For Berrimilla's first circumnavigation, the International Space Station
and the North West Passage, go to www.berrimilla.com
and www.berrimilla.com/tng

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

(no subject)

Position 0630 3rd 4509 08009, trip 97, DMG 46, which includes making up the 37 we lost yesterday so an ok result.

What a difference a day makes, to coin a cliche. Whoever did the upended colander Incantation for us got it right. We have the assymetric kite up, hooning, heading a bit too far north but we'll drop it when we get up to 45N and pole out the heady and point at Hobart. From aaaarrrggghhhh to Aaaaaahhhh! It's just like sailing across the bottom of a glass of milk - one of those crystal glasses with a pattern cut into the base - grey crinkled fluid glass, liquid fog, no horizon and the diffused glow of a silver sun just hanging up there in the milky firmament. Noice, except for the runny drips off everything. This must be the fog Cook wrote about, that he sailed 900 leagues through. Convergence zone classic.

Ferals later - I think we need a new grib so I'll try to send this. Firefly starting to go green at 70+% on the propagation screen for sailmail (green means there's a chance to connect for that hour of the day and the % gives a rough guide as to how lucky you might be) so things are beginning to close in. About 30k in the marathon - way back from half way - the turning point for confidence. Or the hook for Damocles.

ABC radio

Last Sunday morning, 31st Jan, the boys had a chat via satphone to ABC Radio's Macca on his show Australia All Over. The call went for about 14 minutes, and the mp3 version is here:


It is big - about 8mb, and Berri is from 1:00 to 14:30. A very good chat about Kerguelen, both sounding as chipper as ever.

Peanuts

It's been a Charlie Brown day. The sort of day when Lucy took the ball away just as he finished his mighty run up to kick it and he whirled over flat on his back. Stood up, threw his head back and yelled AAAAaarrrrrghh!

One of those days. when little things conspire to make life even more difficult, when we are wrapped first in too much wind from the wrong direction, going backwards, now in too little, in almost liquid fog that runs off everything. And the pasta was all starch - a gooey glutinous awful gluggy mess - almost uncookable in the boat - never seen it like that before. And...and...the list goes on. AAAArrrrrggghhh!

Half an hour later - I tried to connect to Iridium to send this and see whether we have any mail and there's no dial tone. The computer has, once again, removed the iridium modem and substituted it's own internal version so another dreary system restore. Why does it do this??

aaarrrrggghhhh!