Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

The sound of one ball drifting...

0630/24th position 2859 00428, trip 130 and 1202 to CT required VMG for Dec 5th now about 4.5kt. It's a bit like limited over cricket - balls left, runs to get, wickets to fall. Drip feed instant gratification, to coin an oxymoron.

We crossed 5 deg West at 0045 this morning - We are now east of Falmouth and 4750nm south after 6314 miles! Gordy notified four hours in advance and we will celebrate this evening. Dank, drizzly, overcast, windless - just trickling along.

I've been checking Berri's systems prior to CT so that we can get recalcitrant gizmos fixed. Have just cranked up the SatCom C - an Inmarsat C device. The equipment seems to work and it logs in to the East Atlantic region but will not transmit messages via the Land Earth Stations predefined in the software so I assume there must have been some sort of amendment since I last used it (probably at least 18 months ago as it is power hungry so only used as emergency backup). Would appreciate advice if anyone knows - else will get on-line latest version of Easymail software from CT to check for changes.

Steve sent us a list of howlers from the current crop of higher school certificate exam papers in English. I rather like this one: 'The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.'
Shades of a softly Taoist Sei Shonagon and her list of things near yet distant - in her case 'The course of a boat'.

Nostalgia 3

Me. I seem to be the serious one, as usual. We actually had to go to about 75N to get around a big ice field in Lancaster Sound - sadly, freezing rain and big icebergs meant we were just not able to make it to Beechey Island and the NASA HMP Camp. At the time I wrote this one it seemed that the really hard bit was behind us and so it was, but there was still a lot of nastiness to come, especially dark nights and ice in Davis Strait (but overwhelmed by swimming polar bears and the most glorious auroras) and the Atlantic crossing which destroyed the old engine. It's all there on www.berrimilla.com/tng if you can be bothered to wade back past the spammers' desecrations.

Alex

Kimbra's watch and we are almost as far north as we need to go to round the northernmost point of Somerset Island, just east of Cunningham Bay. So - in an hour or so we should be able to head east, then south east. No more ice visible, Cornwallis just there on the N. horizon and a lighter patch of cloud where Beechey should be, about 45 miles away. Worth just a tiny wooohooo! Pascal's dotted line is ok so far - we can't test the Beechey bit but we'll pick it up again soon.

As for clothing I thought a detailed list might be interesting. On deck, I wear my brown fisherman's super tough wellies, aka Sitka Slippers, with sock liners and fleece socks. Glove liners and insulated industrial rubber gloves. From the skin out, a thermal vest with long sleeves, T shirt, no knickers or thermals over the nethers (because they promote the most agonising gunwale bum) so a fleece mid layer known as salopettes, with a fleece hoodie on top. Sometimes a balaclava and neck tube. On top of all that, a Mustang survival suit or a float coat and Henri pants if it's not too cold. Goggles if it's snowing or windy.

And it has come to pass - at 1750 UTC Sunday August 17 we turned east, then south east at 74.12.10.3N 093.57.28.2W. Half way Consultation is occurring. Slightly bigger Wooohooo!

And keep 'em crossed please. Looong way to go yet.

Nostalgia 2

This is McQ feeling cold

McQ

oh how I wish the oreo cookie monster would leave me alone!!! he hangs out shivering at the end of my bunk while I am off watch, desperately trying to ignore him, though its hard as he looks so blue and fluffy and unmonsterlike and pathetic, then when I come on watch he sort of attaches himself to me and won't leave me alone, till I relent and eat cookies, despite my constant protesting!!!

To jump on the clothing bandwagon too, which i think I just win, I have on:
1 pair thermal socks
1 pair thick fluffy socks
1 pair ziploc bags (yes these count, they might be the most important items infact!!)
1 pair leaky boots
1 set of underwear, actually bikini top and bottoms\
1 pair thermal legs
1 thermal top
1 midlayer salopettes
1 fleece top
2 midlayer jackets
1 oilie bottoms
1 oilie smock top
1 pair fluffy gloves
1 pair sealskinz gloves
1 pair waterproof outer shell gloves
1 neck warmer
1 thermal balaclava
1 hobart beanie
1 windstopper balaclava
1 fleece hat with ear warmer bits
1 pair ski goggles
so thats 29 individual items...yes, 2 pairs socks, 3 pairs gloves and four hats... its making me cold thinking about it!!!

Oh how I sometimes wish the oreo cookie monster was a heater instead, then he could hang on to me all day and night long, and I wouldn't mind at all!!

Hope everyone well and warm
Lots of love
McQ
xxx

Nostalgia, part 1

I have just cranked up the incredibly ancient and scarred old Toughbook from the first voyage and the Bass Strait roll and found some old blogs from the critical bit of our North West Passage transit last year. I think they are worth putting up again here. All from 17/18 Aug 2008

Kimbra's post

You've heard of gorillas in the mist, but today we've had belugas and snow! I've never seen a beluga whale before, but I have to say it was love at first sight. To me, these small whales are superficially more like oversize, white, friendly dolphins. As Alex said, we saw a small, loose pod of about 6 belugas around brekkie-o'clock this morning. One appeared to be stalking us, so maybe word has got around the whale-world about Corrie's close encounter off Barrow and they're out for revenge? Anyway, most cool!

The weather is also (still) most cool. So far, it's snowed on 3 separate occasions today. My Alaska keychain thermometer is still telling me it's 10 deg C, but I'm rapidly losing faith in it. My cold-toe-ometer is telling me that it's probably a little less than that. Cold enough to break out the hot porridge with dried apricots and maple syrup for breakfast. Yum.

While I hate fog, I'm really kinda fond of snow. There's not enough of it (yet!) for it to settle, and we're definitely not talking snowmen either, but it's very peaceful. And makes a nice change from the rain. It's starting to settle on the hills bordering Peel Sound, and dusting parts of them a light grey against the dark blue-brown rock.

Nearly around the top of Peel Sound. Another 50 NM until we hang right and turn east along Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound towards Greenland. So 50 NM to go to my mental halfway point, where we stop heading away from the edge of the world and start heading back to civilisation.

Anyway, my fingers are too cold to hit the right keys on this miniature keyboard, so I'm heading for my bunk. Wake me for dinner in bed in an hour or so...wonder what Corrie's cooking tonight?

Night all! K.

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Almost back to where we started

0630/23rd position 2822 00644 trip 143 and 1327nm to Cape Town. Closing on the half way point at 36 k in the marathon.

Still hooning - genoa poled out, pointing at CT, averaging about 6kts. Soft spot due later today and much bigger one tomorrow. Dec 5th arrival still on the cards. Will depend on the behaviour of the high behind the one we're about to enter. Big to-do list for Cape Town.

Lots of birds following us - I have so many floaters in my eyes these days that looking at the horizon or trying to focus on a bird is a bit like reading newsprint - takes time and concentration, so a bit of jizzery later.

We should cross 5 degrees west tomorrow so we will have completed the huge arc to the west to get around West Africa and the South Atlantic weather systems and be back due south of where we started. We shall celebrate - if you're reading this Gordy, I'll blip your mobile with the satphone. The journey will start to become very different from here. There ain't no 'Beam me up Scotty!' once you get down into the southern ocean below Africa.

Wimping along

I'm a wimp when it comes to flying kites out here - potential for big and unnecessary stress on the rig if things go pearshaped and all the other complications of bits of string everywhere. But Pete was persuasive and we've had our racing assymetric kite up for the last 3 hours and we are hooning - trying really hard to stay in a line of wind that I think will die with a line of cloud to the west of us. Last time we flew it was from the Fastnet Rock back past The Lizard in the Fastnet where it picked us up about 100 places (luck as well, of course, with a massive wind change as we rounded Pantaenius)- so, Mr Shilland, a good little engine and just right for these conditions. Still more or less on target for Dec 5th arrival with 1436 miles to go. Kevvo is driving - I'm watching him because there is still some swell and if a big one catches the stern, it throws us sideways and gives poor Kevvo a completely false apparent wind which gives him the hiccups.

Later - since I started writing this, I've been hand steering for a couple of hours because it's too much for the electric autopilot as well. The wind is strengthening and I think freeing us and we may have to drop the kite soon. I saw our first Portuguese Man 'o War (Bluebottle for the Australians) quite a big one, deep blue sac with crenellated fringe on the top edge and half moon curve so they drift with the prevailing wind. And a white bird settled on the water - unusual as most of them here are brown or black - orange beak, white head, black slashes around the eyes, grey flecks on top of the body and wings and two long straight white tail feathers - hard to judge their length but at least as long as the body. Not in the albatross book but somebody will know what it is.

Later still - we dropped it in time for a relaxed meeting with the Grindy - was building a nice fat quarter wave so time to douse and get the boat upright again - lost perhaps half a knot but the knuckles no longer grey.

Norm - thanks! Wish we had one of those machines.

Will i? Won't it?

0630/22nd position 2740 00918 trip 130 and 1470 to Cape Town. Required VMG still 4.8 for AM Dec 5th.

G'day to the Crosshaven RNLI mob and RNLI crews everywhere. I decided that today's breakfast Murph which I'm quietly savouring as I prod the keyboard, would be in your honour, especially as in the conditions we're told you are getting up there, you have probably been very busy.

Gerry Fitz - give the Fenwick a call - if he's not totally stupefied, dozy old fart that he is, he's got a really good story to tell you and you can use it immediately to edify your punters. Buy him a beer - he earned it and someone orta give him a gong.

If this is a short one, the HF radio is back - I never know from email to email whether it will turn itself on when I press the switch. It came back last night for long enough to send the grey rainbow thingy so let's see now..

A rainbow in grey

We are as remote as it is possible to be in this huge ocean. Last ship a week ago, before that, another eight days to the previous one. Not an aircraft, not a space station, nothing human. Macca for ten minutes a tribute to technology and a welcome interlude.

How can I describe this night to someone sitting in front of a bright computer screen at home or in the office? It's as if we are inside a huge faintly luminous grey sock. Shapeless, untouchable gaseous void filler in thin foggy grey. We're sailing on soft grey-black velvet, invisible, shapeless but substantial, with the loveliest of phosphorescent twinkles in a rolling greenish halo of disturbed water flowing past. You feel the motion - it's experienced, without the usual frame of horizon and clouds to mark the boat's passage. The sails a darker mass in the void. Swooshing surging burbling water noise and the swish of the wind generator with its gentle undulating whine as it fires wiggly amps at the batteries, its tiny red LED glowing in the shapeless grey. Instrument lights at their dimmest grey - juuust readable but even with the acutest night vision there's only the feel of the change in density between velvet and gas at the horizon. Masthead lights brilliant arcs of pinpoint colour leaving painted trails on the retina - green light reflected off a masthead aerial making a surface patch in the velvet out to starboard. Sometimes it catches a ripple and turns it into glowing life for a second or two. The usual clunks and creaks that are the atmospheric noises off in any sailing boat. Gentle breeze on the face - tonight a caress but always out here with the hint of

Or just a dank and dismold overcast night if you'd rather do without the hype...

Freaks of the airwaves

Just possible there may be another Macca gig sometime after 0700 Sydney time Nov 22, 2000 UTC Nov 21. ABC Radio Australia, program Australia All Over.

SJ - instructions not followed! So much for reinforcement - and the HF died again just as I'd downloaded the 3 liner with the half page of unnecessary crud attached. Grateful if you could advise no more emails possible unless relayed through you but phone ok. Iridium too precious for extraneous garbage. Murphyalatermate.

Quickie to catch the propagation window

0630/21st position 2700 01132 trip 110 (all over the place...) and 1596 to CT

SJ - thanks mate and assumed as much - but never any harm in a bit of reinforcement!
Izz 'n'G Kool and gluey doods - thanks too.

Another trawl through the wheelie bin.

In a Eureka! moment, while engaging the neuronic trio in an explanation of the difference between magnetic and true courses I discovered (stumbled across) the origin of phosphorescence. Nothing to do with dinoflagellates, just the detritus of sloppy navigators. Everyone knows that Einstein hated the idea of entanglement in which one of a pair of particles can be shown to be 'known' to the other no matter how far across spacetime they may be separated. He called it spooky and kept trying to find an explanation because it appears to defy his general theory of relativity. Navigators have known about it since Prince Henry set up shop at Sagres - if you draw a line on a chart, all those entangled particles on the chart have their spin established by your pencil and all their partners out here on the ocean fire up and make a glowing line on the water that corresponds to the line on the chart. Then you come out in your ship and sail along it and before you can say dinoflagellisticexpiallidocious you have got to where you were going! Good, conscientious navigators always switch off the excited particles on the ocean as they pass so as not to confuse us lot who follow but we're not all so punctilious and phosphorescence is the result - terazillions of those excitedly spinning particles left behind by sloppy navigators higgledy-piggledy all over the ocean.

The difference between magnatic and true will have to wait - not half such fun.

One for the mythbusters if they haven't done it already, or any competent mathematician who can find the numbers. I have heard it said that there is a significant chance that in any day you breathe air that has been circulated so comprehensively by the world's meteorological systems to the extent that any breath might contain a molecule from Nelson's dying breath, or one of Henry VIII's belches (or worse) or Nefertiti's sneeze or a dinosaur's bellow. Presumably, the further back in time the more likely. So what are the chances that a molecule in the air I'm breathing now was once breathed by a slave building the Sphinx?

Or in similar mode, the human body is mostly water, which is circulated in the same way - what chance any part of me was once in the bilge of Leif Ericsson's Viking ship on the Greenland coast? Or of the puddle that Raleigh spread his cloak over for Elizabeth 1? Or even part of Raleigh before she had him shortened by a head for being presumptuous?

Enough already!

On ignoring the oblate shape of our spheroid

The GPS has two sets of numbers upon which we gaze with hopeful yearning - our latitude and longitude co-ordinates. Each reads degrees and decimal minutes & right now our latitude is 26.07.897 S read as twenty six degrees seven point eight nine seven minutes south. For the navigationally challenged, one minute of latitude is equal to one nautical mile so we are roughly 7.9 miles south of 26 degrees. The last digit (the 7 of .897) is one thousandth of a nautical mile or about 2 metres so as we sail along, the numbers increase or decrease depending on our direction. We are heading south west, so the latitude numbers (degrees and minutes south) are increasing by roughly 0.005 for every boat length we sail. The longitude numbers (now 012.38.023 W) are decreasing by roughly the same amount. Only roughly because a degree of longitude at 26 south is less that a nautical mile. Purists, please ignore the problems raised by diagonals and oblate spheroids for this little exposition. For the first time for what seems days, both sets of numbers are counting in their respectively correct directions. South is increasing and west is decreasing. YAY!

Another concept is Velocity Made Good or VMG. This is a calculated number based on our course and speed over the ground relative to where we are going. It is almost always different from our speed through the water and our speed over the ground but it is the best indicator of how efficiently we are sailing the boat and choosing our courses. On the last tack, our VMG for Cape Town was about 1 knot - then came the wind change we have been crossing all the appendages for and we tacked and now VMG for CT is 4.2 knots - much better but still not good enough to get us there by Dec 5th. We need a constant VMG of about 4.8 for that. Our speed through the water is about 6.2 knots and speed over the ground is 5.4 knots so we are in an adverse current of about 0.8 knots. Our required course over the ground for CT is 130M and we are actually making 167M which explains some of the discrepancies. Perhaps another burst on the difference between Magnetic course (M) and True course (T) and variation in another post.

Deborah, thanks for ISS and Atlantis info. As you can imagine, a big news hole out here - can't even get the Beeb world service without major hassle. I'm about to try using the mast as an antenna. Big Hi to Andrew - the Needles in 90+ knots I can only imagine.

Another word of explanation: Our ISS viewing times are roughly the 20 minute periods before sunrise and after sunset - while the ISS can see the sun and reflect its light towards us if they are anywhere near us bur as the sun is below our horizon the sky is dark enough for us to see the reflection quite easily.

Norm - thanks - jeers and ribald laughter from the crowd is what gets one foot out in front of the other again and again in those last 6km.

Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Not a lot to talk about

0700/20th position 2609 01259 trip 109 and as you can see, we are north east of yesterdays position. The high seems to have slowed or stopped and we are in a variable and undecided SE wind rather than the easterly we were expecting so the best we can do is about 080M at about 4.5 kts over the ground which is about 055T. The centre of the high is still south west of us and what happens next may decide whether we make CT by Dec 5th or even this year! Still in a 2ish knot NW current which really kills progress when your top speed in only around 5 knots. Our VMG is still positive but not healthy. End of marathon pain and suffering! With the benefit of the clarity of hindsight, we might have been better to have followed a similar track to Groupama - much longer, with big risk of nastiness but overall better wind.

Making today's 5 litres of water, slurping coffee having dunked and waiting and watching. The brownish 'albatross' was back yesterday evening - airy, imperious swoops and soars either side of our track, disappearing into the troughs, changing direction apparently without effort, steep banked turns out to about half a mile either side and very occasionally crossing diagonally from astern to ahead.

Will try to grab remaining smidge of propagation window and HF this.

Murphyalater

A pair of Spectacled Petricals

Well, that's how it comes out sometimes - try repeating Spectacled Petrel fast. There are now two of them and I have photos of one which might be sharp enough for the blog - very difficult to get focus right with long lens, moving boat and fast moving bird. They are about 700 miles from home on Tristan da Cunha.

Sitting on the front of the high, VMG for Cape Town lousy but we are hoping that it will improve significantly as we get further knocked and tack. Just as the Pacific Ocean was trying all the way from Sydney to Adak in the Aleutians last year to push us back into our box, so it seems that the whole of this huge stretch of the South Atlantic is moving North West at about 2 knots - the North West flowing Benguela current is supposed to be much closer to the African coast. So we've done a lot of sailing, tried some tacks to see where the best VMG happens and there ain't no good combination of wind and current out here just now. The Examiner being snaky.

Malcom, thanks re isinglass - we've always used vaseline which works just as well but the trick is to make sure there's lots of it evenly spread on the shell and doesn't always happen. We only chucked two out of 4 dozen so not bad - so to speak.

Duncan - you've been busy! Red jacket out of hiding and operational. Needs design tweak - I shall write to Henri Lloyd and see whether they are interested.

Latest Position

another quickie

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

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

A tired analogy

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

We have just been visited by a Spectacled Petrel - yesterday's prelim jizz said it seemed to have white round the eyes but unable to get my decrepit eyes into gear so not sure but today it came back and no doubt whatever. I bet there aren't too many people who have seen one - they are endemic to Tristan da Cunha. Stocky bird but with the most graceful soaring swooping flight, just like an albatross.

Apart from that bit of wonder and joy, it's been an ornery day. Things have conspired - the laptop dropped it's iridium settings again so had to restore it to yesterday meantime big wind change so out on deck to adjust, come back to laptop and spill Grindy's Medical Elixir carefully saved in unspillable spot even in these conditions. Or so I thought. And that series was just one of several so somewhat frazzly, without gruntle, po faced and surrounded on all sides by irk.

Later, a photo I would have loved to have been able to take. Sunset about an hour ago, sky still deep luminous silver blue, fluffy dark grey castellations of Cu along the western horizon, radiant new moon above. Enter, stage right, Spectacled Petrel, black silhouette soaring across the sky and the moon in full 90 degree bank and swoop directly towards me - silhouette changes to tiny circle with razor slash curved enhedral wings. Another steep bank and he's gone. Serene, lovely sight and suddenly I'm unirked, fully gruntled and happy.

Quickie - I need a cuppa.

0700/18th position 2603 01640 trip 129 CT 1877

I'd forgotten what it is like to be cold and wet and complacency was in the air - last night's little fracas was a useful reminder and I'm now properly waterproofed. Big tidy up just finished and we're back pointing at CT at about 4.5kts. Wind easing, barometer rising. Will probably get softer during the day.