising and the grib, while still showing us as in the trades, has the high below us at about 25 S
As I said in the last one, below thr high you get down into the line of lows - depressions - that march across the world all year round and go all the way down to the ice at times. To be avoided unless you are deliberately looking for a slingshot into the next dimension, as Groupama will be when they get down there in a few days. Then they will start to go very fast indeed and will sustain those speeds for thousands of miles as they follow the great circle to the Horn as far down towards the ice as their data tells them is safe.
I have been in 4 really severe storms and the '98 Hobart with winds over 60 kts and at least 2 of them gusting over 80. Two were approaching Cape Horn 4 years ago and the other two were in the S Atlantic, off Montevideo and just a bit further along our current track towards Cape Town. All but the '98 Hobart (where we were just behind it) found us in the dangerous (left front) segment of one of these depressions and if you haven't experienced the ferocity of an even relatively mild 60 knot southern ocean storm it is very hard to describe - a combination of wind and huge breaking waves, gut wrenching knockdowns, the screaming of the wind in the rig, violent movement with no frame of reference and the crashing of water against, around and over the boat. Plus your own fear. Grown men have been reduced to tears - and at least one has been brave enough afterwards to make his videos public. You sustain yourself from wave to wave, knockdown to knockdown by remembering that no storm lasts for ever - they just seem to - and you have to outlast them and hope the boat is strong enough to last that long too. I seem to remember that the one we went through over here had winds over 45 knots for 9 days and we were bare poled (no sail up, trying to keep the wind and waves on the quarter and sometimes surfing at 10+ knots) for most of the time. While there's never nothing you can do, you are pretty much helpless and it feels that way. Not funny. I hope the Examiner is kinder to us this time.
David - interested. We may be in touch shortly.
Allan - more interesting than ever. I guess you have to ask how often it happens around the world and never gets reported.
I think it is this flow of the subconscious, a subliminal sensing of the unfolding pattern of things that makes it so difficult for me to listen to music or to read anything more demanding than escapist whodunnitry. Each requires a level of concentration that drowns the subconscious and the subconscious keeps fighting back. It's a form of obsession but it has saved our bacon several times that were obvious and I'm absolutely sure umpteen times before they became obvious. It is aural, visual and tactile - like the aircraft pilot whose eyes see broken patterns on her instruments or who feels that tiny buzz of resonance and is instantly warned, I hear and see and feel the boat. Today the click, yesterday the tweaker on the wrong side of the sheet, years ago the feel of the almost broken forestay. Makes me highly unpopular sometimes! I remember getting cross with McQ last year for being so absorbed in whatever her ipod was doing to the inside of her head that she had not noticed the leech flutter or something equally trivial in itself but part of a larger pattern - the butterfly's wing on the other side of the world.
And I still miss heaps - the disconnected windvane when Pete went overboard 4 years ago, for instance. Complacency sucks but it's so easy!
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Norm - one for you - I think it was Helena Rubinstein who said that her product represented the triumph of hope over reality. Or words to that effect.
Daily rituals: very important for marking the passing of time and ensuring, for instance, that things don't get forgotten.
0900 - I'm coming off watch and Pete is coming on. 'You awake, Pete?' 'aarghmpfh yes' ' It's time' So he gets out of his pit and I work my way around the dodger -tricky in these conditions - with a bucket containing 2 cans of Dr Murphy's excellent medicinal compound all the way from Crosshaven. I work my way forward to Berri's fridge - Coolgardie variety, milk crate with wet towel wrapped around 2 Murphy's similarly delivered yesterday and exchange the warm for the cold. Surprisingly effective fridge if you keep it primed - see below - and in the shade and the breeze. The evaporation of the water from the towel requires heat and this is extracted from the cans. Great care required on return journey so as not to shake cold cans and exacerbate widgetary effusion - see below. Pete gets out special tankards from the sliding cupboard, carefully deals out small handful from last bag of molto toothsome crisps from Lisbon. Then the careful positioning of can - for me, inside the tankard - so that the instant widgetary effusion at the moment of unzipping goes mainly in the pot and then I pour it and - sweet nectar of the gods, it slips away with gentle fluid caress of the olfactories and the other thingies on the tongue.
Then I go to bed and last about an hour before the pee bucket calls. Bugger decrepitude!
Fridge priming - at least three times a day it is necessary to pour sea water over the towels to keep them damp. Pete usually does the final one in his 2100-midnight watch. There is also a bottle of tonic cooking quietly in the fridge awaiting its fate at 1700 - see part 2.
Still a'hooning, heading south along longitude 24.58 W to get down to where we hope the back of the high will be. To continue yesterday's explanation for the non-sailors, south of about 35 degrees the westerly winds begin - you're in the top of the roaring forties. in the forties, a line of low pressure systems tramps around the globe at various intensities and frequency. A southern hemisphere low rotates clockwise and draws air in towards the centre - think water going down a plughole - and the closer you are to the left front quadrant of the system you are the stronger the wind. The combination of the anticlockwise high to the north and the clockwise low to the south tends to promote and intensify the westerly winds where the two meet and the trick for us is to trek along the bottom of the high and the top of the low.
More on this later - must send it and get on with ritual. Post on ritual to follow too.
