Neptune's bucket

We crossed the equator at last at 0415/2nd at 23.40.5333 W - the place was littered with old shaving brushes, knickers, broken trident cut outs, dilapidated neon signs and a floating wooden bucket that said 'Placations Here - Or Else' so we poured a small libatory tribute en passant, thanks to Izz'n'G. Of the God himself, no sign - probably getting bored with it all. Z in hiding.

0645 position 0006 S 02344 W trip 87/24

HF radio has died again. As rather expected. I think it has something to do with the links to the Pactor and the laptop. Will drag out all the stuff from the q-berth again later. DamnDamnDamn

Reprieve - Temporary perhaps

Had another go at the HF/SSB radio and it seems to be working again. Nothing obvious so fingers and all the rest crossed.

Nereida, if it goes on working I'll arrange a sked with you. Do you have 4483, 6227, 8713 ? Ignore the 'from' address above - please use our sailmail address to reply.

Getting savagely knocked by the current - up to 30 degrees from our heading to COG - water about 4 deg colder than further north. Equator around midnight AGW - just have to sweat it out and hope for a lift from the wind.

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Nearest Humans

An Iridium phone is the most insanely difficult gadget to manage in a boat like Berri - have to keep it dry, charged and with its antenna erect and then get it your ear when it rings. Each almost impossible, but all together requires ingenuity beyond anything I can muster. Finally got to talk to Jeanne in Nereida this morning - she's about 900 miles SW of us and going rather better. For us the equator seems to recede into the distance as we get headed and the current bites. Jeanne has a proper Iridium set up rather than Berri's cobbled together version - I'm going to drag out the bin that has the Iridium spares in it to see whether we have earphones and a remote mike for it which would make things a bit easier.

Mintaka tops

0700/01 position 0109 02304 trip 107/24 we've had about a knot of current against us for a couple of days.

Middle watch again - glorious night, Jupiter, Formalhaut, Orion, Sirius, Canopus all just visible in the moonlight. It makes such a difference to life when you know you don't have to come out of your corner fighting! We're out of the nasties and into the trades proper - fluffy cu, 18-20 kts from just east of south with the prospect that the wind will back as we get south and west and the jerky violent lumpy corkscrewing will ease a bit. The sea is just the wrong mix of swell, frequency, wind waves and left overs for a boat Berri's size and it's very uncomfortable - you have to brace, time it and swing with the motion and avoid the hard bits - a bit like a monkey in the canopy.

Having said which, this is what Berri does best - sheets just cracked and going to windward. I'd hate to be in one of today's same sized flat bottomed pounders in these conditions - Berri with small headsail and 2 reefs and about 10 deg of heel, lee gunwale about a foot out of the water just flows. Or would, were it not for the short steep swell and the wavelength. The problem is that the wave length is about 2 boat lengths and so the poor old barge is working hard and having to recover after every wave. She has to blast her way through the swell, so lots of spray but her forward lines are so fine that I've just been up the front and hardly got wet.

Should have said that yesterday's shoal of blue fish were airborne - speed of sound flash between the waves and no doubt trying to avoid becoming dinner for something bigger but a little gem inserted into my day.

Nearest humans - Jeanne Socrates is about 500 miles ahead of us - google her - in her boat Nereida and we might be able to talk to her tomorrow on the satphone. 0645/01 - we spoke - more later.

Uncanny - I'd just written all this goo about moon and stars and being out of the nasties and went up into the cockpit and there's a line of cloud and murk coming in very fast from the SE - the moon will go soon - this might be the change predicted by the GRIB....But it wasn't - no sooner had the murk arrived that it was gone again and back to fluffy cu. And not so cuddly, that fluffy cu. - I've been watching it race past the moon and it's fierce.

Tonight, during Pete's next watch, Mintaka will cross the sky a degree south of Berri's masthead - our zenith star for the Equator. At that moment we will be almost exactly in the middle of the Atlantic and we'll have it to ourselves. Cool!

A Talisker moment

Position 1630/31st 0158 02224

Thanks to Pete Goss whose 18 year old Talisker is our mark for each arbitrary 1000 miles away from Falmouth. We've just had no. 3, after a Proper Berri Breakfast of ancient Bacon and Murphy's Medicinal Compound. And wouldn't that make a basis for a nice cryptic clue?? The bacon is just getting that interesting uber-flavour - still exuding about a tablespoon of pussy water every 4 slices and still very noice!

Another bird - not in the book - slender, ternlike, span about 40 cm white head and underbody, black beak and eyes, dark topsides, chevron across inner tops of wings, white leading edges to outers. Single (?) long tailfeather, longer than the body and stiff. Curved appearance to wings and outers do the flapping. Carla - yo! Your bird book is wonderful, now that I have a bit of time to learn how to use it. Just seen a Madeira Storm Petrel and a Sooty Shearwater (I think) which settled on the water behind us. What happened to Aries? Don't know whether you were with us about 2 weeks ago when I saw a spectacular entry and burn up right over the top of us - speculation that it was an awol US rocket that was not on public view.

A shoal of small silvery blue fish with, I thought, a dark flash - perhaps 20 - like vertical ovals, small tail on the back and almost no cross section. Appeared to be immensely purposeful and in perfect formation. Sad little flying fish on deck tis morning - Pete said one hit him on the ear last night and surprised the cods out of him - left him covered in scales. Perhaps this was the corpse.

Nice offer of contribution to Iridium costs. Thanks mate! I'm going to go on sending this stuff as if it were free like sailmail and hang the expense.

Berri is creaking like she never did - interesting - possibly to do with the post Roll repair but more likely decrepitude, like her crew. I don't think she's in any way about to kark.

Doug - thanks! If you have links to any of that stuff and you can send them to Steve W or berri2@gmail, perhaps Steve could put them on the blog? Truly fascinating. What time of the year were Dagelet and Kerguelen out there? Neil - g'day. Sue, hi from the mob - glad you're sleeping - must be really scary. We're sending you gentle vibes. Z out of hiding. Ron - nothing like a cryptic to pass the time between drinks. Hi to your mate. David - there must be wrecks like that all over the world!

A friend in Cape Town has kindly agreed to let us use his address for snailmail. It's a private address and won't go on the blog but if anyone does want to write to us, Steve W has it. Send him a note via our berrimilla2 gmail address and he will give it to you.

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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