Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK

A Crux be upon us!

0700/31st position 0234 02202 trip 95/24 154 miles north of the Equator but about 162 to sail on this heading. We should cross at about 02251W if this holds.

Middle watch and the torpids again. Almost clear out there - fluffy Cu and some wispy high cloud -altostratus perhaps. And a blazing moon so only first mag stars dotted around the firmament.

I'm mortified and gobsmacked. Umpteen times I can remember thinking '12v fan!' in Falmouth and saying to myself that it had to go on the list. But it didn't and wow do I regret that one as we swelter inside a closed down Berri in the tropics. 'T'ain't no fun not nohow not never!

Carol - I found the BBC World Service for West Africa on 15400 - reception pretty awful but nice to know they are still out there. And if you google quickscat you should find that it has nothing to do with tiger hunting and lots to do with wind.

Brief word of explanation - in the 0700 position reports I sometimes put a distance to Falmouth. This is always the straight line or rhumb line distance, derived by plonking the cursor more or less on Falmouth and reading off the distance to ship on the scale on S0B. However, there's a lot of more and less in that rather arbitrary and slack process. On the smallest scale on the chart, the tip of the cursor would cover a lot of water - Falmouth to Portland, perhaps - so the measurement is very much more or less. When I take the time to zoom in on St Anthony's Head, the cursor covers a table at the back of the Chain Locker or Gordy's fish box. Rather more accurately, I find that Falmouth is 2995 miles away. We have sailed 3514 miles according to the GPS so about 519 miles further including into Lisbon and then around the curve of West Africa.

For the first time inwhat seems like weeks there's a clearish horizon to the south and YAY! Crux, Gacrux and all the mates are up there serene and beautiful. Berri's first sight of the Southern Cross since mid Pacific last year.

Quickie 1530/30th

Position 0319 02142

Last night was a bit of an achievement in its own way. Imagine Berri as the ball in a pinball machine and all the pins and blockers and springy things as the rather solid squalls with rain and usually about 20 knots at the front. Wind all over the place in between - no gradient and the system apparently almost static. Berri's track over the chart rather like an alcoholic and demented caterpillar chasing the ball around the pinball obstacles. If we ever get back to Sydney and I can download all this data, the track from about 5N to the equator will be more than interesting. Each kink and dodge and curve and wiggle has it own story and it was bloody hard work but we managed to stay going more or less south.

We've just been overtaken by another much more violent squall - now dissipated, some light rain and no wind - we are still in the system that produced that squall but there's only grey all around - the grey that at night becomes the obsidian lustrous velvety black that has no form but is all depth and menace. No idea what else is in store but I can hear thunder rolling his eyes and walking the talk. No sign of the gradient.

Changed from the big furling headsail to the little one - Kurtsy's staysail from his single handing Love And War around the Pacific.

Non sequiturs in limbo

0700/30 position 0348 02128 trip 91/24
What a bloody awful night! Total living but physically demanding, utterly frustrating and on balance, bloody awful. I'll try to write a bit more later.
Yesterday:
Imagine if you can the almost unimaginable - we're more or less becalmed here in our tired old workhorse but we do have an engine and we can, if there is any, go to windward. We have food and a watermaker. Less that 200 years ago in this same bit of ocean there would have been slave ships similarly becalmed with their lower decks crammed with people chained to the decks and hosed out when the stench got to be too much for the crew. Not enough water, starvation rations, salt water ulcers, chafe, no sanitary arrangements of any kind, sheer uncomprehending fear and misery, confined and condemned. The dead thrown overboard and floating beside the ships, unrecorded and ignored. Just loss of profit. Looking at the weather system we are under, it doesn't seem to be moving very fast, if at all - there was a pale moon for a short time and the clouds were not moving past it - the slavers could have been stuck here for days or weeks with cargoes of the slowly dying. Voltaire wrote that the one armed, one legged slave said to Candide and Pangloss 'This is the price we pay so you can have sugar on your tables...'

And staying with the sombre, Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisitors had it both ways. If you were called to testify, there must have been a reason so you were guilty by implication and a candidate for the disemboweller and if you refused to testify, there must have been something you were hiding so equally guilty. Oversimplified of course, but our particular Examiner is in the same logical frame. We are fair game - the sea is serenely, imperiously, unforgivingly indifferent to anyone who is out on it so we must be silly enough to be expecting that She the Examiner will do her worst. Reminded of all this when reading the story of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and fire (Paice, Edward, Wrath of God, Quercus, London 2008). A fascinating story, with the Inquisition prominent. And don't miss the grisly tale of the public executions of the Tavora family (not by the Inquisition as it happened, but at the orders of the King, through the Marquess de Pombal). We were given by a friend an even more ghastly version than the one in the book.

The Examiner has cosseted and coddled us so far on this trip and we can't really complain that we are stuck here in some rather unpleasant conditions. But it ain't much fun. This middle watch again.

Time slices through our 'now'

1100/29th - but it meanders backwards and forwards through time

At last we've got the wind the GRIB says we've had for the last few days and we're rompin' south. Equator in 2 and a bit days if it holds. Martin Vaz more or less in the gunsight but at least 2 weeks away. Heading for huge grey cu-nim with rain and roll cloud. Glad it's daylight It would have Night on Bare (Bald?) Mountain creepies all over it and foreboding and angst at night. Can hear the beginning of the blast in the rig and sails a dull whiney roar with associated flutter - sails and heart!- may need to go roll in the heady for the squall...Hmm! Didn't happen - it's a mini front and it is receding in front of us and heading us at the same time. Heading almost west at the mo. We must get through it before we are back on course to the south. Not yet even raining, though it looked like a dogs off chains gig an hour or so ago.

Nearest humans - we were approached by a long-liner an hour or so ago, at 0442 02108 - we sailed close to some of his buoys but he wasn't talking to us on VHF. He had L.S.N. on the side and name on the bow was in western alphabetic script - longish word followed possibly by '...Sea'

The Storm Petrel that's been around for several days isn't. I thought its wings were a bit to long and thin and I now think it is a Macaronesque Petrel Puffinus Baroli. Lovely to watch with long swooping glides and then the Storm Petrel fluttery gig. Never close enough for long enough to confirm ID but I think a good approximation.

We're stuck behind this system - if you've got access to satellite photos, you cant miss it and we're under the northern edge. It wont let us go south Poo! About to get very wet (1830/29)

We passed half way to Cape Town at about 9 N but inexplicably forgot to note it so there might be a little celebration later. If we can keep going out of here towards the equator, my best estimate for Cape Town would be around November 27th. To be revised as we go.

1830/29th position 0418 02127 trip 3381.

Bit of follow up.

Daylight and what a difference - towering monsters black as the gate to Hell silhouetted against the tiny glimmer of starlight through the overcast become just big and grey and fluffy - still threatening because you know what's in there but without the looming menace they have at night. Still going just south of east though - but ok in the overall scheme. Should give us a better SW angle if the wind really does do as predicted. The equator is still 294 miles south and - like Alison Chadwick's graphic metaphor, this flea on the elephants rump can't see over its horizon from down amongst the crevasses.

Waves - we have a SE swell, about a metre, but lumpy with wind waves, then every hundred or so there's a train of three or four much bigger ones - amplified, perhaps from some other pattern? - but we think it happens with much bigger southern ocean swells as well

Gerry & Donna - g'day - if you promise to use a 'clean' email system (Donna's perhaps?) - without all the logos and caveats and other attached c--p I'll talk to you direct on sailmail - try it out first on berrimilla2@gmail.

Ron - you and your friend should do more cryptic crosswords! Grindy and all its versions are anagrams - the clue would look something like 'Clear liquid tautology from Dr. Grindy?' 3,3. Or perhaps 'Dr Ringyd's medical compound from Cork?' 3,3

Carol - glad our wind appeared somewhere! Izz n'G yo and pleased you survived the Uprisings.

1900/28th -0700/29th

1900 position 0520 02142

The GRIB wind is about 45 degrees out - has been for days and prediction the same. No matter, simple change of plan - We can barely hold 125M at the mo but although the other tack would be marginally better, the drum from the old salts is get as far east as you can. So we'll plod on - metre by metre etc. I wonder who else has been just here doing just the same. We have been somewhere here twice now. Imagine how frustrating in a square rigger, like the old Java, but in those days the wind was king and it dictated the rhythm of sailors' lives - rather than catching the morning press. About 4/10 cloud, various levels, with embedded rain squalls. Great for a shower every now and again.

The Airbreeze whizzeth and is so far keeping the battery at around 13v. Needs another pooptillionth of a tweak to get it up to 14v but will wait till it's a bit less lumpy out here.

Either Steve - if you notice that I've forgotten the no-footer footer, could you please edit out the address on the blog? Rather too easy to forget to stick it on the end sometimes. Tks.

Brain like hard boiled egg in the heat - these are boring and uninspired. Sorry.

0700 position 0456 02111 trip 3329 = 107/24

Another dramatic midnight watch - huge shapeless black monster cloudbank descending on tiny B from the north - Old fart in the cockpit starts closing down the ship - hatches, stormboard in, roll in the headsail to large postage stamp, wet weather gear and lifejacket on and wait for it. It's the waiting that gets you! Closer, darker, more than ever sombre - slowly into the surprisingly soft leading squall line and whammo! Nothing really! A little burst of 12 knots or so and drizzle with lots of lightning to the north in the guts of the thing. Wind dies - wallow me wallow me farties and time to burn some diesel. We are now trickling SE holding about 140M waiting to see whether the wind does as the GRIB predicts and comes around to the SE. You know you're alive out here in the boonies in the periodic table of the meteorological elements.

And we have an imaginary ship out here with us - held in spacetime by the combined realities of the Polly Ranch mob and the hard boiled egg of this OF. More later.

Pete's little fridge - and other matters

'Tis just past the witching hour out here in the steamy humids of the mid Atlantic boonies. We have consulted with the very gifted and dry doctor from Cork - hey Alan, do you think he and his mate Murf might sponsor us for all this coverage? - and little Berrimilla headbutts onward. Pete has a specialised tonic bottle fridge rigged in the leeward life rails - wet towel, string, shade, breeze, what more could you want? - so we have cool G & T from Cork. In every sense. The limes ran out a week or so age and we're into squeezy lemon juice but it drinks, as they say in France or wherever.

And I'm sweltering behind the Cone of Silence - big plastic curtain across the nav and electronics area for the uninitiated- as I put this together. Brain congealed and torpid - have I missed something? I've never known the GRIB to be so wrong for so long. The wind is from about 200M - has been for two days or so with minor fluctuations - so we can just make about 150M. The GRIB predicts about 150M and for the next three days as well as those past. Anyway, this points us directly at Cape Town but we'll probably have to get way west behind the high sometime. Can't afford a big file to look at th whole S Atlantic wx pattern - we'll just go along with what we've got on the racecourse. It's a headbang, but relatively gentle so far - about 15 knots, short lumpy sea, a reef and three rolls in the heady.

Another solitary Storm Petrel gliding almost for ever inches over the roiling mass and then dropping, fluttering, scooping running a bit, more flutter and back into glide - and so gracefully done. I love watching them. They are the smallest bird in the albatross family, some species weighing as little as a sparrow, while the snowy albatross weighs in at up to 13kg and wingspan of about 4 metres.

Sue - Z sends vibes and hugs.
Ron - the go lever and the stop lever are in dynamic balance here - both need frequent lubrication
Steve - tks re Marc. Iridium supplier is Cable & wireless Falklands - Telstra one didn't work on first voyage so we jumped ship! C&W has been brilliant - keep 'em crossed

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Latest Position - different views

The nearest humans

Position 0700/28th 0602 02227 trip 3222 =128/24 and about 44 degrees south of Falmouth = 2640 miles

Midnight to 3 watch again - big Turneresque moon in and out of the clouds with Jupiter in tow - gentle fluctuations in the wind but mostly heading south in a SW gradient - not at all in tune with the GRIB prediction. Kevvo driving, taking us all over the ocean to keep the wind in the sails. We're in almost the narrowest part of the Atlantic where we were visited by that lovely cattle egret 4 years ago. I've always hoped that it made it to Africa, where it seemed to be heading.

Two aircraft on reciprocal courses, one way high heading SW towards S America the other much lower heading NE for W Africa. They passed each other and us at the same time. Different lives! I wonder who they were, those 600 or so people and what they would make of this little barge below them. Then there was a ship, lit up like Nan Jing Dong Lu that we passed about a mile south of - seemed big, but probably fishing - we're over the Sierra Leone Bank here which might be significant.

Otherwise, nowt to report. Just idle thoughts wafting in and out of the wheelie bin. We are well inside the last BU to the Equator and then almost another one until we catch up with the sun. Will be good to be back in some consistent weather.

And at 0620, still dark, still in SW wind making about 150M. Odd - ought to be way into SE by now. GRIB in half an hour. I don't remember this bit from last time - which side of Martin Vaz did we go, I wonder - theoretically at the southern edge of the trades at 20 S and our first southern hemisphere waypoint. We were heading for 45 south that time, rather than Cape Town.

Carol, your cake almost got us to the Equator - thanks! Pauline, we've just unwrapped yours.

Them old CZ blues...

I think - firmly grabbing the nearest wood - that we've cleared the dreaded convergence zone. All the nasties seem to be to the north and we've tacked onto about 200 towards St Peter & Paul rocks just north of the equator at 29W. If the GRIB is right, (and it's been a bit off for the CZ), the wind should free us tomorrow to head nearly south. Us'll see. I'll send for another with this and collect it in the morning - more economical that way - Iridium charges by the call and by the minute.

Not much to add - hot and humid again and we're plodding along. A couple of solitary birds in the last two days, both, I think, larger versions of Storm Petrel but not close enough for more detail. No sign of recovery form the HF. Can't get the SatC to talk to the computer - I think a com port problem - will try with different computer when I can summon the energy to drag out all the stuff from the quarter berth to find it.

Love yez all. Keep talking to us!

0700/27th

position 0732 02333 trip 116/24 Falmouth 2729 CT 3418 (Both straight line distances)

During my 1800-2100 watch yesterday evening the moon was up close to Berri's masthead with Jupiter close by - spectacular enough on its own, but they had a fluffy halo of reflection off the very high cloud out to about 1 moon diameter and then further out - diameter about 25 degrees - the most perfect and complete halo I've ever seen - breathtaking! hard, sharp inner edge, fluffy around the outside and glowing - from where I was sitting it almost seemed as if it included Berri's masthead. Halo for a stout little boat. Orion is up there now, Mintaka still 7 degrees south but getting closer. Crux soon!

The usual series of rain squalls through the night but all very soft compared to the first lot and quickly dissipating. In a windless patch now and burning some diesel to get across.

Just heard from a friend who sails on Groupama 3 - 103 ft Tri - they had 10 minute average speed of about 45 knots during a recent attempt on the Transatlantic record. Now waiting in Brest for right weather to set off on an attempt for the round the world non-stop sailing record - the Jules Verne trophy - they may come storming past us somewhere in the S Atlantic. As we plod on with our Steptoe and Son shoestring bag of bits and pieces. Go guys! All the best!

In the interests of science and the consumer, we feel we should report an interesting observation. McVities brought out what they call a new, 50% fat free Digestive - yay! - except they seemed smaller (not quite by 50%!) and much less interesting for the inveterate dunker. So we found - with difficulty - a supply of the 'original' McVitie's Digestive and bought 20 packs or so. But Pete noticed yesterday that you can dunk them whole into Berri's original blue mugs whereas we think we remember that on the first voyage you had to break a bit off. Shame! They've gone the way of the narrower 490 sheet bog roll and top qualty bacon where you get a lot of water with your bit of pig. And oatcakes in a carton half filled with air. A shrinking world.

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quickie

The last 12 hours rank high amongst the most unpleasant I have ever spent out on the Og. Not scary, except for the first blast, not difficult - just plain unpleasant - line after line of rain squalls - not too fierce but with sheeting flying rain, visibility about 100 yards for hours at a time - so bad that we both put on our TPS dry suits for the first time in anger. Nice gear, though I wouldn't want to live in it for too long. Cloudbase now rising - I hope permanently - rain just drizzle and we're heading south. Just spoke MV Leander, looked like a big tanker, bound for Galveston - skipper reported that we were clearly visible on his radar which was good news and, I hope, confirms that we bought the right radar reflector.

The odd thing about all this is that we've been in a westerly wind since it all began yesterday - not on any GRIB and still blowing - almost monsoonal but we're too fao out and too far north, I think.

Sue - thanks for messages & sorry to hear of your troubles - hang in there - Z commiserates too.
Gordy, an M&M chase would be fun - you'd catch us easily, I think if you had a load aboard. Pete's best mates in the pink...
Scott, g'day and glad you're back, likewise JC. Malcom, think I've found the spot but my chart RS so will investigate in CT if French are co-operative.

Drama - sort of

0700/26th position 0911 02420 trip 120/24

There we were, me in my running shorts having been limpid with sweat all day trying to trace the HF problem, Pete in his grotty green salty Stubbies, having a small relaxing mug of random Aussie red with rehydrated curry and rice and celebrating for Hilary - idly watching the cloud building up to the south, still stinking hot and humid, water 37 deg. And then there it was - deep grey horizon, rolling black squall line coming in like the vulture stooping - two decrepit old farts jerked into action - just time to put things below, drop in the second reef, roll in the headsail to a quarter of its size and it was on - only about 25 knots, 90 degree wind change, follow the blast around, lightning, deeep sonorous thunder rolling all about - not at all like Mr Krupa's riff over there in the Pacific last year but still musical - torrents of rain - Pete gets naked with the soap, I go down and connect the mast base to the earth and come up and let the rain wash off the day's grot. And now we're in 2 knots, just as the GRIB predicted and due for another couple of days of it. I'd been soaking my other grommy clothes in a bucket of salt water and green stuff so was able to hang it out in the rain and get a free rinse Yay! And it's (relatively) cool and the sea feels really warm...as it would. Lightning away to the north, overcast and spotty rain here.

And then it got interesting. Pete woke me @ midnight - 'There's some black cloud ahead, might be a bit of wind...good night' - not just dark but glutinous inside-of-cow black and lightning all around so I packed the satphone and some gps' into the icebox and got out there - like going under a table and the first blast had us around onto 290 with horizontally slanting rain so thick that I couldn't look into it and had to adjust everything then tack by feel - and a ship! dead in line and we were the give way vessel so had to get behind him except that he stopped right in front of us ... and so it went, non stop for 3 hours with lightning all around, the wind actually hot on my face, my thin pants and T shirt and me wringable - warm water crashing over the bow and back to the cockpit on sheets - black black night, occasional phosphorescence to the side -up to the foredeck twice to sort the furler gradually stumbled through it, the rain eased, the wind backed again and we were back on course and time to wake Pete, who slept through it all. Fun. How I love the tropics.

Damn!

Ok. It seems we have a terminally dead HF radio. Just won't switch on. We've tried all the obvious things and it seems to be in one of the black boxes. Happened once before and it came back but I don't think so this time. This means all these posts will have to go via Iridium and will therefore be much less expansive and rather more expensive. Last resort might be the SatC but I think that's dead too. Will try later but have to find the software and load onto this pc.

In case Iridium goes pearshaped, here's the plan: we will head for Cape Town come what may and try to get the HF fixed there. We are at least a month away from CT and I will try to make arrangements for a fix from out here. If Iridium dies too and no SatC we will be out of communication for as long as it takes but don't stress - we'll turn up down there roughly early December. We'll just head around the back of the high as best we can without GRIB data - it's been done before!

I will do one blog post and message collect at around 0700 UTC and a second one at around 1800 each day,as long as I have an Iridium signal. If no post, don't stress - can't always manage to get it together but will always try

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Wiidgetry

One for Alan in Crosshaven - G'day to you and the RNLI mob - be so good, if you would, as to get on to the manufacturers of Dr Murphy's magnificent medicinal compound and tell them that Dr Murphy's dispensations of said compound are just fantastic organically but technologically there's room for a bit of inventive genius. The coldest we can manage out here is a couple of degrees below ambient in our wet towel fridge and what we would love to have is a widget with a 1 second built-in delay - a bit like a grenade really - so that there is just time to upend the container into the tankard before the explosion. So to speak. At the temperatures here, we're losing a bit twixt widget and cup. Room for improvement. Your beanie has been earning its keep but now in hibernation.

Checked in with AMSA on the satphone this morning just to make sure the system works. We're not likely to be able to speak to anyone on the HF radio from here and it's reassuring backup to be able to reach them if things do go pearshaped.

A bit of real live meteorology. At sunrise this morning, we were under two developing anti clockwise swirls of mid and high level cloud along a roughly defined east-west line. The grib shows us between 2 developing lows - with NE surface winds here to the north of the line and SSE winds further south. The line of convergence? I tried to film it all. Tomoz is due to be soft and variable, same next day. I hope that doesn't mean monster cu-nims and sturm und drang.

We've been in murky haze for some time now - perhaps a couple of weeks. I've just shimmied up the whizzer's pole to give the potentiometer a minipooptillonth of a tweak and the leading edges of the blades have a thick layer of reddish brown dust along tier lengths. Dust blowing off the Western Sahara directly upwind of us, I think, and almost certainly contributes to the haze.

Here's the Examiner - the HF radio has died - plenty of power, not the circuit breaker, no apparent reason. Will dig out the manual when it gets a bit cooler in here. This by Iridium.

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Footrot flats no more

0700/25th position 2858 02437 trip 131/24 Falmouth 2550

In an effort to save weight and make room for a flexible fuel tank, I left Berri's cockpit floorboards in the garage when McQ and I left Sydney in April last year. Did not matter on the Sydney - NWP - UK trip because of the stuff in the cockpit and anyway we had boots on most of the time. Now, though, it does matter - the geometry of Berri's cockpit drains means that in these extreme rolloing conditions there's always a couple of inches of warm (32.5 deg - feels warmer than my skin but it ain't) water sloshing around on the cockpit sole. Bad karma - I can't stand having wet feet in my bunk and they were never dry. But this game is all about intelligent improvisation - in Falmouth I liberated a bit of ply from a chuck out to work as a floor for our inflatable and it just fitted up in the forepeak so I brought it with us and yep! it fits the cockpit floor as if it was specially cut - YAY!
In yesterday's post my congealed brain cell said that a BU was 5 days - it's really 6 as anyone would have known. We are at 11 deg N or 660 miles from the equator so a bit over one BU. Between here and there is the convergence zone and - if they are operating - the doldrums. The grib shows a doldrummy patch just ahead of us and I saw the loom of lightning over the horizon last night so things may change dramatically in the next couple of days. And the SE trades are blowing directly from the South so we'll be going to windward once we're through. Poo! But it is a mark of progress.Enter the Examiner, stage left, with sibilant hiss.

My sailmail propagation app indicates that we may be out of range for some of the time out here -we'd be one of the very few boats ever to have used it in this bit of oggin - so these posts may have to go via Iridium so will be very much shorter as Iridium isn't cheap for this old fart.

1900/24th and still scarily easy

At about 0745, we were overflown by a twin engine jetliner, silver, red markings on the tail, jizz impression said possible red winglets as well, but glimpses only thro binocs as boat rolled around. It was coming from the SW and was surprisingly low, perhaps 15000ft max but contrailing. Descending into Praia, perhaps? Odd.

Back to the BU. Both an astronomical unit AU and a Berrimilla unit BU can be a rough measure of time - the AU being about 7.5 minutes, the time it takes light to cover the distance between the sun and Earth, while a BU is about 5 days at Berri's nominal and much more placid speed of 4 knots - a fast walk. This whole voyage would be about 21 BU - sounds much easier to handle than 13000 miles - and we've covered about 4 of them so 17 to go! In marathon terms, just into some sort of rhythm - perhaps a couple of k only but on the way. The original surge of adrenaline dissipating and resolve and determination taking over. The first notions about how the race will go - did I get the preparation and the taper right? Is the old body in the groove or just a bit raspy at the edges? Experience providing comparative data - and the unconscious always doing its thing to prevent the excesses of enthusiasm. Metre by metre, boat length by boat length - I'm not sure that I personally actually set out on these things with any real expectation of arriving - it's more to do with if you don't, you won't - and might regret it. Dunno. Right now we're about 1.2 BU north of the equator.

Snippets of memory from nearly 60 years ago - moral turpitude had something to do with finding out that girls were interesting. Misty memory of a rather older boy being expelled amid swirling and naively ignorant rumours but we were never told. I can still remember his name and see his face so it must have meant something.

Carol - haven't been able to pull in the Beeb - short wave doesn't work very well when the sun is up and my night watches don't really match the schedule. I'll have a real try tonight.

Thanks to Brian, Ann, David, Ron for messages.

AU and S2H

0700/24th position 1310 02454 trip 2727=122/24 Only about 1.3 S2H to the Equator.

In astronomy there's a unit of distance called an astronomical unit or AU. 1 AU is about 93 million miles, the distance from Earth to the Sun. In Berri, we have the Berri Unit or S2H which is about 630 miles or just over 10 deg of latitude.

Malcom, thanks - I was wondering exactly where that crash site is. We will be about 1 S2H to the east if things go as planned. And yep - I think I still have the satphone number or mmsi for the m du Fresne.

Still a few Orionid meteors but a very hazy but mostly cloudless night and they are not very bright.

A Touch of the Turgids

0200/24th position 1335 02501

Did anybody else notice that there seemed to be a world shortage of M&Ms from about July - not the peanut ones in yellow packs, there were lots of those, but the real thing in brown packs? More on this later.

It's the midnight to three watch again - Pete woke me and I emerged into the world dripping with sweat and torpor - not just lassitude but that viscous torpor that curdles action and congeals the mind. Lethargy, inertia, all that too, rolled in. Reminded me of when I was a very little kid just starting at boarding school where my pastors and masters used expressions like moral turpitude to describe the attitude of any kid with a gram of original thought or the gumption to use some initiative. Never used about me, unfortunately. I was bumped up a class, so I was too clever by half, or too clever for my own good. Quaint, that moral turpitude! But what I have now is a sort if visceral torpitude where my mind sends sluggish commands to my extremities and they jack up and say go away and don't disturb me can't you see I'm torpid stupid?

So, a cup-a-soup later and not a lot of improvement, I raided the goodies cupboard to find one of the only two packs of M&Ms that we were able to buy in Falmouth (ASDA yet!)and later in Lisbon. And now, about thirty of the little blobs later appropriately sugar fixed, I can at least prod the keyboard. Did someone at the back of the class say 'More's the pity?'

The GRIB shows things getting interesting between here and the Equator. The ITCZ seems to be up and down between 5 and 10 N with a nasty little patch of activity to the south later today. We are trying to get a bit further east to get behind the active bit though that's really too far ahead yet, but also to get a better angle to cross the SE trades later, which at the moment appear to be blowing directly from the south. Fickle breeze here - comes and goes but we're moving.

Thanks everyone for your message - apologies for my turpid recalcitrance in not acknowledging them all but don't stop.