Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

And all of this shall grind the arsebone and pass away

0630/3rd position 3509 01222 trip 108 but DMG to Cape Town 69. 295 to go - Monday morning on the cards

Yesterday - On the port tack in Berri with any sort of heel, there is nowhere comfortable to sit and relax. Nowhere. You are constantly braced by legs, arms, eyebrows and the poor old arsebone and we've been on the port tack seemingly for ever. With no prospect, for the moment, of any change. Necessity and adversity being the mothers of invention, Pete had a brilliant idea and our now largely redundant coolgardie fridge milk crate is upended on the floor next to the galley with a folding cushion on top and we have a seat. I know where there's an arsebone overflowing with joy and happiness!

We are 25 miles south of Africa - in the Southern Ocean - and to emphasise the point, we're in big rolling swells with wind waves over the top. Heading SE, more or less directly into the current and picking the time to tack is a tricky and somewhat arbitrary decision. We have 317 miles to go, directly upwind and across the current yet we don't want to get too far south to the natural lay line because the developing low to our WNW seems to be deepening rapidly and is predicted to move north, producing 25 knot easterlies down here. And, to make it even harder, we just got a little lift, so the other tack will be a bit less efficient in the VMG department.

Middle watch this morning - Anyway - all seemed cool and froody so tried a tack and - oh joy! - the combination of wind and current gave us a 90 degree tack and we're pointing at southern Namibia instead of the Gulf of Guinea like last time and there is the prospect of a lift later. But it may not last - things seldom do out here! Lots of very big ships going around the end of Africa each way. Spoke one going east - surly and uninterested but confirmed he could see us at 7 miles on radar - reassuring! The new reflector seems to work.

With the radio once again randomly functional, I have a Cape Town MW station and the Beeb world service dialled in and we have human voices again. The very first voice I heard was some guy reporting in broad Australian from Melbourne. So there ya go.

Sue - would you like me to despatch Pinkbok for Xmas tree? I think he'd be relieved!
John and Sherryl - great to hear and good luck with Matangi and new lodger!
Robin - gotcha - Pete will write
Tim - thanks for generous offer - separate email follows/precedes this post.

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Latest position images and Henry Knight

Note that the marker in the south west corner of the lower image is
not a Berri position. It marks the supposed site of Henry Knight's
grave. For Henry's story, go to log entries around November 14th.
I and G in UK

Latest Position

Umpteenth quickie

The radio has come back from the dead. Damn! That will make the problem harder to diagnose.

Position 0700/3rd 3417 01052 trip 98 but vmg to CT only 59 miles. 364 to go.

We have 10 days worth of doses of Dr Murphy's medicinal compound and the second packet of real M&Ms is broached and dwindling. Major incentives to get across this bloody current and into CT.

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Moving - arachnid like but moving

0700/02 position 3340 00954 trip 95, 413 to CT so real DMG 76. Best guess at ETA from here late Sunday, early Monday.

We have a steady wind at last and should keep some if it for at least 24 hours - but no predictions! Almost level with CT and Sydney. Pooey morning so back to back breakfast Murph at 0430 to fortify. Excellent recipe and much fortification added. Been bashing iridium lately so will keep these short for a bit.

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Oscillating Wollongong

Finally - after about four years since we last saw it from Berri from way down in the southern ocean on the other side of Africa - The ISS - new improved version, bigger, better, brighter with Scott's bit of fishing line on the big solar array to hold the thing together. I was not expecting to see it as it is cloudy and 3/4 moon anyway but it appeared in a gap for about a minute - Yay! Thanks Deborah and Carol both of whom sent me this one. I wonder who is up there now.

While it is tedious, this bit of the journey has been really interesting - seamount, current, water temp etc. We are now re-crossing the continental shelf SE of the seamount ridge and the water temperature has dropped 2 degrees. An ominous sign. The predicted midnight wind change has not happened - we are ghosting along in about 5 knots of breeze at about 3 knots. No obvious sign of the change in the clouds - it may have dissipated before getting to us but so far the grib has been very good at predictions. Here's hoping. Soon we will pass Sydney - at 33.51S on almost exactly the same latitude as Cape Town but on the east coast of the continent so subject to very different weather conditions.

Then there's Wollongong, 50 miles further south. I hope we don't need to go that far but if we do there's an ancient Berri tradition dating all the way back to 1994. The journey back from Hobart after a Sydney-Hobart race is often really tedious - not much wind and up to 3 knots of adverse current all the way up the NSW coast. That first time for me in Berri, Floris and I were bringing her home (actually from the Sydney-Eden race that year) and we decided to open a beer once we got to Wollongong which we duly did. Wollongong has moved a few miles further south every year since - a virtual concept! From here, we could perhaps start to move it north again.

Hi Norm!

Link to recent post

Alex asked me to post this link - to the right place in the right blog
- from 2008.
http://awberrimilla.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

The link should take you more or less there, but you will have to
scroll to the correct date.
The unwary, who choose to stray to other pages, may be assailed with
invitations to sample a cocktail of invigorating medication in several
jolly colours.
The management team apologises. This is the unreachable and hacked
site. Some kind Canadians seem to think Alex and Pete need pepping up.

Isabella in the UK

Nostalgia, part 4?

Another blog from the desktop on the old laptop. I must have saved it to send later. I remember writing this one, (and Tony's brisket!)less than 18 months ago, huge sense of achievement but tempered with the knowledge of what was to come and the uncertainty of setting out to do something that really put us out there on our own in the most hostile of environments. As it turned out, Nome and Pat Hahn and his family became the basis for the success of our transit of the NW Passage - and are now lifelong friends - I have an invitation to follow the Iditarod next year on a snow machine with Pat and the team supporting one of the Mushers. Who'd a thought that before Baton Rouge and Pascal's little chart?

Early am 5th July Nome with what passes in America for coffee:
Strange - eerie? - feeling. I remember vividly looking at Nome on google earth in Sydney what seems now only yesterday yet so far in the past it has no time frame. I remember my feelings at the time - this tiny spot so far away - a harbour - Berri still on her mooring at RANSA - so far to go, so much preparation, perseverance, patience and persistence to get there - such a thoroughly uncompromising task to get Berri here and this is only the beginning. And here we most definitely - yet somehow unbelievably - are. On Independence Day - seems fitting.

I sat in Breakers Bar on Front Street as the festivities went on outside - long, narrow dark bar receding into the murky cigarette smoky distance, Mr Zappa and the Grateful Dead on NPR loud in the background, a bunch of goldpanners, construction workers and locals spread along the bar drinking the most amazing concoctions. Ice, cranberry and Vodka with a side shot of Crown whisky is one I remember. I felt as if I belonged - yet the signpost outside the Nugget a few doors away said Sydney 7181 miles (easily the furthest away of all the names). Tony, the barman, had a cookpot behind the bar and he opened it up and put a big black lump about a foot long onto a huge cutting board and started to carve it. My July 4th brisket, said he - would you like a plate? Would I??! How much is it? Against the law to sell it in here - I'm giving it away…so I got a paper plate with slices of marinated sugar glazed brisket, cooked overnight, with crisp bread and a mix of beans and onion. One of the best meals I have ever experienced - washed down with Alaskan Amber. A feeling of something achieved yet the usual apprehension that the Examiner still lurks and we're really only at the start line. Can't ever escape that except by getting on with the job. Just needed Marvin along to park the amazing collection of hard country vehicles outside and tell me that his b.t.s.o.a.p. was wasted in Nome and did I have a real job for him?

On which: today is back on the gearbox problem. It's a linkage problem, I think - doesn't always seem to engage properly so I will try to dismantle it all again and adjust it - almost impossible to get to the business end of the Morse cable that moves the gear lever but I gotta do it somehow. McQ and K having their usual morning sleep in and will probably appear around lunchtime and start on the other jobs.

Still too much ice up north and we have been strongly advised by the locals who know that we should not leave until it is open at Point Barrow so we will stay here until that happens. So - out of this expensive hotel and into a B & B if it looks like more than a few days.....

And I won't bore you with the rest. To savour the moment, I have just made coffee using the little blue plastic funnel and one of the last of a pack of 250 filter papers that I bought in the store in Nome - last used, I think, during our rather nasty Atlantic crossing last September.

For the oceangraphically minded

Position 1215/01 3259 00850, 472 to go.

The current has vanished, at least for the time being. Hooooley dooooley! How can this be in a world where the laws of physics rule?

Some observations: We felt what seemed to be the strongest current as we passed the big seamount at 31.40S 008.24W. It sits on a ridge extending from the continental shelf and presumably has a significant effect on the huge volume of water flowing NW past it. We passed over the ridge about 35 miles S of the seamount.

The current ceased abruptly as we crossed the south eastern edge of the ridge and the water temperature rose about 2 degrees. This seems to be a very similar phenomenon to the East Australian Current which also runs along the continental shelf, except that there, the current is warm water flowing south whereas here it seems to be cold water flowing north. I have tweaked our heading to try to stay in the warmer water here and we have every appendage in the boat crossed.

If everything holds, Dec 5th will be tantalisingly close but I think just out of reach given the grib predictions for the next 4 days. Kite at the ready for a tiny snatch of northerly wind if it lasts long enough to reach us.

Quickie

0700/01 position 3248 00822, trip 106, CT 496 so real trip = 66. GPS trip from Falmouth reads 7144 sailing miles.

Astonishingle, amazingly, astoundingly - the current just disappeared! We are running along the edge of the shelf heading more or less towards CT. Lincoln's wise men may have known a thing or two. Perhaps. Now we need wind. I think Dec 5th is definitely a bridge too far but you never know out here.

Pink predictor, tks for stormsurf. We'll take what comes. El P in the pink.

The last 6 k part 2

Here we are, 500+ miles from Cape Town going nowhere and, furthermore, doing it sideways towards northern Namibia or Gough Island. At about the same speed as you would walk a chihuahua through a peat bog. There's a lovely Lincoln quote that I've kept by me for a year or so since I first read it:

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!" - Abraham Lincoln

How consoling indeed. Just about sums it up! Thanks Carla.

ISS pass tonight, perhaps, if I have read the numbers right.

More Accurate Frustration!

Posted, with apologies, by I & G in UK.

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.

Crash 'n bash

0700/30th position (day 60, excluding Lisbon) 3145 00721, trip 123 (but only 97 closer to Cape Town) CT 562

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!

Frustration!

Compare bottom left and bottom right positions to understand Alex and
Pete's frustration.

Posted by I & G in the UK.

The last 6 K

1900/29th position 3135 00643 with 603 to CT and going sideways

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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Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Another quickie

0700/29th position 3152 00525 trip 108 CT 659 - bad knock from the current and SE wind but Dec5 still possible.

Sus, tks for stormsurf data.

Quickie from ship alley

0700/28th position 3203 00321 trip 134 and 759 to CT. The equation is moving our way - but no predictions.

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.

Hesdbanger's lament

Another of those heart-in-mouth nights when Berrimilla's passage through the ocean sets off a trail of luminous green strobe like explosions of writhing radiance in her wake and out to the sides as well - it's as if there is a pressure wave from her bow out to about 5 metres each side and while most of the fun occurs directly in her wake, there are sporadic flashes at least that far out every few seconds. At six knots, that sort of pressure wave in water must be in the nanopooptillionth range so whatever it is is extraordinarily sensitive. Whatever, it is mesmerising and lovely, our own special aurora marking our passage.

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!