A funny old life

Position 0630 22nd 4314 12913, trip 118, DMG 110 - mildly astonishing given the meanderings and wobbly winds but there we are. If we can keep 5 kts on the clock we should make Maatsuuyker by Sunday. Not too hopeful at this stage. Groupama will be a green flash beyond our southern horizon in the next 24 hours or so.

Young, black on top and white faced albatross still around and a smaller one - looks like a black brow but isn't - and prions all over the place.

I've just been asked to do a short article for the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum newsletter - a bunch of readers whose towering erudition leaves me quaking and awestruck - long story but to do with the alcohol token, a coin substitute, that has been accepted from my sister by the PRM. Odd though because I once shared a house with someone who later became quite respectable and went off to Oxford to become the Director (don't know his proper title) of the PRM, which up till I learned about his appointment I had never heard of. Circles in the sand.

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A zig and a zag, a this and a that

Been a bit overwhelmed for a day or so. Wind great in the progress sense but keeping Berri together and hooning in these seas is a touch unrelenting and the grackling and clenchening keeps the decrepit metabolism working in high gear. Not quite 'not having fun' cos we are moving towards towards the flaky paint and rusty hinges but wearying.

Anyone seen the moon recently? Or the sun? I think we're on the wrong planet - will extract old faithful Merlin to get some times.

Bashing through the og we were earlier, black squally night, occasional glimpses of brilliantly sparkling stars. Vaguely aware of new banging thump, intermittent, sporadic - seemed to be coming from stbd q-berth so put it down to movement of bags of food cans and empty fuel drums squashed in there. A bigger roll than usual (meaning a very big one indeed) bigger crash and all the lights, instruments, electrics generally karked. Dark dark but for faint glow of some LEDs and the USB gadget powered by the computer. Dooon't Paaanic! Reach for blue towel, wake Pete and start closing everything down and begin diagnosis.

No radio (connected directly to the battery, bypassing the isolation switch), no engine start from either battery, no wind generator, lights, instruments. Oddly, some LED indicators on switch panel still working along with 12v dc outlets. Unpack q-berth to get at main battery box, nothing obvious, big shunt connections ok - 12.7 v from each battery so - phew! - we haven't cooked them - then a big lurch and the two big batteries and all their rats nest of wiring moved a couple of centimetres inside the battery box. That's it! The new crashing noise. Feel and prod all the terminals and massive wires and Eureka! the main negative lead runs from the terminal through a slot cut into the top of the rear side of the battery box and off to the shunt and it has parted inside the insulation over the crimp to the spade terminal. A classic stress fracture - the end of the 8mm copper wire looked just like a bit of brown cheese. While still held together inside the insulation there must have been just enough current to keep those LED's glowing.
From there, what to do? We don't carry spade terminals that big, or a crimper either. But we do have cable clamps to bypass shroud failures - big ones! We clamped the broken end of the wire to another big negative wire crimp on the battery terminal and bobsyer! Back in business. Sounds easy but imagine doing it with your armchair rising and falling 15 feet or so, rolling through 60 degrees and pitching so your nose hits the table in front of you. I'm gobsmacked that the electrics kept working so well for so long - hanging by a thread it must have been for quite a long time.
So - the cause - it seems that the negative lead going through the slot must have been holding 30 kilos or so of battery more or less in place for the two years since they were installed, but with a bit of movement happening in the heavy weather stuff causing the wire to flex at the crimp, weaken, the movement to increase, the wire to strand and eventually part.
And the fix - all y'all make absolutely sure that your batteries are wedged as tightly as possible into their boxes as well as being strapped down. We banged a couple of softwood plugs into the space for Berri and it will all get us home.

Here endeth the lesson for the day.

Quickie

Psitiion 0630 21st 4345 12337, trip 124, DMG 117. Chequered progress - sunshine, rain, gale, big rolling swells, short, vicious lumpy seas - roll up, roll up, come for a trip in the old Bucket in the Bight - thrills, nailbiting, chunder gaslore.

Pete's daughter, Sarah is 30 today! Happy Birthday Sarah! All y'all Consult and send happy vibes.

MJC - tks for whalers.

next stop....

Adventure Bay next stop for the old barge (and bargees).

(Click on map to enlarge.)

Not having fun part 27 or whatever

Position 0630 20th 4349 12353, trip 129, DMG 124. Progress - 999 to SE Cape.

The Examiner is back from the broom cupboard, dishevelled and feeling guilty that she's neglected her duty for so long. The 'mild' low to the south of us is giving us a steady 30 - 40 knots with huge breaking seas - vast vertical walls of translucent power and beauty - breaking along the tops and each one threatening to swamp the old barge. Tiny spot of headsail, Kevvo in charge. We take off down the faces at 9+ knots - Scary but seems better to be moving reasonably fast with the waves - you can only sit all grackly and watch and wait for the next one to come rolling through - and the next. And then there are the cross waves that come in occasionally and amplify the dominant swells and they really arrive with attitude. Bright sunlight between clumpy Cu and the sea a brilliant deep blue on one side of the boat and lighter, greenish blue on the other. No sign of it blowing out - I think we have got to sit through at least another six hours or so before it abates and the seas start to go down. Poo! It's going to be a long trip from here. Now gone thick overcast - rolling Cu and rain squalls. Sea almost black with glowing white breakers. Lovely if it wasn't so threatening.

Albatrosses yesterday - at least three big Snowy or NZ, not fully mature with lovely bright black and white plumage, and a really young one, black with a white face and white underside. I have their photos.

Greetings noble Blatt. The S2H doco is not bad - I've seen it a couple of times. Hard to believe that we were out there.
Caroline - longer answer due but not at the mo - thanks for chasing the met people.
Alan H - thanks for the kind words - and your chart - it's good to know that we've helped to light a few candles on a hill or two
Sue - thanks - enjoy Switzerland. Elpinkbokkerkergybat has face to wall again.

Tenterhooky and the squeaky gate

Position 0630 19th 4338 12104, Trip 125, DMG 120. 1075 to Maatsuuyker, 1122 to SEcCape.
Iff we can keep all this together and the Examiner stays out at the movies with Huey, we will have less that 1000 miles to go by this time tomorrow. From there, it all looks manageable. Keep em crossed please!
WP, preferred route will be Adventure Bay - perhaps overnight - then the Iron Pot and up the Derwent. But at least a week to go for that decision.

Western Australia!

Position 0630 18th 4351 11815, trip 149, DMG 137. Too good to be true. Anxiously scanning the horizon for the Examiner but the grib predicts more of the same for three days or so. Hmm! Less than 2 Berrimilla Units to go - 1194 miles to the waypoint, 1241 to SE Cape.

For an instant or two in a couple of days time, at about 4406 S 12636 E the magnetic variation will be Zero as we cross the transit from the true north pole to the north magnetic pole. Up in the North West passage near Devon Island, it was nearly 90 degrees.
Chris P, we might decide to go to Adventure Bay if the weather is ok and then into the Derwent via the Iron Pot - a rather more significant sounding end to a circumnavigation than 'somewhere' in the Derwent. We will keep you posted via the blog. would be good to have an escort - last time was pretty cool.
Maureen T - If we haven't already bored you silly and you are still out there, thought you might like to know that the plastic box you sent us the cake in has been our biscuit box ever since and has done splendid service. Would you like it back with provenance?

Middle watch soliloquy

Berrimilla's first circumnavigation was the Sydney-Hobart - Fastnet - Sydney-Hobart sandwich via Cape Horn in 2005. That circumnavigation actually began and ended in Hobart. It was a first and I doubt whether anyone will be silly enough to do it again.

As I said in an earlier blog, iff we make it into Hobart this time, we will complete our second circumnavigation in the Derwent, also, I think, a first but this one via the North West Passage. Hobart again is really where it can be said to have started and quite by accident. We were in Hobart after the 2006 Sydney Hobart race and we left to sail back to Sydney on about January 2nd 2007. Since leaving Hobart that day, we have sailed rather jerkily around the world. So, the second circumnavigation includes our near disastrous upending off Gabo Island (I think there's a link somewhere in the blog to this story) and loss of the mast, a tow from the Water Police launch into Eden and the long trip motoring back up the coast to Sydney. When we left Hobart, Pete, myself, Tom Crozier (no relation) and Dozy Old Fart Fenwick were on board as far as Eden, then Bermagui. The others left me there and went home and Brian Maher came down to Bermagui a few days later to help me motor the old barge back to Sydney after John Witchard had stripped the engine and got it running again.

Then later that year there was Baton Rouge and Pascal Lee drew his map in my notebook on the bar of the Varsity pub at Louisiana State University and the North West Passage idea morphed into misty life. Pascal's map is now on T shirts all over the place with Berri's Kingfisher. If anyone wants one, let me know and I'll organise a link to the Demented Ferret who produces them.

Rather a lot of intensive planning later, Pete couldn't come and Corrie McQueen flew out from England for the real start of the NW Passage attempt and the very long non-stop trip up the Pacific to Adak in the Aleutians and then Dutch Harbour. Kimbra Lindus joined us in Dutch Harbour for the actual transit. Then Nome, waiting for the ice at Point Barrow to break. The Bering Strait - two continents, two oceans, two superpowers. The transit, Arctic Circle to Arctic Circle - 31 days of astonishing experiences - ice, whales, foggy pinkouts, swimming bears, belugas, the old and the new DEW lines, the ghosts of Francis Crozier and the Franklin crews, freezing rain, Beechey Island so near yet so far, Eleanor on Devon Island for the eclipse. And the people we met. Amodino, Arctic Wanderer and the other boats. Afterwards, in Nuuk, the most expensive beer I've ever bought. The smell of fish from Paamiut, still with me. A thoroughly unpleasant Atlantic crossing and Gordy and Dave Carne rounding that bit off in Falmouth. Changing the engine in the car park in Falmouth and then the gearbox in Hamble. And the gearbox again in Lisbon. The application to the Russians for the NE passage. Berri's second Fastnet. And then it's been just Pete and me from Falmouth to here. About 26000 miles so far this time and about 2000 to go to Sydney, roughly the same distance as the first one. Only when we get back to Sydney this time can we tidy it up and say we've done the circumnavigation the more elegant way, starting from Sydney in April 2008.
But easily the best thing has been the people we have met - generous, amazing, involved, helpful, wonderful people all along the way from Adak to the Kerguelens and in Australia, the UK, Crosshaven, Lisbon, Cape Town and everywhere. And not just those we met face to face but all y'all out there - even Anarchists! - who read this nonsense and write to us and keep us going with your interest.
Thanks everyone!
We're not home yet though. The Examiner lurks and never sleeps. We think she might have taken a fancy to Huey and we might even send her on a blind date with Iridium Bill if she lets us through the barn door. And there's a hippo I know who should meet her too.

Of grackles and rocket science

Position 0630 17th 4357 11505, trip 133, DMG 112. Consistent!
Earlier:
We just cracked 13000 miles from Falmouth on the GPS odometer - that's miles sailed, not distance made good, unfortunately. Takes in all the zigs and zags. Talisker moment, I think, when Pete wakes up. We are past Dirk Hartog, past Leeuwin and almost south of Freo - so Hi Val and Jill and Kimbra and Mark and J & S - look south and the wildly waving arms you can see above the horizon is us, in the mirage.
Clearly, I haven't had enough experience in high pressure systems. This one is rock solid stable and behaving exactly as the grib says it will - no erratic wind gusts, no direction changes, steady barometer, relatively calm sea. Beyond belief wonderful! Not used to this armchair ride and it's such a nice surprise after my grackly doom and gloom.
Cyril, thanks! I sort of knew grackles are birds but I like the onomatopoeia - it's what knuckles under stress ought to do...Glad you are keeping your twilight handicap under control - takes lots of cunning. Don't tell anyone though! When do the twilights finish? Will we make it for the last one?
Margy - do you have a favourite horizon? I've got lots but they depend on time of day, mood, all that stuff.
Carla, our real rocket scientist friend has advised that coffee making without filters isn't rocket science at all. Boil it all up, add a tablespoon of cold water to settle the grounds and pour the coffee off the top. Carefully. That, of course being the problem out here in the corkscrewing boonies. But we shall overcome. I could, of course, use the plunger but the coffee isn't as good. Carla also gave me the correct version of my quotation from the post a couple of days ago - it's Sir Walter Scott and, as she so rightly states, he's saying that a desk job really sucks. So that's the poetry - but what was the occasion? Nothing to do with Scott.
Run out of books to read - working on getting the 2000 odd photos into some recognisable form - there are backups and copies everywhere so I'm aiming for one complete set. Then I'll make several backups and delete some of the duplicates. (Is there a program out there, preferably freeware, that searches hard drives for duplicates?)Then I'll try to edit it and get rid of the dross - at least half of them. Massive job and should help to grind out the miles from half way. Most of the bird ones also need cropping for maximum effect. Does anyone know of a quick and easy way to get them on line so all y'all can see them. Picasa is (was?) way too slow for that many even for tiny jpgs. My ASUS EEE netbook offers free on-line storage which might work but out here I haven't been able to check it out.
Today would have been my father's 98th birthday - we'll Consult with his favourite spirit this evening.

Oz getting bigger...

A load of middle watch nonsense

Position 0630 16th 4349 11204, trip 119, DMG 111.
This one's a composite: middle watch from here
SFSG! We may have finessed this one - just far enough north to avoid the blast - still in about 20 kt but the sea is relatively easy so far. Twin poled, furler and storm jib, double lines from the tiller to Kevvo (originals just a bit frayed), holding our collective breath. The tail end of this one, just ahead of the front and the low behind it, has 30+ knots forecast and it's on our latitude so we'll see. Meantime, hooning towards the barn door at around 6kts. In 68 miles, we will be south of Dirk Hartog Island and the Australian mainland and we are now only 577 miles from the closest point of Oz, down near Albany.

So - doom and gloom suspended for the time being, knuckles still in moderate grackle mode and appendages firmly crossed. Sweaty when you have to keep them like that for so long!

Somewhere out there, there's a hippo buying high heels over the internet. Don't know whether s/he's a cross dresser or just thinks it's cool to be hippo in blahniks. Definitely a cut above the mud wallows around Devon. No - I haven't gone completely loony - just the hippo.

We have a deadline. I have 7 coffee filters left from the pack of 250 that came with the jug I bought what seems years ago in Nome but was really only 18 months or so. I am recycling them - I can always get 2 cups but they tend to disintegrate after the second, so we must be in Hobart in 14 days or I go cold turkey. A variation on Prufrock, may his memory live on.

0630 from here:
Still hooning and looking good - sitting in 20 kt Nwesterly and the barn door beckons. Grackled knuckles less grackly - sea not too bad, Berri loving it - twin poles, rolling with the seas and surging along.

Echoes

Position 0630 15th 4405 10926, trip 110, DMG 81 - spent a lot of the period heading NE.

Back pointing at the barn door, wind 20-25kt, sunshine through 4/8ths cu, luminous blue green sea. The biggest albatross of the voyage earlier but could not retrieve camera in time. Snowy or NZ, I think. Curious, gently condescending, total superiority. Lifetime event stuff.

Talking of which, your puzzle for the day:
Said Sam to Denis, in italics:

One wild, sweet hour of glorious life is worth a world without a name.

Why, and what was the occasion? Is the quotation apocryphal?

An echo of the reported last words of Elizabeth 1st - 'My kingdom for one more minute' which, from memory, may be misquoted.

And we wait - 1800 UTC is the grib's prediction for the leading edge - about 11 hours.

'midst the grackles

Murphy and the elements have just combined to deliver one of Those Moments. We have been climbing the latitudes to the NE to make a bit of space for the forthcoming blast but the wind backed to the point where I thought it necessary to gybe. Black, overcast night, faint glow from the horizon to the west. Haven't seen the stars or the moon for days - unremitting nightly gloom. Out into the cockpit, set it all up, remembered the checkstay just in time, tweaked Kevvo across and a nice gentle gybe later, start tidying it all up. All a bit delicate - main way out to port, boat rolling, preventer not yet sorted and tight so uncontrolled gybe back very much on the cards. Keep head down, get preventer on the cleat, then headlight in red, go forward to release and re-run starboard preventer. Bang headlight against the boom and, enter stage left Professor Murphy, it goes out. Dead. Corpsed. An ex-parrot headlight. A moment of absolute blackness - brace, keep everything in place by feel and then the eyes adjust and still have reasonable night vision and yeeehaaa! phosphorescence all around, swirling coils in the wake aft but - a big slashing gap in the overcast and there in glorious glowing diamond cascades across the sky was the milky way. Almost as wondrous as my first aurora off Baffin Island.

Just had a message from Groupama 3 - they will probably pass south of us on Feb 28th, as we close on Tasmania. Go guys!

And so we wait for the blast. A lot will depend on the actual wind direction when it arrives but I suspect there will be 24+ hours or so of bare poling, trying not to go too fast and get sideways on a big wave.

Tg, tb, & t' ugly

Looks as if it is going to get rather ordinary out here for a few days. We are right in front of a two day blast along the SW corner of the high that is forming north of us and we are due for a reasonably gentle day tomorrow with the westerly gradually increasing, then about 2 days of 25 - 30 with much higher gusts as the thing gets itself into gear. This means big, breaking seas and discomfort. Lots.

The good news is that it is pretty much in the right direction, so as long as we can keep things together we should make progress. Trying to follow good compromise course right now and get NE as fast as we can so that if we have to run down with it, we don't end up way south again.

But not a pleasant prospect. The gut clenchens and the knuckles grackle.

The emptiness of the long distance voyager

Position 0630 14th 4450 10720, trip 117, DMG 90. Not bad - a soft and variable 24 hours mostly and more to come.

This is sort of nowhere land - not yet close but the barn door is just below the horizon and I can almost feel its rough, rusty nails and peelng green paint. Time and distance pass very slowly - we go about the business, we grind out the metres, try to keep everything together, Berri pointing north of east to get some northing and give us a bit of flexibility when the next low arrives, probably tomorrow. I'm hoping we are getting close to the influence of the high that usually lives in the Bight and tends to block the passage of the lows and send them south east. No real signs yet that it is there waiting for us.

Pale sunlight, cold, cheerless but we're trying to get things dry.

Last year, just north of here, Pete Goss was knocked down in Mystery and his brother in law broke his leg. Did some damage to Mystery too - I visited her later in Williamstown. Pete gave a presentation and that was when we auctioned the ensign Berri Flew for the NW Passage and Mystery then carried for the rest of the circumnavigation as her Oz courtesy flag. It made a thousand dollars for the Bushfire Appeal.

Just a few birds around - Prions and Storm Petrels - but mostly, the place is empty empty.

Quickie

Position 0630 13th. 4537 10501, trip 141, DMG 147 - probably GPS glitch here but DMG is accurate. Still thoroughly unpleasant but improving slightly. Just trying to get back north again before the next one hits us. This has been the nastiest bit of sea I have experienced for a very long time - at least three big superimposed patterns and 30+ knots to boil it all up. Seems to be abating now but will take time for the sea to drop. GPS has recovered, at least for the mo.

Bill - tks for ice & fire
Margy, thanks for sleeping bag ref
KC for I know not what but good to hear from you
PP for forecast and AC

Time for a cup of nice hot soup fortified with dried mashed spud for body and periperi for flavour. Hardly matters what flavbour the soup is supposed to be.

Bleeeaaah!

Well - middle watch again - oughta be daylight but it's the usual greyout with lashing spray, 35+ knots, violence, bashing, crashing waves the works. Seems we get an hour or so of the good times while the Examiner excuses herself and then it's back on the rack. But it does get us across the ocean pretty quickly so this isn't a complaint, just a bleat. And to keep it all in proportion, this is exactly what Francis Joyon, Groupama and all the other elite headbangers go hunting for and try to stay in for the whole two and a bit months they are out here. Sitting here,though, in this little old barge, the next 15 days or so do look pretty endless.

Erk - that WAS a big one - massive roaring crash and Iguacu falls cascading off the coachroof, poor old Berri shuddering and shaking herself and off again. We have the main up with the 3rd reef and it's really way too much but this is supposed to blow out - like 6 hours ago...And we are continually pushed south - got to get as far north as possible in the next break.

A bit of reality TV for anyone else who might be thinking of following:
first - the Grib files always underestimate the maximum wind in any low pressure system - if you double the grib forecast you are in the ballpark
second - if you have one, a trisail is the way to go but to be any use, it has to be the easiest sail in the boat to hoist. Invariably, it is the hardest because nobody ever uses it. Get a separate track fitted for it on the mast with its own halyard, exiting just above the top of the track, and take the track down to deck level - then you can leave the trisail in the track, in a bag but ready for instant deployment. For various reasons, I could not get the track down to the deck in Berri so we can't do that and the tri doesn't get used as often as it should. The third reef is way too big for most of these weather systems.
third - get a good quality aneroid barometer, calibrate it, fit it where it is both highly visible and safe from accidental bashing and use it. It can place you on the grib file more or less and it is the best indicator you have apart from looking out of the window as to what is about to happen to you. A digital barometer in your wrist watch or on the bulkhead is ok as backup but it needs batteries or some sort of power supply and is subject to other damage like salt water ingress.

Apologies if that's all a bit condescending - but I think it needs to be said occasionally.

Seems the last big wave wrote off the GPS aerial - filled it with water. Damn! Have backup, can travel but a bummer.

What Alex is looking at....

click on image to enlarge

A prediction that isn't

Position 0630 12th 4509 10143, trip 122, DMG 107. 1878 to Maatsuuyker waypoint. ETA SE Cape perhaps March 1st - so there's a non prediction wot I never ever make. Metre by metre we're closing in.

I think we may have sown the seeds of a bit of international collaboration between Australia and Kerguelen - more later, if it develops. But gratifying and thanks mostly to Doug Morrison and his papers.

In a little northerly burst - around 20kts so far, not supposed to go more that 25 but who knows. Seas rising again. Sunshine for a couple of hours this morning, now gone - what a difference it makes to one's mood. Eternal grey is grim.

in the middle somewhere

Middle watch, now, of course in full daylight. High stratus and strato-cu and lots of blue sky. Yeehaaa. Noice to see the sun for once although it is frosted behind the cloud layer at the mo. Trying to squeeze every last centimetre out of this breeze - it's coming from roughly north, about 12 kts, reasonably calm sea and we're making about 5 kt towards Hobart. Due to increase to 20+ as the day progresses and we'll shorten sail and keep going. Now have Cape Leeuwin to Maatsuuyker across the top of the computer screen with Berri bottom left - progress becomes almost visible at this scale.

Norm, (& MJC) thanks for Queen Victoria - I guess it's obvious really when you look at Tenniel's drawings in Alice - Her Imperial Maj. to a T! Glad you're still out there - was getting worried!

Val and Jill - looks as if we will miss Freo, barring catastrophe, but we will wave as we go past, probably around next Wednesday.

Ferret the Noige - an Eeyore moment - that's just what WOULD happen! But will be good to have them and may order some more when we get home if ok with you.