A Techie at the Doca

Alex phoned yesterday afternoon, and again this morning from Lisbon.
They are safely docked at the Doca de Alcantara which is just above
the suspension bridge in the centre of Lisbon. The internet caff is
some distance away and at the moment Alex hasn't located anywhere to
plug in the laptop. So the news is via Devon and as follows:
Before they decided to go in to Lisbon we managed, from the UK end, to
identify an agent for the generator located in Lisbon. The alternative
was Tenerife and there was no agent in Gibraltar. We phoned up the
Lisbon people to check that they could assist and they said they would
do all they could. We relayed this information to Berri and they
turned left.
I had talked to an extremely helpful woman in Lisbon who spoke
excellent English and she and a techie will be going down to the
Doca, at midday ish today, to take the unit away and check it over.
This means that Alex and Pete have had to dismantle the generator.
It also means that little is likely to happen over the weekend and
they will probably be in Lisbon until Monday or Tuesday. Alex will
update here as soon as he has time, locates an internet caff or a
Yacht Club with facilities, and remembers to take the right bits of
string with him.
Isabella

Lisbon

Just passing Ponta da Lage at the mouth of the Tejo - lovely day - berth arranged at the Doca d'Alcantera. More when we know.

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Lisbon it is

We're 39 miles north west of the entrance and we'll enter the Tagus at about 0800 UTC tomorrow. More when we know more - but I've always wanted to go to Lisbon so there's serendipity out here somewhere. If they will let us in, of course. We're pretty scruffy.

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Update

Looks as if Lisbon might be a better option than Gib as there is an AirX generator agent there but not in Gib. We are now about 14 hours away from Lisbon if we can make contact via I & G and iridium. We'll keep you posted. Will hang around until daylight if we decide to go in.

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Latest position image

Finger trouble

Or clammy mushy brain - averaging nearly 140 miles/day...

Huge container ship passing us at half a mile.

First attempt at video of waves a disaster - need more practice. Matt, all cameras and this laptop on UTC

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4025N 01002W 674 miles

What a night! gusty 30 - 35 kts and big following sea. About 15 ships overtook us, some very close indeed. Big waves seem to come in groups of about 5 or 6 very closely spaced very steep faced 5ish metre waves with the first one breaking and the next about to break. Because we are going much more slowly than the waves, Berri rides up them, in effect, backwards and they tower above her stern and then she slides over the top, more or less straight and meets the second. If the second one breaks, it's the one that usually makes things difficult and slews the stern around and confuses poor old Kevvo with a false apparent wind. There's a long express train roar and the cockpit is obliterated by rushing crashing water - and so it goes for the rest of the wave train. But at night, with phosphorescence it's magnificent - and scary - it's like surfing down the face of a giant living boiling neon tube. Sometimes with an incandescent rooster tail from the bow to the cockpit. All under a lovely clear sky with the waning crescent moon and Venus at about 15 deg on the E horizon, Orion high above Sirius to the S and the Great Bear and the Pole to the N. For the first time I can remember, I watched the Great Bear turn its half circle and end up upside down...

We're averaging nearly 170 miles a day - huge for Berri but when you consider that the 24 hr record is now about 900 miles, rather ordinary by world standards! Wind due to ease a bit today so perhaps 2 days to C. St Vincent and 2 more to Gib

Impossible to keep the inside dry in these conditions - we have the storm boards in, but at every watch change we bring in litres of water on our gear and B is so small there's nowhere to isolate this from the rest of the boat. So everything is clammy. Erk!

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The Examiner getting back into practice

4133N 01009W

Hoofing it down the coast, ships everywhere and the waves are so big you often don't see the ships until they are only a mile or so away, by which time we fervently hope they have seen us on radar - I bought the best reflector I could afford...

Steady 25+ knots. Waves building for 36 hours - mostly ok but every 100th or so wave we get a train of four or five massive steepies very closely together. Heady rolled in to half storm jib size and still surfing at 6+ with several of the biggies breaking into the cockpit and half filling it. Trying to keep everything dry below.

Due for at least another 18 hours of this. Prob 5 or 6 days to Gib all going well.

Pete on watch in the cockpit - has to be someone there all the time for the ships - I've just done double egg and bacon and tomato sandos with a pre prandial Discussion with Mr Gydrin. Noice.

Time for a couple of hours ensac.

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Latest positions image

0900UTC 15th

Position 4226N 01014W with 550 miles on the clock. 25 - 30 kts, lumpy 3-5 metre quarter to beam sea with waves breaking across the boat. Uncomfortable but getting us south reasonably fast averaging about 5 kts. Faster possible but not sensible.

Another proper breakfast just past - we have changed medical practices since I last wrote. The Dublin Doctor and his assistant Dr Gordon have achieved such international publicity since they started looking after us that their Consultation schedule leaves very little time for us. Accordingly, we have transferred our business - at the recommendation of the RNLI in Crosshaven - to a smaller practice in Cork where Dr Murphy and his senior consultant Mr Grindy have regular surgery hours. Dr Murphy looks after breakfast and other odd times, while Mr Grindy provides embalming fluid for those moments when nothing else will do.

Once again - knees wedged under nav table, fingers more or less steadied to type this by wrists braced on the fiddle - we thing about 5 days at least from here to Gib. Appendages crossed please that the Levanter is not blowing out of the Strait.

Some administrative stuff - Steve W in Sydney will check the gustbook on the old site and berrimilla2@gmail.com for any messages and forward them to us every Monday and Friday. For anything more urgent, he has the satphone number as do Hilary, Isabella and a few others. Please keep sending us stuff - makes life much more interesting.

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Disturbances in The Link

Paul and Pauline kindly made an alteration in their brilliant video
for reasons that need not trouble you all - and so the link I sent
earlier now won't work.
Hopefully, this one will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-TUJ-J5fgA

Isabella

Video Link

Just received from Paul and Pauline of Falmouth Photos: a link to
video of Berrimilla leaving on Friday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDIfLrH-osk

Isabella

The Black Dog

And what to do about him. It's not unusual to experience massive mood changes out here, especially if, like Muggins, you worry about stuff. Yesterday was an awful day - first the wind generator and then the little red sail proved more or less conclusively that it won't do what I wanted it to do, which was to act as a furlable downwind sail for twin poling in heavy weather. It acts just as I feared it would - when trying to roll it in with any wind at all in it, the lower part of the luff winds up bar tight and the top third is a flogging mess and almost uncontrollable. Sad - I had hopes for that baby and I'm thinking of a workaround. A sniffer wont do it but perhaps if I lay it out in Gib, put the hanked storm jib over the clew and more or less line it up with the after third of the red sail, draw a line on the red one up the luff of the storm jib, roll in the red one to that line as tightly as possible and then bind the rolled ends every few inches down to the top and bottom of the marked line, so - I hope - stopping it from unrollimg more that storm jib size and - again, I hope - make rolling in a very much smaller sail just possible. Us'll see.

Today, running south down 01013W, so clear of all the shipping inshore, but smack dabbety in line for tomorrow's 30 knots all down the coast. Poo. We're at 4428N, 428 miles clocked.

But 5 hours of good sleep (3 + 2) and a proper Berri breakfast of a guinness and a bacon sanod with lashings of tabasco and all's well - Black Dog banished into the outer darkness for the mo.

And Pete's colourful nethers are on the improve - still very sore but he's smiling a bit more. The Doctor for breakfast always helps.

For those of you who need to know, the satphone is up running and tested. If you want to talk to us, remember to hang up before it goes into voicemail (5 rings) and keep ringing back till someone answers.

Steve, got your message, thanks and Mon/Fri is fine. Bleep the satphone at other times.

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For info: position just given from Alex

The plan - such as it is

We're at 4602N 00944W with 325 miles behind us. 30 knots forecast for tomorrow and the next 2 days to the south of us. We will try to run south along a line just west of 10 W to about 36 N and then turn East for Gibraltar. In the meantime, I hope we will find out whether we can get the generator fixed in Gib - or, as an extreme option, one of us could fly to the UK with it. If all goes well we should be in Gib in about a week to ten days. Anne H in Falmouth - if you'd be so kind as to email the OCC Port Officer in Gib, we'd be very grateful.

Not having it working is not s true showstopper but it does make things much more difficult and this early in the trip and so close to potential help, I think it is sensible to try for the fix.

There seem to be echoes of that first voyage all through this - the unplanned stop in NZ and generator problems later.

Anyway - POO!

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Pearshaped again

Our wind generator has died. Again. It did not seem to be working properly from the start as it was not switching off when the battery was charged but instead winding up to 16+ volts. Battery frying stuff. Now it is in both Charge and Brake mode and doing neither. We've dismantled the 3 way switch and bypassed it but no go so it's internal somewhere. We are thinking of going into Gibraltar. G or I, could you possibly ring Keith or Nigel at Greenham Regis at Shamrock Quay Southampton and ask if they would be able to send us a new one to Gib plus a new 3 way switch and the wiring? Don't need blades. If they can, it seems to be the best option. We probably have enough diesel to charge, make water etc to Cape Town but not really sensible. Shades of the Falklands last time.

Or we could turn around and slog back into wind. 'orrible idea.

I'll try to get the satphone cranked up and call you in a couple of days but please also email to the sailmail address.

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A pretty red prawn net

An interesting 36 hours, in the Chinese sense. As some of you will know, Pete is taking things a bit easy for a few days - resting, one might say, on his rather colourful laurel and Muggins is the bod in charge of Doing Stuff. Three reefs and the pole more or less routine, though knackering but I've just spent the last couple of hours trying to get the new sail set up to twin pole. There are 6 bits of string coming out the front of Berri's mast and 4 from the back. Then there are sheets and downhauls to control the pole and each sail. All of these must be sorted so that when it goes up, the sail is not fouled around any of them and it flies free with its sheet, halyard, downhaul and topping lift correctly led. There is so much power in even a small sail like this that the consequences of one foul lead can be very messy. I started from scratch on a heaving deck with water washing across and trying to manage a harness and tether at the same time (for you lot at Crosshaven, as per promise!) Anyone who has tried it will know just how complicated, frustrating and difficult this can be.

Long story - so I got it all sorted which took about an hour of very intense endeavour and brought up the sail (modified, David C, as you suggested - how good is that!). Got it all connected to its bits of string and its pole, set up the boat to run downwind on the other poled out sail to cut down the apparent wind and - gulp - hoisted it. Foolishly, I hoisted from the mast because when, inevitably, it got away from me and unrolled itself, I had no control over it cos no turn on a winch. Boat doing 5 knots, sail pretending to be a thrashing prawn net in the water, Muggins cursing and pulling it in bit by bit and re-bagging it, but no longer neatly rolled so no chance of an immediate second go.

At this point, after clearing away pole and attendant clobber, engaged in Long Consultation with Wendy's Friend from the Liffey and reconsidered. First, the sail must be woolled just like a kite but second - why ever did I try to put it up with the pole and all the clobber already rigged? Upped the complication by a power of 10. Should have just thrown it up and got it properly tensioned and then set up the clobber and unfurled it.

A rest and another go and I'll get it right. Immensely useful but frustrating - you really learn when you have to do it yourself and get it right first time.

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4903N 00546W

About 70 miles down the track, just north of the separation zone. 2 reefs and poled out headsail and lumpy.

I got to Falmouth in early May and Gordy and other mates and I did huminomungous work on the old barge, startring with clearing the grass and dead leaves out of the cockpit and we launched her a week or so later to find all the other fixes that were needed - including the gearbox and the generator and the nav lights - all very expensive but essential. And Crosshaven and the Fastnet interspersed with weeks in Falmouth's rather grimy harbour gathering slime and grot.
which leads me to the surge of joy Berri and I and probably Pete feel now that we're actually off and the slime and grot is washing off and the old barge is alive again. About 2 tons heavier than for the Fastnet and every nook packed with stuff. My joy tempered with a bit of quease and some well polished apprehension - the more I do, the more polish it gets. Interesting. More on this later - seems it's quite common. But I need a GRIB

And I wish, oh I wish that I understood what regulators regulate and how they do it.

PS Already USB gadget is misbehaving. Just tried to send and Airmailk crashed. I shall have to resurrect all those Ps - patience, perseverance...

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Wide Blue Yonder

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Falmouth Farewell : Crew and Well Wishers Assemble