Latest Position

another quickie

0700/19 position 26.23 01433 trip 120 CT 1765nm
CT now less than 3 BU - Berrimilla units or 630 miles/U or 1 Sydney-Hobart race/U - seems much more do-able than 1765 miles. Given about 21 BU from Falmouth to Sydney and we've done about 9 of them - only 12 to go! Woooohooo! This bit from Falmouth has been a bit of a headbang.

Another avian visitor - bigger, just as graceful, light brown - just possibly our first albatross.

A tired analogy

Tomorrow is sailing day 49 out of Falmouth (not counting the Lisbon stop). We have at least 18 to go. I know I have used this metaphor all through these voyages but it works for me and it has a real significance. A marathon is 42.2 kilometres less a metre or so. I've run a few - lost count but perhaps 26 or 27 - and for me the half way point psychologically and often physically as well comes at about 36km. At 36 k I know I will finish and I can almost feel the buzz notwithstanding the fact that my body has started to eat itself and every white line painted on the road feels as if it's a foot high, potholes are like volcanic craters and my eyes no longer focus and my legs are starting to cramp. The three neurons have long since given up trying to engage with sludgy synapse and talk to each other. Those last 6km seem to take as long as the first 36 and every metre is an effort that has to be made, one after the other. I reckon we're closing on half way to Cape Town on that basis - not quite there yet, I think that may really come at the Greenwich meridian - but close. As a compressed analogy a marathon, over a bit under 3 hours, says it all, though with a much higher intensity, for a sea voyage of 60+ days.

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.

Quickie - I need a cuppa.

0700/18th position 2603 01640 trip 129 CT 1877

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.

And then it all went pearshaped

Enter, stage left, the Examiner in her hot pink leathers. We've been twin poling happily for a couple of days riding the top of the low down hill towards Cape Town but all good things etc. First a rapid change in wind direction NW back to SW along with barometer bottoming and starting to rise. Here beginneth the High, it seems. Then rain and squally gusts and time to roll in the red sail - Black murky night, Pete coming off watch, Old Fart no 2 goes out to do it - no prob - roll it in and tie it off, unroll a bit more genoa and adjust the pole, back below to get dry and make cuppa. Not so Fast, says Herself, all softly snarly like. Another gust and the top half of the red sail unrolls and starts to flog itself out if its little knickers. O.F. no 2 back out to sort - no easy way so try easing the halyard right off which does ease the flogging so OF2 to the foredeck in driving cold rain, naked except for skinny shorts to gather in flogging sail - all ok until mostly gathered in and - wouldn't ya know? - didn't ease enough halyard so can't get it all and now cant get back to ease more without losing control of the sail. Pete comes out and we eventually get it under control, squeeze it down the little ventilation hatch, put the pole away, tidy the string and get the genoa rolled in as well, remove the pole, tidy up and back below. OF2 by now shaking with cold and needing lukewarm cuppa from half an hour ago. Unseamanlike, you may well say - correctly - but things seldom happen according to Hoyle and you sometimes have to muddle through.
So now we're bare poling to the NE in pitch black night, both stormboards in to keep out cold rain in gusts, waiting for daylight when we will go out properly clad, make sure all the bits of string are properly sorted and get some sail up again. Meantime, write and send this, get another GRIB to see what's in store and make another cuppa.

no-foter

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West of the Chain Locker

If you sit in Gordy's usual spot on the corner of the bar in the Chain Locker (Waterside pub in Falmouth, for the Australians and other Oddlanders) with your back to the fireplace, you would be looking more or less south with a smidge of west. That's where we are now but in a week or so - AGW - you will have to stand with your back to the fire as we pass you to the south, range 5000 nm as near as makes no difference, straight down the meridian. Celebrate with us - how about a nominal time of 1800 UTC on Nov 24th - a week today? Somebody please tell Dave Carne - we'll assume he might be in the top office - and Oz and Tall Paul and Adi and Lara and anyone else who might be around. Teleport us some ice for the G&Ts.

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.

Things you learn and random rewards

Another occasion for a Random Reward - soon, DV & WP, we will cross 5 degrees West, the longitude of Falmouth, so we will have sailed the massive arc of ocean necessary to get around West Africa and we will really be heading for home. Then there's 1.15W, the longitude of Cowes, the furthest East we have been. Then there's the Greenwich Meridian. Each a potential cause for celebration should one be needed. The GPS trip reads 5478nm - roughly the distance we have sailed from Falmouth, but still 13 degrees of longitude to go to complete the arc.

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.

A bit of ritual - part 3?

Nice one from Carla in Baton Rouge:
Watched the movie Serenity and thought of you and Berri. The lead character
tells the first rule of flying (a spaceship): "You can learn all the math in
the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake
you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air
when she oughtta fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens, makes
her a home." Fair winds and lots of love, Carla.

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

n0-footer

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Quickie

0700/17th position 2518 01845 trip 130 2000 to Cape Town so a Talisker moment later perhaps.

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.

Things you learn: Part the Umpteenth:

Baked beans ferment once you open the can. Without going into the enormously long winded and engrossing possibilities of this interesting fact (just think Blazing Saddles with fermentation..Slim Pickens on rocket fuel...Always appreciated Slim Pickens - such a nice self deprecatory name for a no bull actor) I have eaten more than a small gerzillion baked beans cold from the can with a teaspoon in the last 5 years or so but I've never managed a whole can even when conditions have been particularly adverse and peary. So - always buy your beans in half cans unless you really really like them or you have more nefarious purposes for the left overs.

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.

Significant moments

The HF radio is back but flaky and the Pactor modem drops out sometimes mid connection - don't know why. So this will be interesting. I'll send it now with our 0615 position 2342 02012 trip 5337 and CT 2107 to go

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.

It's all happening - except wind.

Hornswoggle - the HF radio just came on - must be something loose or a dry connection somewhere. I'll try to send this before it dies again. 1330/15th position 2309 02103. No send - no propagation.

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.

Fingernails - in at least 2 episodes

0700/15th position 2255 02129 trip 5247=87/24 Cape Town 2190 This post started yesterday afternoon.

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.

Henry's Place; Berri's position

Posted by I and G in the UK

Henry Knight

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

 5Fine day very Hot Calm Henry very/ Ill could not take but very little Susan A little better betwixed 8 and 9 O'Clock/ Henry went down stair's took A Counterpane down with him that he had/ been laying on all day previous to this he had been to the Closet but once all day/ as soon as he got down to our Berth he started to the Closet I followed after him was/ in the Closet with him we talked together a good bit I then went up on the upper/ Deck same time Henry went down I stayed a short time up on Deck because my/  wife was washing the children and she could do better with the little Girl when I was/ out of sight as she used to cry after me, mean time Henry had gone to the Closet/ again and for the last time he was heard to groan but no one it appears Knew what/ it was or who it was he had fasten himself in the Closet with the Hasp as was the / way of most of the  Emigrants and therefore could not be got at under 15 or/ 20 Minutes no one had  suspected a death had taken place untill the Door was opened/ but so it was poor fellow he was quite dead sitting on the seat & perhaps my/ friends can be a better judge what my feelings were than I can express I took/ George to see him after he had been carried into the Hospital which was the place/ where all the Dead were taken poor fellow he wept over him most bitterly nor/ was he the only one that wept for none of us expected/ all this

 

Posted by Iz in the UK

Henry

At 0905 UTC we launched Henry's little box at 22.26.1 S 022.44.5 W with instructions to the hairy old fart with the trident to ensure that it gets delivered by his favourite mermaid. Jelly snakes, jelly beans and chocolate tied with red and green ribbon from Isbella and sealed with gaffer tape. As you do. Onya Henry!

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.

Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Henry's day abd a big thank you

0700/19th position 2221 02252 trip 98/24 Little bit of breeze and creeping along.

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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Berriwallow

Middle watch - Berri rolling gently in the swell - quiet shhsssh sshoossshh of the water slipping past the substantial colony of barnacles along the starboard side - stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae in their gigazillions in an almost luminescent sky - poled out on the port tack in wallow mode, main slatting uncomfortably and may have to drop it and get the red sail out, just shooshling (Kimbra's NE Passage word?) along at about 3 knots - NE swell and about 8 knots of breeze. Will be a couple of days before we know whether yesterday's punt will work out or not - we are at the top of a complex series if swirling high and low pressure systems and the grib predicts that there are a couple of dominant lows to the SW. I think Groupama will be further down on the second one going like the clappers eastwards - I hope so - keep stoking the boilers guys! If we are lucky we will just sneak into the top of the first one and it might carry us into the second. But there are big holes all around so it's anybody's guess. At 0140 on the 14th, we're pointing directly at Cape Town with 2292 to go.

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.

Colder pints or general relativity

0700/13th 2141 02432 trip 132/24 2378 to CT These positions almost always come at the end of the blog, which gets stitched together in the middle watch and sent around 0700.

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.