0030/23rd

You could easily sail past the Cape Verdes at less than 10 miles and not see them despite their very impressive presence. There's a local hazy overcast day and night that hides them completely. There are the usual clues - swell patterns, birds, lenticular clouds when visible - but you don't see the rocky bits.

Yesterday Pete had his first flying fish breakfast - only one small one because he was kind to the first two that arrived and tossed them back. I've heard three more arrive on deck as I have been writing this so a feast for tomorrow. They are such lovely graceful creatures that it's sad to see them dead in the scuppers.

Last time we were here was September 8th 2005, the day before Pete's birthday, in almost exactly the same groove. Later today we should pass Baha at a range of about 10 miles. We were a bit closer last time. And the day after that, Pete went for a swim.

Carol, thanks for monster retype. Today I'll trawl the frequencies and report back.
Doug, thanks for Kerguelen data. Sounds like a big French base - my chart very spiky and sparse - if we go Cape Town, I'll get a better one and maybe talk to the French Consulate.

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Correction

I put poor Henry 180 miles north of where he really is - sorry mate - proper position 2835 S 2609 W. We're on our way. Thanks Doug - I don't have a detailed chart of the Kerguelens though could probably get one in Cape Town. My CMap shows Port Douzieme and Port Jeanne Arc on the north sides of the two larger islands to the SE of the big one. No Port Christmas. Looks like a pretty forbidding place and well worth a visit if the Examiner allows. I think the German navy used it as a coaling depot in WW1 as well - is there a French scientific team there somewhere?

Carol - interesting if it was a wayward rocket. I think you may have sent frequencies - thanks if you have.

Saw the NWestern island of the Cape Verdes this morning about 25 miles away - big volcanic peak - oddly, doesn't have a name on my chart. Next one is Sao Vicente. But, just like last time, there's so much haze that mostly you cant see them until you are about 5 miles off.

Current position 1640/22nd 1620 02548 and we have the main up for the first time in about 2 weeks - 2 reefs so as not to overpower the headsail and cause Kevvo to connipsicate and the 15 knots or so just ahead of the beam. Holding course about 190 just a bit west of what we really need but it's due to free us tomorrow. East Canaries current probably taking us west at 1 knot too.

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0700/22nd

Position 1706 02555 Trip 2478 = 135/24 - noice.

We have just passed the Banco Do Noroeste at the NE point of the Cape Verdes. Short lumpy sea and Berri has been a bit lively all night - jerky corkscrewing bouncy motion and very difficult to do anything or even brace. Drinking a cuppa takes some skill. Still dark this far west but lighter sky in the east. Saturn has risen. Orion now to the west.

I'm running the watermaker without the engine for the first time since Lisbon. The Airbreeze at full whizz in the 14 kts or so apparent that we now have carries about half the load. The watermaker needs 6 amps for the hour it takes to squeeze the 4.5 litres we use so we're only down 3 amp hours and no diesel. Whack fol the diddle-o. It means that the whizzer is putting out about 5 amps - 2 for the boats gizmology and 3 for the squeezer. And it keeps the voltage at 12.9 - fantastico!

Carol - lots of Orionid meteors - mostly little ones, appearing to fall directly into the NE horizon, some white, some yellowish. Pete saw another big one - these follow a different line and may not be related. Intermittent cloud so we probably missed a few.

Have to stop this every 12 minutes or so to check the watermnaker bottle - we never squeeze directly into the water tank because if the membrane were to kark, we'd have salty water in the tank - no fantastico - so we have two reserve plastic bottles with 6 litres between them and a further 9 empty tonic bottles that we fill and keep as the ready-use supply. This way, we keep the tank full of Lisbon water and use only squeezed ocean. If we use any from the tank (and no reason to do so unless the squeezer fails) then we can first taste the squeezed bottles and if ok, pour them into the tank. By doing it this way, we also know how much water we have to survive on it both squeezers - or the electrics - fail and we can ration accordingly. We do have a handle that can be fitted to either squeezer if the electrics go so we can still make water manually.

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Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK

Just an update - started around 0900/21st

Course altered - dropped the little red number which has earned its keep! - now just the single, full headsail still on its pole and haven't lost any speed. We'll observe for a couple of hours as there's no point in overpowering the boat and making Kevvo sweat as well as getting spray in the cockpit for no real gain. About 12 days to the Equator iff we can keep up this speed. It's getting scary - far too easy - I suspect the Examiner will intervene somewhere along the track.

Carol, thanks for Orionid meteor info. The big one a couple of nights ago was tracking roughly NE > SW from probably a bit north of Orion. Was spectacular - I've seen a few little ones since but no apparent pattern. A request please - somewhere in the boat I have (lost) my short wave frequency handbook. Could you please interrogate the BBC website and see whether there is anything we can receive out here and relevant times and frequencies? We have a digital SW (+MW LW FM) receiver. Tks!

Doug, thanks for Henry's co-ordinates. I now have his resting place as a waypoint so we are reminded of him and of all the thousands of others who have died out here and have no name or record in history. Young Henry died on Feb 6th, 1853 and was buried at 2535 S 02609 W. His sister Susan? died within sight of the lighthouse at Cape Town, so if we go that way we will send her some jelly snakes as well. And I look forward to your Kerguelen discoveries. We've done the equations and reality is looking like Cape Town and not S Georgia - SG just a bridge a bit too far but still possible. Kerguelen might be an acceptable substitute.

The birds are back - Storm Petrels and their bigger relations but I was looking into the sun so too hard to get features. Later perhaps.

Now 1730/21st Trafalgar and all the dead sailors commemorated - position 1816 02533 and a-hooning. Will need to grab lots of easting after the Cape Verdes so as to cross 05N at about 22W - so sayeth The Admiralty in Ocean Passages of the World. Nice to think that this is the turn for home but I doubt it - I think we will have to cross to about 30 W after the Equator - but we might get lucky.

And the Whizzer whizzeth and it keeps up with the battery discharge at about 12 kts apparent. Good one!

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0700/21st

Position 1912 02512 trip 2343 = 129/24

A good day's run. Today We will need to change our course to pass glose to the Cape Verdes heading for St Peter & Paul Rocks just north of the equator at 29 W. We will almost certainly have to revert ti single headsail and main - the main probably with a reef to stop it taking over when coming off the tops of waves. Not yet daylight - we'll do it when we can see stuff - much easier!

A Proper Breakfast day and Trafalgar Day - I think it was Wellington on the battlefield of Waterloo who said that a battle lost is so awful to contemplate that there's nothing near as awful except a battle won. He was looking at the dead and wounded on both sides. Trafalgar Day for me evokes similar emotions.

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5Rs and some thank yous

We've just clocked the 2000 miles from Falmouth. Dr Goss' bottle of Talisker came out for the Reward event and I have it recorded on video. Aaaah! Thanks Pete.

Cakes - we have three, given to us in Falmouth. Carol, your three part version has been sustaining us to here and will probably get us to the equator. I think of you in your kitchen and the long drive to deliver it and it has an integrity all its own. Thanks.

And the way we have the boat stowed, Pauline's will be next and should get us across the South Atlantic by which time we should have the boat sufficiently emptied to be able to get at Maureen's, which was first into the quarterberth stowage. That ought to get us at least towards Kerguelen. Thanks, all of you! Updates will follow as we get to them.

Sarah, your white paint job it holding out well. The cockpit is now a bit worn but the rest sparkles. And the tankard is in regular consultative operation. Thanks on both counts.

Peter C - the RCC pot is likewise in regular use - it now has an authenticating dent, though not anywhere that reduces its capacity. Also thanks to all.

And tomorrow is Trafalgar Day. A Random Event if ever I saw one.

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0700/20th

Position 2046 2343 Trip 2214=120/24

around 0100/20th - Something quite large just entered the atmosphere and lit the place up with a very bright burnout. It cake from the NE, passed just south of us and seemed to break up as it passed over us. It was heading roughly 240 and it burned out about half way to our SW horizon. The trail was visible for some time afterwards. The brightest one I can remember ever seeing.

My old mate Betelgeuese is poised almost directly above Berri's gyrating masthead - we're moving south. Mintaka here we come.

Thanks to Carol and Malcom for the galactic centre being in Sagittarius. I found the centre you can't see very close to the bit near the centre you can see - a load of dust and an event horizon rather got in the way. Binocs on a clearer night. How big is a super massive black hole? Golf ball? Moon? Earth? Silly question really. I seem to remember that in galactic futurology, we are due to get mixed up with Andromeda before we fall through our own event horizon. But not next Tuesday.

And I know I've done this before but it's haunting - here we are in an empty patch of sea about 6 miles across that moves along with us. The first ships here were probably Portugese - little caravels and naus, crosses on the sails, pennants, religious statues, superstition, fear and the lurking inquisition. Then anybody's guess - probably the Spanish, Magellan, Drake in the Golden Hind - and in the peak years of shipping, perhaps 10000 ships each year. Nondescript traders mostly but also naval squadrons, slavers, fat sluggish cargo galleons carting gold and other treasures from Brazil and the Spanish colonies - and the clippers. Cutty Sark in this wind, stuns'ls and royals set, surging past at 16 knots And the Java and her like - worn out transports taking immigrants to Brazil and Australia and South Africa. Surveyors (who, for instance, charted the Tropic seamount of a few nights ago so accurately?) and cable layers, whalers, nitrate carriers from Chile. And the occasional submarine. And now racing yachts - high tech like the tea clippers in their time with similar urgency and deadlines. I wish I could play the movie as they all pass through history.

Doug, if you're reading this, send us Henry's co-ordinates and we'll send him some more goodies. Henry Knight was a young boy who died of starvation in the Java on his way to Australia and is buried in the South Atlantic - see the first Berrimilla website.

Good luck with Polishit, Izzo - report on return please.

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Tropic of Cancer

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Tropical Rs

0700 position 2215 02221 trip 2094 = 113/24

We crossed the Tropic of Cancer yesterday prompting the resurrection of the 5 R system - Berri's Regular, Rationed and Random Rewards Routine - we decided that this was a suitable Random event that should be Rewarded and we engaged Dr Grindy for a what he billed us for as a Long Consultation at 1700. Regular events are the daily passage through spacetime that brings 1700UTC into our 'Now' momentarily each day (short Con with Dr G, high on the event horizon for both of us through the heat of the day) and the alternate passage of our little world from odd to even to odd numbered days. Because of the need to Conserve in order to be able to Consult under 5R (see above) for the whole voyage back to Oz should we decide to potter on past the obvious stopping places, we have a proper breakfast in the company of Dr Murphy on odd numbered days only. We have some raspy Australian cask red (1 euro/litre in Lisbon so it must be pretty random) which gets trotted out on even days for dinner. Pete likes it - I tend to watch and encourage with loud cries but desist from actually running it past my teeth. We are 1870 or so miles from Falmouth, so in about 130 miles there will occur what I hope will become another regular event. One, I think, that merits Pete Goss' brew.

Polaris is getting satisfactorily closer to the horizon and Mintaka closer to the zenith - still downwind, twin poled, apparents never more that 10 kt and often down to 4 which is when Kevvo takes his bat and ball and slinks off to sulk. But 10 kts is only just enough for the Airbreeze to tick over and put mini amps into the battery so we have not yet seen it at full blast. We run the engine for about 3 hours each day to keep the batteries and all the gizmology (laptop, watermaker, instruments, nav lights, autopilot and camera chargers) working and I've just added 25 litres of diesel to the tank. We've used more but we're rolling around so much that I can't fill the tank without diesel sloshing out of the filler hole and into the bilge. I think we're burning about 1.5 ltr/hr but time will refine this estimate. If the Airbreeze has the grunt, once we get some serious apparents it should give us the 2+ amps we need to break even or get ahead. Hope so anyway - else we'll have to close things down like last time when the towed generator died.

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0700/18th

Position 2326 02051 Trip 1981 = 106/24 Falmouth is 1774 miles away so the GPS shows we've sailed about 200 miles further to get here, including up the Tagus. This is sailing day 17 of 114 or so.

There's a tight little low forming over the Cape Verdes - at current rate of progress we'll be just behind it. But it seems there are southerlies to the south of it so we may be shaken out of this gentle downwind torpor.

Could someone please tell me where to look for the centre of our galaxy - the nearest constellation would do. Thanks.

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Imagine...

23 41 48.7 N 020 39 58.4 W

Have you ever flown past a mountain? Or into La Guardia at night low over the Hudson past the tall Manhattan buildings with their lights? Or past the washing lines on those buildings on the way into the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong? You get a sense of the proximity of it all yet you are an observer and isolated. Here we are, in tiny Berrimilla, on a black night, Cassiopeia and Sirius just visible in gaps, gliding past an invisible mountain under the ocean and seeing it only in the imagination. We are three miles south of its almost vertical 4000 metre southern face. It's there, invisible, a massive presence, 30 km across just beside and below us. Awesome.

But the ocean moves - broadly there's a clockwise flow around the North Atlantic and here we should be in a southerly current. If only that vast movement of water past the mountain below would cause it to light up like Berri's wake last night! A huge glowing green squareish pyramid filling the depths. Wouldn't that be cool and froody? Might even generate lenticular waves of phosphorescence down current from the peak.

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Tracks and traps over jizzery

I'm told that nuclear submarines can be tracked from space. Compared to a nuclear sub, one of the most disguised and surreptitious travellers ever devised, Berri's glowing, flashing green luminous trail across the North Atlantic last night must have looked like Son et Lumiere. It was awesome and enthralling - rather like the auroras we saw in the Baffin Sea and in it's small way just as spectacular.

Today, we are approaching the Tropic Seamount on the edge of the shelf - 4000 metres up to 500 or so in a vertical climb covering only about 5 miles in distance - breathtakingly steep if it were on land and nearly half as high as Everest. It's still 50 odd miles ahead but the sea has gone from deep almost milky blue to grey-green. Possibly unrelated. I've been squeezing it and it tastes just like the blue stuff!

A brief pass by a Storm Petrel - very brief glimpse, like the Madeiran but seemed to have longer thinner wings than in the book and also an all-white rump and tail. There isn't one like it in the book, so I've probably over jizzed. Zark!

Difficult to pick what to talk about - I'm sure that what we have for breakfast can be tedious all round - but perhaps interesting to note that we still have fresh tomatos, potatos, apples, turnips, onions, bacon and eggs. The bacon is packed 4 slices a time into sealed plastic sleeves. Even the very top quality bacon we bought sheds a lot of pus coloured water while awaiting its fate which is good because we don't have to boil it off before the pan will get hot enough to fry. The bacon and eggs and some spuds and apples from Falmouth, the rest from Lisbon. Lisbon tomatos - like no others - wonderful! If there's anything anyone would like us to write about, just holler and we'll see.

Interesting joust gybing the twin pole arrangement - difficult to explain but as a start, we have 24 bits of string coming back to the cockpit many of which are involved in a headsail gybe because we have one big and one small headsail and they must be changed from side to side. Many traps for young players in the process! For a start, if not kept bar taut, the halyard for the red sail gets wound up in the furler for the big one and ain't that a hassle to unwind...etc. We now have the red one on both kite halyards Dave - to try to stabilise the head and stop it unwinding. Time will tell and it could be interesting getting it down.

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Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK

Camouflage

0700/17th position 2438 01931 Trip 1875 = 110/24

Another sailing vessel crossed our bows from east to west at sunrise - seemed bigger, may have had 2 masts, new sails and faster. I think this is the first time we have seen another sail anywhere out of sight of land since 2005. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't any more around here, though it's getting to be the end of the season for crossing the Atlantic by the classic route from the Cape Verdes to the Antilles.

Yesterday's moth - perfect camouflage perhaps for the Western Sahara, only about 200 miles upwind. I wonder if it's still there?

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Sententiously orotund mellifluity?

Borrowed from a description of Dr Johnson's prose. I have asked my sister Isabella to put links and any other explanations and translations directly on the blog if I get above myself. Or up, as they would say in Australia.

Some of this stuff might make more sense to some of you if you can see the weather data we are getting. We get data files over the HF (SSB) radio known as GRIB files - GRaphics In Binary - they are compressed weather maps for small selected regions that we send for via sailmail (www.sailmail.com). Stone age technology but very effective and simple. We are using the GFS model at half degree resolution - www.passageweather.com might allow you to see the same thing but I'm sure google would find a free site if not. We're just hanging in the western edge of a northerly band of wind off the coast of Mauretania and hoping to hold it until we get into the Trades proper down near the Cape Verdes. Tricky - the wind is influenced by big systems to the west and it sure ain't constant.

Deborah - thanks for the ISS table - as you say, gloomy prospect. I had not realised until we were actually speaking with Leroy Chiao in the ISS in 2005 that they have periods when bits of the world are in darkness for several days at a time. He tried to take photos of Cape Horn for us and could not. Praia was a good guesstimate - we should be there in a few days. Sorry about the need to relay messages but the technology is desperately simple and wide open to spam which would put us off the air immediately. Fixable but with difficulty, so we always try to stay one iteration away from the real world.

Wake flashes - spectacularly big tonight and everywhere. Just as if a strobe is going off under water. I managed to focus on one and it seemed to have shape, rather like an S and about a foot long and luminous green - the same sort of light as Cyalume sticks if that means anything to anyone. Some are so big that the whole boat is silhouetted instantaneously - fascinating.

And a visit from a bigger moth today - parked for long enough to get a look but not a photo - golden, triangular wings when closed, about 2cm, with tiny red and brown speckles. White/beige body. Malcom, as you say, chaos theory at its most extreme says that when it took off a ripple went through spacetime and maybe a probability wave will collapse with appropriate spectacle somewhere Out There.

Frustrating day trying to get any laptop to play DVD's we have been given or even to get them on to the ipod. No go - laptops need plug in to play/convert AV1 files and the ipod just doesn't see them as movies - there's no movie library in my itunes and it seems to look only for 'rented movies' even in manual sync mode. A pox on the thing.

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Prufrockery?

This one got stuck in transmission somewhere a couple of days ago.

We're about 600 miles from the Cape Verdes - That's a Sydney-Hobart race. Or a drive from Sydney to Brisbane - at 2.5 knots. ETA at my CV waypoint 9 and a bit days, equalling our slowest ever S2H. Was it Prufrock who counted out his days in coffee spoons? We count ours in S2Hs. Some distances to contemplate: Falmouth to the equator about 3337nm; Eq to mid point behind S Atlantic high about 2220 and mid point to Cape Town 1550 total a bit over 7100 miles. Nearly 12 S2Hs. Accuracy is largely irrelevant as the variables are Big. So about 71 days F to CT if we go that way or roughly December 10. In practice we might get lucky and do it a bit faster - last time we did Port Stanley to Falmouth in 71 days, I think.

I've learned a new word - jizz - it means the overall aspect of a bird, shape, flight, size, beak, rump, plumage - the lot, all together as a single impression. It comes from the twitchers' bag of bits - those slightly obsessive people we met in Nome in planeloads, festooned with cameras, big binoculars, telescopes, water bottles, mostly under an amazing variety of hats and wearing those waistcoats all covered in pockets and zippers. Apparently there's something very rare indeed in the all time twitchers' list of birds-one-must-see that lives out in the back blocks of Nome and almost no-one has it ticked off. A good twitcher with lots of experience will be able to identify a bird by its jizz on the basis of a tiny glimpse - others apparently claim to be able to do so and make fools of themselves amongst the elite. I wonder what is the etymology of jizz?

My small claim to jizzery - I watched a storm petrel for at least 30 seconds up near Madeira - lovely lovely acrobatic bird, flapping and flopping and pattering its feet all over the surface scooping up things to eat and the impression I have in my mind almost exactly fits the Madeiran Storm Petrel except that it seemed smaller than the 42 cm wingspan quoted in the book.

Last time we were here, about 100 miles further west, we sailed through a big dust storm blowing off Mauretania. The whole boat was covered in fine red powder and it cut down the output from the solar panel by about half.

And no, to those who remembered, my mobile didn't ring me from the depths off Madeira. Sad! We were too far for any signal anyway so maybe it was trying - ET where were you? We needed a contraption.

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Prufrockery?

We're about 600 miles from the Cape Verdes - That's a Sydney-Hobart race. Or a drive from Sydney to Brisbane - at 2.5 knots. ETA at my CV waypoint 9 and a bit days, equalling our slowest ever S2H. Was it Prufrock who counted out his days in coffee spoons? We count ours in S2Hs. Some distances to contemplate: Falmouth to the equator about 3337nm; Eq to mid point behind S Atlantic high about 2220 and mid point to Cape Town 1550 total a bit over 7100 miles. Nearly 12 S2Hs. Accuracy is largely irrelevant as the variables are Big. So about 71 days F to CT if we go that way or roughly December 10. In practice we might get lucky and do it a bit faster - last time we did Port Stanley to Falmouth in 71 days, I think.

I've learned a new word - jizz - it means the overall aspect of a bird, shape, flight, size, beak, rump, plumage - the lot, all together as a single impression. It comes from the twitchers' bag of bits - those slightly obsessive people we met in Nome in planeloads, festooned with cameras, big binoculars, telescopes, water bottles, mostly under an amazing variety of hats and wearing those waistcoats all covered in pockets and zippers. Apparently there's something very rare indeed in the all time twitchers' list of birds-one-must-see that lives out in the back blocks of Nome and almost no-one has it ticked off. A good twitcher with lots of experience will be able to identify a bird by its jizz on the basis of a tiny glimpse - others apparently claim to be able to do so and make fools of themselves amongst the elite. I wonder what is the etymology of jizz?

My small claim to jizzery - I watched a storm petrel for at least 30 seconds up near Madeira - lovely lovely acrobatic bird, flapping and flopping and pattering its feet all over the surface scooping up things to eat and the impression I have in my mind almost exactly fits the Madeiran Storm Petrel except that it seemed smaller than the 42 cm wingspan quoted in the book.

Last time we were here, about 100 miles further west, we sailed through a big dust storm blowing off Mauretania. The whole boat was covered in fine red powder and it cut down the output from the solar panel by about half.

And no, to those who remembered, my mobile didn't ring me from the depths off Madeira. Sad! We were too far for any signal anyway so maybe it was trying - ET where were you? We needed a contraption.

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0700/16th

Position 2616 01849 Trip 1765 = 100/24

This is day 9 out of Lisbon plus another 6 from Falmouth to Lisbon so 15 sailing days at 1600 today. As I write we are about 1537 nm from Falmouth so it's even money. We have to resist the urge to count when we are this far out but we are now at least under 100 to go if we use the first time's numbers of 114 days to Hobart. We are planning our resources as if we are going non stop to Oz, so half a mars bar a week and all that jazz. But Cape Town is a definite possibility and the weather down there will dictate the rest. I'd still fit to bust love to go to South Georgia but I think we really need to get home.

Still sliding down wind in variable soft northerlies. Need to get a bit further west as we go but that should happen with the wind pattern shown in the last GRIB. New one should come in when I send this.

Sue - one very hung over Z - been carousing for 2 days. Hope you had a good burf.

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We must be half way to somewhere

For the first time since we started this nonsense back in 2004, I've got a bird book and time - leisure really - to learn how to use it. The book is Onley, Derek and Scofield, Paul 'Albatrosses, Petrels & Shearwaters of the World' Princeton and Oxford 2007 - Thanks Carla!! - and today I used it for the first time. Two solitary birds, almost no time to study them but the first a soarer and possibly a Black Capped Petrel or a Cahow. Both just within their assigned territory. The other, a flapper, was probably a Sooty Shearwater but could have been one of the many all grey Petrels. I had not realised how many different species there are and sub species and variations, down to new versus worn plumage.

The Plan - we could still see Valverde at sunset but I think we can say we're past the Canaries. Once again, trying to stay just out of the influence of weather shenanigans to the west and hold our line roughly SSW towards the Cape Verdes and then to St Peter and Paul Rocks at about 29 W just north of the Equator. To get there, we have to cross the ITCZ unless we find ourselves still in it. The Trades will die at about 10N and then who knows? The big arc behind the South Atlantic high to get us across to South Africa is most likely but we won't know till we see what's out there. We are now almost half way between Falmouth and the Equator - variable wind but always from the North. Twin poled - about to try an experiment with the red sail but it means taking it down first so needs the right moment. Lovely relaxed sailing - not used to it!

Once again, we're crossing the old slave routes. How much misery here, how many dead just thrown overboard, nameless and forgotten?

Thanks for all your messages. No ISS for a month or so and a 1 iron for lightning - nobody, not even God, can hit a 1 iron...Something to do with golf, I assume! If anyone wants to send a message to all seven or so of our followers, such as, for instance, the one about the ISS, I think you can use the Comments field on the blog. Not sure though.

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