International Radio Stars

10 minutes of great audio with Alex and Pete, and Macca from Australia's national broadcaster, the ABC. The interview is the podcast from 8th Nov, about 4:55 into it for about 10 minutes. Go here to download and hear it:

http://www.abc.net.au/australiaallover/podcast.htm

The best bit? Macca talked to Pete, proof that he is really aboard!

Blues - in perspective

1800/7th position 1006 02540, trip 4330 by GPS

This laptop has now crashed twice, inexplicably, in the last 2 days, both times destroying the iridium settings, losing com ports and who knows what else. It has recovered itself each time but not to its previous status. Restoring it to Nov 4th has so far done the trick but I now write these wondering whether I will be able to send them. Profoundly frustrating - If I were Marvin I'd even be depressed. And the HF radio died again a couple of hours ago too. Massive glooom. It would be wondrous to have a stable system or at least to know what the problem might be.

The ocean is that deep azure so intense that it is almost purple. Turns steel grey when the sun goes behind a cloud. Continuous series of little squalls - 25 knots max - some with splash of rain. Big swell, whitecaps 20 feet long. Grinding it out, metre by metre. About 15 k in the marathon to Cape Town. Drink stop with Dr Ingyrd at 1700, Macca if he gets around to us at 2030. I reckon about another 28 days to CT so around Dec 5th.

First day we could do any washing for at least a week - put 1 litre of freshly squeezed Atlantic into bucket with a bit of green liquid soap. Drop T shirt into liquid, wring the soapy water through it, repeat with next shirt and lastly shorts. Water becomes instantly salty and a dirty yellow colour - all the little scrofules having a party - discard water and by now breeding scrofules. Refill bucket with 1 litre freshly squeezed ocean but no soap and repeat. Hang clothes on lifelines or wherever they are out of the salt spray. Basic process, minimal use of water, gets the sweat and most of the salt out but doesn't clean - my Ts are not pretty! But you get used to it.

We have just passed 10 deg south and will overtake the sun probably tomorrow. This means that Berri's cockpit will become uninhabitable without some sort of shade. A beach umbrella would work - but we've got various bits of canvas and we'll rig something as we go.

Not a cloud in the sky is usually a rather loose statement - but here, apart from some tiny flecks low on the horizon, it's true. Amazing how open it looks - not used to the feeling of space - light silvery blue on the eastern horizon, deepening to hazy smokey lapis above and then down to blazing gold in the west as the sun drops out of the sky.

Macca - ABC Broadcast

For Brits, Macca is usually Paul McCartney and I must admit I have
been puzzled as to why a former Beatle might want to speak to Alex and
Pete. Clarification came direct from the high seas this afternoon. I
now understand that for Australians, Macca is Ian Macnamara. You need
Windows Media or Real Player and the link for Ian's programme
"Australia All Over" is here:

http://www.abc.net.au/australiaallover/

You can listen live, or to previous programmes. I will add a link if
and when it happens.

Iz in the UK

Selkirk Settler

Re the gigantic waves Alex was just talking about, here is a link to
some astonishing images.

http://www.nzshipmarine.com/news/detail.aspx?id=79

Posted by I in the UK

More of the same

0700/8th position 0912 02535 trip 130/24
We're eating the miles, port tack 2 reefs, about a third of the heady and a nasty steep 3 metreish swell that poor old Berri has to thud through occasionally.

To continue the theme of the early navigators - once they had the knowledge that to get to the Cape, all they really had to do was follow the prevailing winds from Lisbon to the doldrums, struggle through and back on the wind again, following it around in the big arc across the S Atlantic passing north of Tristan (and as the name suggests, a Portugese sailor doing just that but perhaps a bit further south than intended actually discovered the island). And Tristan to the Cape and past the tail of the Agulhas Bank is the place where the storms are. Like us, they must have anticipated that bit of ocean with some serious trepidation. And these days, with satellite measurements, scientists are logging the 'freak' waves caused by current, long fetch swell, wind and amplification from the meeting of two wave sets. Just like the SE corner of Australia, where we got rolled ourselves. 3 big ones every 1000 sticks in the jelly of my memory and one huge one every 10,000. Googls selkirk settler for some photos.

Huge ship in the night - Pete didn't think he'd seen us so gerzillion candlepower light into the sails and he altered.

Shave and a clean T shirt if I can find one for Macca this evening.

Nearest - and furthest - humans

A ship - first for days. No aircraft - we are a bit far to the east of of the major routes from Europe to S America. I don't know about routes from Africa.

I think the first organised humans to come this way would have been the Portugese. Chabral was the first to reach Brazil and Bartholomeu Dias followed him across and around to the Cape of Storms. Vasco Da Gama followed them and sailed on past the Cape to India. Dias himself died off the Cape in a storm some time later. Da Gama crossed the S Atlantic further north than we do today and arrived somewhere off what is now southern Namibia whence he had to tack into the prevailing winds and the Benguela current to get around the corner into the Indian Ocean. Interesting - people say that those sailors must have been fearless - not so - I think that if you are fearless you are either bone ignorant or brain dead. Fear is the catalyst for courage and I dips me lid to the lot of them. I've been thinking too about how they found their way out here and I think Orion is the secret, with the Southern Cross later. The lower stars are not often visible in the constant murk.

Later, of course, the Portugese Tourism and Colonisation Marketing Board gave the Cape of Storms to their Nomenclature Committee with directions to fashion the dream -- sex up the Chart - to deceive the punters who were to be persuaded to follow the pioneers and colonise the new territories on behalf of the King. The Nomenclature Committee came up with the grossly misrepresentative but highly dreamy Cape of Good Hope and so it came to pass.

Pink sunset reflecting off a biggish swell and the cascading spray of our progress through it - still very uncomfortable.

Feral glitches and a couple of dozy old farts

Fenwick - you're a dopey old fart too - see below - thanks for the kind words but you and Sarah picked up the guy and saved his life - nowt to do with me. Hope your boat not too damaged. Congratulations at least for having one operable grey cell at your age. Keep spreading the word - and passing the open windows.

Iridium panic over for the mo, I think. The laptop was misbehaving yesterday - seemed that it had crashed and restored itself surreptitiously. Tried iridium this morning and would not connect - that awful here-we-go-again feeling I'd almost forgotten -so I went through all the set up procedures for the dial up modem - score 1, the crash had deleted the 19200 modem completely. But the set up wizard was not seeing com-ports except the 4 from the USB to serial gizmo - fiendish and unstable unless you kill a ball point mouse with a steam hammer - anyway, about 3 hours later, rather sweaty and grumpy, I had been back through everything I could think of and decided that Dr Murphy was required at the double with restorative compounds. Restorative ? Restorative - you dopey old fart - where the hell do I find system restore in this thing? Certainly not through windows help (!) but there it was perched at the wispy end of a branch line in Accessories and I took the beast back 2 days and yeeeeehaaa! there was my 19200 modem back on com port 12 where it used to be. And it worked. Meantime I had also cranked up one of the backups and sent a test to Steve which also worked. So we should still be in business. As a non geek who is utterly brainwashed by previous failure into expecting the worst with these things, I feel just a bit chuffed.

There's a chance the Australian Broadcasting Commission program 'Australia all over' will call us this Sunday, 0730 their time, 2030 tomorrow Saturday 7th UTC. The ABC does a live internet stream - I think - if anyone is interested.

Ann - I'm sure I heard cackles of laughter out there in the gloom last night. Poseidon may have a fan for his nursery jokes.

And Norm K out there in the old Queensland boonies - the Cuskelly tells me he has poisoned your mind with this guff - Vogon poetry even - and you are out there compounding the felony. G'day and glad you're there. Write to us - send us a poem perhaps.

Carla - I think you might be right and our visitor is a young noddy - not in the book but your description fits. Almost got a photo in full flight last night. Lerizhan g'day! Re break up entry - yep - I thought the trajectory was wrong for a deliberate destruct or any normal launch. Was a goody though - white light, when they are more often yellowish. Pete is wearing his LSU Event Staff T - the pit ferals chattering but happy.

Things you learn - for cordon bleu cup-a-soup, add a teaspoonful of dried mashed potato. Spud is thicker than water. Erk - did I really say that?

no-footer.

MESSAGE FROM ALEX

Friday 6th November, 0930 GMT (don't know UTC), 0721S 02516W.

Alex rang to say that his Iridium internet connection has stopped
working and that Berri is at the extreme edge of possible Sailmail
contact.

The message is, then, not to worry if new blogs don't appear. He'll
obviously be trying to make everything work again, but breath should
not be held. Appendage crossing would be very welcome, however.

This message relayed by Isabella in UK.

More on wildlife

0700/6th position 0705 02513 trip 123/24. Day 35 and the GPS says we've sailed 4144 miles. Rhumb line to Falmouth is 3613 but with due deference to the cursor.

Seems our little bijou res. in a plastic tube has a stalker. The bird that has been visiting us has been back foe three nights at least - too dark once again to get colours but has the wings and silhouette of a small Petrel but not the head and beak. It turns up in the dark and is gone by daylight. We have sailed nearly 400 miles since it first arrived so it must be keeping us more or less in sight during the day. I have occasionally thought that I spotted it way out in the peripheries - little brown moving speck merged into the murky dapple.

Things you learn - a week or so on the port tack is very hard work. Bijou res. this little boat may be but it's awful short of comfy places to sit and if the cockpit is continually getting doused by crashing spray the only place, and not for long, is the cabin sole which gets pretty hard, unforgiving and cornery.

'Nuff whingeing - we're moving south. Rainsqualls, drenching spray and 25 knot gusts in an 'orrible short steep jerky sea. Not a lot of opportunity for washing and powdering the self so the pit and crutch feral collection is thriving. The boot variety is just festering in the heat up in the forepeak so there will be an interesting reunion out there in the future.

Time to make a cuppa and then do the 0700 position.

I've lost my iridium connection from the laptop. It's a com port problem - the computer crashes every now and again and loses its dial up connection settings for the 19200 modem but the set-up wizard then loses/doesn't see the original com port and for some reason although the wizard says it's connected through another port, Telnet cannot see it. Drives me absolutely raging insane but I cant fix it. Any ideas? Work around may be to use backup laptop for sailmail. Absolute PITA.

Feral bottlebrush

Trade wind sailing - apart from all the tropical aspects without which I can earnestly do - is great if you are off the breeze and can ride the very lumpy sea at the optimum angle. When you are trying to keep the wind just ahead of the beam, it's a different ballgame. Lumpy, thumpy, wet, noisy and uncomfortable. And hot! But we're on the move.

We have been towing 40 metres of light floating line as a possible safety line if someone falls overboard. As Pete discovered last time, the generator impeller line we had trailing out the back was a powerful incentive to use his considerable swimming skill to get across and grab it. Yesterday, I looked at the bright yellow line and it seemed oddly different - I tried to pull it in and the drag was surprising but it had thousands and thousands of little barnacles growing on it - from a couple of millimetres to about 4cm long and so densely packed that it looked like a 40 metre bottlebrush. We spent the morning cleaning them off. They looked like baby versions of the big goose barnacles we sailed into Hobart with last time. My doddery eyes told me that each one had a tiny blue patch on it. How do they exist out here and how do they grab the ride?

More wild life - a couple of Trinidade Petrels. Big fishing boat a couple of days ago but no other humans air, space or waterborne. Except perhaps a laughing Aunt out here with us?

It appears from the latest GRIB that the S Atlantic High is at about 25 degrees directly south. I hope it moves east so that we can cut the corner a bit. Sagittarius and the galactic centre - or where the galactic centre isn't - clearly visible last night before the moon rose. And Mintaka satisfactorily astern.

We've just done some practice noon sights to get back into practice, using the Winastro package on the computer to do the sums. Considering the conditions, not bad results. Tomorrow, the Merlin.

Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Guy Fawkes in another universe

0700/5th position 0508 02441 trip 110/24
Almost exactly half way between the corner of S. America and Ascension Island. Progress, but slow. Wet, lumpy and uncomfortable. Arse-bone complaining to the Ass.
Nocturnal visitor returned last night - not in the bird book and just possibly a land bird - brownish all over, lighter head, dark eye patches wingspan about 40 cm long thin black beak no hooked end. It departed when I had to put the second reef in and get soaked for my troubles.
It's been said that we sem to be enjoying this one rather more than the others - probably right, no deadline, we're going somewhere on the way, and we certainly haven't got to the hard bit yet. I think that's about 3 weeks away, down near Tristan and then all the way to Hobart. We'll see - it has certainly been astonishingly easy so far and I'm sure the Examiner is polishing her whip

Travels for an Aunt

1900/4th position 0415 02433 still headbanging the current and creeping westward.

A friend wrote to say that some years ago she had scattered her Aunt's ashes on the Seine in Paris and wondered how long it might take for them to get back to Boston, where she had lived. Ann, here is a whimsical adventure for her, laughing all the way - left or right into the Channel depending on the tide, up into the top of the Gulf Stream (a bit iffy, that one - cd be stuck around the British Isles for years) and on into the Arctic Circumpolar drift past Spitzbergen and eventually down through the Bering Sea into the clockwise flow of the N Pacific, down the North American coast, across the Pacific from California to the islands east of Indonesia,through Indonesia (iffffyyyy!) to the Indian Ocean, anti-clockwise down past Madagascar and into the South Circumpolar Current across the Southern Indian and Pacific Oceans, through Drake Passage past Cape Horn, NE across the Atlantic into the Benguela, up the coast of Africa, across in the Equatorial to the W. Indies and back into the bottom of the Gulf Stream past Boston. With a few probable diversions on the way! Short cut might be the Agulhas current around southern Africa and into the Benguela...Another short cut perhaps going south from the Pacific down the coast of Australia and into the South Circumpolar south of Hobart. Lots of possibilities!

The Arse-bone of an Ass

0700/4th position 0321 02423 Trip 110/24

And other matters fundamental. Berrimilla is a moving object - moving through spacetime but also moving relative to her inhabitants and quite violently at that. I've written about this before in the first blog - starting with the first of the bus shelter analogies. Imagine you are sitting in a bus shelter in Sydney or Oxford Street and a cherry-picker comes along and picks the whole thing up with you still sitting on the bench and starts to fling it up and down and around in all three dimensions. Fast and jerkily. You are braced with both hands clutching the bench, feet hard against the floor (or in Berri's cockpit, braced against the seat opposite) shoulders rigid, spine and adjacent muscle ridges and pelvis trying hard to maintain some contact with the bench and the side of the shelter. Extraordinarily uncomfortable and your arse bones start to bore and buffet their way through your glutes - or at least that's how it feels - and you certainly get very sore patches on the bum. Much worse if you add salt water blasting into your eyes and soaking the sore patches.

So who but an Ass would cart his arse-bone all the way out here just to have it treated with such cavalier disrespect and abandon, to coin a cliche? Actually needs careful treatment or it can get really nasty - I use betadine and savlon applied about as often as we apply other medicinal compounds to fix the disorders of the psyche and the innards.

Which reminds me of another theme of that first blog - the one based on the Great American Myth in which NASA never really got to the Moon, it was all created in a Hollywood studio - so Berrimilla was never in the Southern Ocean talking to Spacemen, it was really just a couple of Sydney deros in a bus shelter outside Fox Studios prodding a battered laptop and creating monkey-jumble text on the internet translated by the Babelfish into Universal Language as the dead leaves blew around the shelter and the pile of beer cans and empty bottles grew and grew. So here we are again, I suppose. And now that I think about it, it was only a couple of BUs from here that we had our last conversation with Leroy Chiao in the ISS before he and Salizhan Sharipov departed the ISS for Kazakhstan in their Soyuz module and our eventual meeting with Leroy in Falmouth.

Which led to our meeting with Pascal Lee in Louisiana and his invitation to sail the North West Passage which became www,berrimilla.com/tng and here we are.

We have a bird as a passenger - too dark to try to identify it but will have a go in daylight if it stays with us - perhaps small Petrel or Shearwater. I have photos. Pete actually slowed the boat to allow it to get a foothold - see above re cherry-picker...

The Life-Raft Sequence and More

In responses to Alex's recent Plizz, here is some information about
the "old" Berri sites and information on how to find the life-raft
sequence. The site you need is here: http://www.berrimilla.com/

This website takes the story from January 2005 to January 2006. From
the homepage there is a list of links to the many sections of the
blogs: these are under the heading (not surprisingly) of "Berrimilla
Logs". This is what the heading looks like for the life-raft sequence:

• 10. South Atlantic - going up (25 Mar - 03 Apr) Ref 124-143

It isn't possible to go straight to a specific day or event via a dedicated link. You need to follow the relevant blog section link (eg, 10) and then scroll to the appropriate number of the blog entry. In this case, it's 133. Brown trousers advised.

This link might take you to the relevant section, but if not, follow directions as above.
http://www.berrimilla.com/log/TheLog10.htm

The more recent Berri website, which was made on the North West Passage trip, is called "Down Under Mars" and is reached via this link
http://www.berrimilla.com/tng/

This site was set up and manned by the late-lamented Speedy and although it is up and still running, we cannot access it to change or maintain it as he departed to the hereafter with the passwords.

Please excuse the fact that a blog upload often messes up my neat formatting and puts unsightly gaps in it. I think it is allergic to Macintosh.

Iz

Gyrous Jabber

Sometimes a simple message has the power to inspire.

Congratulations on crossing the line from all at Crosshaven Lifeboat. The
fabulous panorama you sent is now framed and hanging in all its glory in the
Ops room
stay safe
Jon Mathers
RNLI Lifeboat Sea Safety Officer
Crosshaven RNLI Lifeboat Station
Hugh Coveney Pier
Crosshaven
Co Cork.

Jon, Thanks! We remember you all with huge respect and affection. And, of course, think of you while we despatch every Proper Breakfast, as we've just done. Examiner permitting, we are looking forward to cracking a Murph or 800 with you one day in front of that panorama.

Idle speculation - I wonder if any of the water we are sailing through has touched Berri's sides ever before. There's an anticlockwise flow in the S. Atlantic so lets assume a circle of diameter 2000 miles, giving a circumference of about 6280 miles. Say an average flow of 1 knot, making the round trip roughly 6280 hours or about 262 days. Doesn't seem long enough intuitively but that means in the 4 years or so since we were here last the gyre has gyrated about 5.6 times so we are about half a revolution out of phase. But that doesn't take into account the voyage up the fishpond from the Falklands to Falmouth through that monster storm off Montevideo where we lost the liferaft. That storm is on the first blog too, (link
Izz Plizz?) and there's an analysis forming the final chapter of the 6th edition of Heavy Weather Sailing by Peter Bruce, published a couple of years ago by Adlard Coles, London. Anyway, seems there's at least a chance the old barge is shaking hands with old molecular friends again. Maybe we'll find bits of the liferaft as well!

Malcom, which way does Jessica plan to go? Don't remember Minerva Reef. And you'd better check my maths for the gyre!

----------
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for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Boring is Good!

0700/3rd position 0134 02408 trip 92/24

Still tracking westwards - partly because we are still in the westerly setting South Equatorial or the South Sub Tropical Currents - they divide around about here and as we get further south, the South Sub Tropical will start to take us south down the South American coast. Ilhas Martin Vaz is at 20 S 29 W and I think we will probably pass quite close to the east of it. Sydney is at about 154 E so from Martin Vaz we will have 183 degrees of longitude to sail - a smidge over half the world and we will ignore great circles for the sake of a good story.

I gather the pissing-in-the-wind blast of squall, rain and lightning that I described some days ago made it into the Fitz Files in the Sydney Morning Herald. My Everest is scaled! Further down this fishpond we should also pass quite close to Tristan da Cunha and Pete has reminded me that last time we were in the big storm down there it lasted for 9 days, all the time over 40 knots and often gusting 60 with some of the biggest breaking waves we saw on that voyage. An indifferent destroyer of boats and psyches. Check it out in the first Berrimilla blog.

The moon is high above the masthead but dimmed and masked by high cloud. No stars. The world has no colour, only form and density and diffident sparkle under the moon. The sea is relatively gentle - SE swell, perhaps 2 metres, rolling not steep and Berri is flowing - 12 knots of breeze and about 4 over the ground - there's about 1.5 kts against us for a bit yet. We haven't adjusted the sheets or Kevvo for 24 hours - noice!

I think I may have the glimmer of a work around for the recalcitrance of this radio. Marc is checking with Icom and time will tell. I'll post the idea if it keeps it alive for a week or so.

'Hallo Fishy'

Position 1900/2nd 0050 02357

Things you learn out here - tricks of agility and dexterity - in pearshapedness, Berri may rise and fall rather violently as much as 30 feet in seconds, while at the same time rolling, pitching and yawing often in jerks - classic corkscrew motion accompanied by appropriate crashing, sloshing, creaking, howling blasts. Outside, you can see it all happening and you brace instinctively often without even needing to hold on by hand. For instance, it's relatively easy even under those conditions to time it carefully and get from the cockpit to the foredeck perfectly in tune with the boat with quick hand over hand swaps - never, unfortunately, in tune with your tether, but that's another story and something else you learn. Inside, no frame of reference and you learn to feel and listen to the boat and again, instinctively, almost always get it right when moving around. I've got lots of scars to show the exceptions however. One of the things that really works inside is the system of fully weight bearing hand holds and you can find them in the darkest of nights. And dexterity - I can hold almost my full weight against one of those hand-holds with 3 fingers of one hand while the pinky delicately holds a couple of Sao (cream cracker) biscuits against the palm without breaking them on the way to the cockpit. Sometimes though, you wish that evolution had delivered about 46 prehensile toes plus nose and a tail.

And in those conditions you can't eat pasta or anything really even from one of Berri's elegantly appointed dogbowls without getting food down your front. Just been trying to get the results of a recent blow out of a couple of T shirts. Nope! Not nohow.

Last night Mintaka did its thing at almost the right moment too except that there was a cloud in the way. Mintaka, for those that asked, is the leading star in Orion's belt.

Other things that really work - Chefsway Dried Meals from Hobart - Onya and thanks Nathan. We took lots on the first voyage as backup and didn't need them and ate a lot at home. This time we took 30 through the NW Passage again without needing them but Pete and I have decided to alternate them with the usual sludge from cans on this leg as a bit of a treat. All now well past their use-by date but still much better than anything else we have.

I'll try to do a 'what works/doesn't work/what we've learned' bit every few blogs. Sometimes I find myself writing things that I'm sure I've done before - if it becomes a habit, someone tell me please. None of this 'Hallo Fishy' Hallo Fishy' 'Hallo Fishy' old fart stuff if you please.

Evolution and Murphics

15 miles into the southern hemisphere and appropriate breakfast behind us if that's the right word. I think we're in the real SE trades. Iff (= if and only if) I'm right then we have about 1200 miles of easy sailing down behind the S Atlantic High to around 20 S near Martin Vaz. Big headsail on and full main. After that we have to squeeze the genie back into the bottle and get down to about 34 S and across to Cape Town. Sounds easy doesn't it? Last time we had one of the worst storms I can remember south of the high roughly on the Greenwich meridian. It's all written in the first voyage blog - relentless and indifferent, 50 - 60 knots and regular knockdowns to and sometimes past the horizontal. I think that was where my first Merlin calculator died. And I wept for it as an old friend. New one courtesy of - who? really sorry but senility has got me - is now kept in the nav table.

Seems we might be Macca'ed next Sunday if I can manage the satphone and talk at the same time - Shades of Gerald Ford and chewing gum.

In the interests of science - I get (and not everybody does) what's called a photic sneeze whenever I get out into the sunlight for the first time in a while - comes from nowhere, big blast and it's gone. WW2 Spitfire pilots used to dread it apparently as they emerged from cloud into bright sunlight and needed absolute concentration to see the Messerschmitt. I've noticed that after consultation with Dr Murphy at breakfast, both Pete and I seem to sneeze in similar fashion. Possibly mine might be delayed photic but this morning, definitely two separate events. A Murphic sneeze perhaps? What is the evolutionary advantage of this? Or are we due to become statistical relics?

There are, of course, always (at least until one runs out) two Murphys sailing along with us. The excellent consultant from Cork represents the ephemeral element and the other one is The Lawyer - he who says that if it can go wrong it will - the first law of statistics in Berri. Paraphrased without elegance but proper brevity as 'shit happens'.

Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK