We have the assymetric kite up, VMG about 4.5, iff the wx system holds for the two days forecast, it should get us home but no predictions! Barnacles not helping.
Last night: Looking back over the last 66 days of sailing - the first 36 k of this little marathon - I'm astonished at how lenient the Examiner has been with us. 7500 miles of downhill, easy sailing most of the way, except for some small bursts of the pearshaped up in the convergence zone. So, desperately frustrating though it has been to be out in the gridlock within sight of the pub and no Marvin to take over, I don't think we have grounds for complaint as we wallow here. On the contrary, in fact. But we are not in the bar yet - not nohow and I might change my mind at any time.
Middle watch again - we have just enough breeze to be making headway, or we had when I started writing this but it's dropping out rapidly. Massive to-do list for CT if we ever actually get there. Battery down to 65% - lowest I can remember ever seeing it - so a bit of diesel and we can make some water too. Just not enough wind for the Airbreeze whizzer to keep the charge up.
I've been idly engaging the neuronic trio in contemplating the preconceived, taken for granted notion of size, of the vast stretches of this little blue green blob in the universe in human terms. Berrimilla and I have been at the northernmost point of mainland America, on the southern shore of Bellot Strait in the NW Passage and at the opposite end, at Cape Horn which is on an island south of the end of the mainland. At both places I was conscious of the huge distance to the other end. We are now just short of one of the fiercest Capes of all, Cape Agulhas at the southern tip of Africa. The enormous spread of the continent fills the whole of my perspective from Berri's bow around to past her port quarter, yet it is over the horizon, low, relatively flat and so far invisible - a quirk of geography class at school and completely unreal. Big, mysterious and unknowable. And Agulhas, not Good Hope, is the real 'Great Cape' and one of the five. So ends as rather mixed up contemplation. The next couple of days - and perhaps several more - are going to be very long. More dead leaves in the bus shelter.
David W - Dutch Harbour sounds pretty much par but I'd like to see that facebook page - would you please ask for me? You should read Steve Tompkins' blog - I think it is 'a sense of place' and there's a link on the old /tng site.
