Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Just a position

Position 0630 15th 4355 05614 Trip (corrected for reset)109 DMG 107. Sparkling, glorious day, Prions in full flit, delicate grey patterns against the icy blue water.

No contact yet with Port aux Francais so I'll keep this short.

Norm, Pete would like numbers please.

Prodding for the sake of it

Middle watch again - now nearly 4 hours ahead of Greenwich and the sun is nearly up - tends to ameliorate the horrors! - it's been one of those crystal nights, no haze, stars so bright and close it felt as if you could touch them. Just a bit cold and damp out there to sit in the cockpit and enjoy the experience. During the night, we cracked 10,000 miles from Falmouth on the GPS and I missed it. I now know that the GPS trip counter does not count above 10k nor does it automatically reset to zero so I have lost some miles, perhaps about 30. Now manually reset and counting again from zero. It seems colder here than it did up in the arctic ice - odd. The air is very dense and carries a lot of water which condenses everywhere.

We are tooling along under a big high, just the headsail and as usual, rolling about a bit, making about 4.5 knots towards Kerguelen. Alessandro, south east of us, is making 6 knots and will pass south of Kerguelen on Sunday night. We intend to go northabout and into Port aux Francais if the weather allows. We are about 5 days out if the grib is accurate - due for a blow from the NW in the next 24 hours.

Malcom, Biggles was probably driving a Catalina, ex Cape Town or Reunion. Doesn't all that Boys Own stuff seem quaint - yet I read it ferociously and no doubt assumed its values. The way we were.

Norm - I can't do numbers. No probs digging a hole with ergro but!

As a safety and sea survival instructor, struggling to undo the zip of my sleeping bag at midnight when Pete woke me this morning, it occurred to me that sleeping bags are really bad news in any situation where a roll or even a bad knockdown is a possibility. Doesn't take much imagination to see why.

No takers yet for bird photos - not as many birds out there today and mostly white chinned petrels.

Piccadilly circus in the southern ocean

Position 0630 14th 4313 05359, trip 125, DMG 115. The usual - lumpy, changeable, damp, sunny it's all happening. Now brilliant sunshine, still blowing white crests off deep iridescent blue sea. Cold enough to notice. I have resurrected my arctic sleeping bag, bought in Cambridge Bay in the NW Passage. Pete has his old down bag and bivvy bag from the original gig. Have to keep them really dry - neither designed for boats but lovely and toasty and difficult to get out of.

We have learned that most of Kerguelen is closed to visitors because of various research projects, so we are now heading for Port au Francais. We are trying to establish some sort of contact, to get permission to enter the harbour and I'll keep you posted on that one.

There's someone else out here - apparently Alessandro di Benedetto is just south of the Crozets, about 250 miles away, trying to break the round the world record solo unassisted in a 6.5 metre boat. That's all I know so far - sounds like a mini-transat. If so, I dips me lid! We are trying to contact him as well. Apparently he has a website.

I've been asked to explain Golgafrincham. It's a joke from HGTTG - Arthur found himself on a planet populated by telephone sanitisers, management consultants, motivators, colonic irrigators, bog roll pointers - all the people that Douglas Adams seemed to think the world could quite happily do without. They had been part of the population of a doomed galaxy, embarked in special space ships to find another home in the universe. What they did not know was that they had been deliberately separated from the rest of the (Useful!) population of their original galaxy in their own space ship and diverted to a small blue planet on the outer edge of an insignificant galaxy - and so became the early citizens of Earth. You really have to read the book...

Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Life, the universe and everything

Position 0630 13th 4239 05130 - about level with Bicheno in Tasmania and about 200 north of the Crozets. Trip 99, DMG 92 and Kerguelen 774 (in case anyone is actually following us on a chart, I'm using a waypoint about 90 miles north of Baie de l'Oiseau as my DMG marker so your numbers may not equate exactly to mine. I'll change it as we get closer).

Tomorrow - the grib says - will be pearshaped with 35 knot (read 50+) northerlies blasting down a big front behind the current high and 40 kts forecast for the Kerguelens. We should be about mid way down and we'll do our best to deal with whatever we get. Iff we get really lucky, it will then soften gradually and we might get a reasonably clear window for landfall. Pace the Examiner, of course, and the Great Statistician, Mr Murphy.

I forgot to announce that we have a new Medical Person aboard - she comes from Windhoek and her advice and her medications so far have been excellent. Something other than an Irish accent at the Consultation for a change. I have a drop of her elixir to hand as I write and I've just demolished a bacon buttie. Life is good.

More unoriginal silliness inspired by Brian Greene - as we seem to be (to the universe and our surroundings) relatively low entropy clumpy collections of hydrogen atoms with interstellar distances between them on a quantum scale - what is a thought? What's it made of? What is the nature of consciousness? How is it that the clumpy collection that prods this keyboard can create and process and transmit to you lot the concept of a superciliously superior albatross laughing at out dopey inadequacies as it soars and glides around us? And why and how would I ascribe supercilious superiority to an albatross anyway? There must be a lot of people out there working on the answers.

What an interesting bit of spacetime this is. And in a few billion years, physicists think it will be gone, not a wrack left behind, just hydrogen atoms. Eventually - perhaps - just a cold and dark void with about 5 hydrogen atoms to the cubic metre. Rather fewer than the magic 42 in HGTTG. Enjoy it while you can and help others to do the same!

Antarctic Prions in full flit - small,lovely, graceful birds, grey/blue feathers on top, white undersides, wonderfully aerobatic - I have a photo of one half way through an Immelmann. White chinned Petrels in and out of the mizzle - wet, clank and dammy but good breeze taking us SE. Another brief glimpse of the big black bird that looks and acts like an albatross. I think parts of the belly are white. It doesn't hang around - one fly past and it's gone for the day.

Mizzle

Cook's fog, I think. Mid latitude convergence zone conditions with cold and warmer air mixing over cold (?) water as the pressure systems swirl and merge and coriolis exerts its magic.

We're in it now - today it seems thin and the sun almost gets through occasionally. There are thicker patches with quite large raindrops and mistier areas with tiny droplets that soak everything. As I look out of the window next to my head, I can actually see the glow of the sun and the top of the mist like low level cumulus reflecting the sunlight. Nice breeze - a bit like doing hull speed with the kite in fog in the English Channel in the Fastnet. Quite eerie.

But the point of this is that it gives one a different perspective. Looking down sun, to the SW, the mist is bright and reflective - hint of a rainbow - but under it you can see successive grey horizons looming out of the murk - the real SW swell that is sometimes very hard to pick amongst all the confused wind waves caused by the rapid changes in direction in each successive system. These horizons are impressive - high and grey and travelling and as one passes beneath the boat it sometimes happens that the next one is just looming out of the gunk 300 metres or so away. Suddenly, you're in the real world and you get a feel for the size of these things - there's this deep rounded trough falling - lurching? - away below your eye and up into the summit in the distance and although they are significantly smaller than we experienced west of Cape Horn, they are still Big. West of the Horn, you could lose a cathedral in the trough, here, perhaps just a small town hall and adjacent public lavatory. Plus all the little birds.

The sun is poking through - my hands on the keyboard have warm sunlight on them. Local time is about 1300.

The Black Dog prowls the Boonies

Seems my Pilgrim in Despond post stirred a pot or two. I was trying to put into words the sorts of weirdness and insidious despair that one sometimes has to overcome to pursue silly gigs like this. The final line was supposed to soften it but obviously didn't! I can remember when it was not acceptable to admit to emotion, when to tell it like it sometimes is was seen to be a sign of weakness - C.S.Forester's Hornblower books weave it beautifully. A reflected example, though I have a sneaking feeling that I've used the story somewhere else in these blogs but it bears repeating and does the stiff upper lip rather well - Imagine the Duke of Wellington on his horse surveying the battlefield at Waterloo during the most desperate moments of the battle, surrounded by his staff, Generals in full uniform, aides, runners, the full retinue. Shouting, screams, cannons, smoke, stinging eyes, choking breath, death and blood everywhere. One of Wellington's senior commanders had his leg taken off by a cannon ball as he sat on his horse next to Wellington - 'By Gad, my lord' he said 'I've lost me leg!' By Gad, Sir' said Wellington 'so you have!' Just about sums it up really.

Back on Iridium. Propagation and range to Africa station now makes daytime HF impractical.

The French, Cook and the later navigators wrote extensively about fog down here - lots of it, arrives suddenly. Cook in Resolution sailed 300 leagues (how long was a league - my hazy memory says about 3 miles?)in it in company with Discovery without losing contact - amazing! We were in thick misty drizzle this morning, visibility half a mile max - I think it's the mid latitude convergence zone standard murk, at least out here. We were in it for days out of NZ last time. If we get to Kerguelen, it may be different.

Alan B in Xhaven - your beanie performing mighty service cosseting the noggin. Other toys work with TPS dry suits. Noice - tks.

Norm, the best we can do is observe that each of your words is symmetrical after the first letter so can be 'wrapped' and read backwards by end for ending that letter. Is there something deeper and more mysterious?

A couple of notes from Malcom to round it off:
Last October, Japanese scientists reported that they had put small
forward-looking video cameras on albatrosses to monitor the birds'
behaviour. The results showed that the albatrosses followed pods of killer
whales and that they fed or scavenged on the detritus of whatever the whales
were killing and feeding on. Whether this behaviour evolved from the birds,
over the ages, following boats, or whether boat - following evolved from
following whales one may never know.

malcom again

AW, BTW Biggle's flew into the Kerguelens after the war in search of German
treasure in "Biggle's Second Case". As you will recall he also beat you to
Tierra del Fuego.

Blimey! Is there no end to this white anting? What was he flying? Were Algy and Ginger with him? And where did he land??

The other old fart..

Hi there its Pete
Yesterday I woke for the early morning watch at at 0300 UTC which is just after 6am local time. Scratched the sleep from the eyes then noticed something unusual out the back door, the sun was up. The sky was blue a few clouds about and the seas were calm. During his watch Alex had taken taken two reefs out of the main and had poled the full headsail out to port. The boat was ticking along beautifully at 4-5kts. with about 10-12kts. of breeze on the port quarter.
These rare conditions deserved some early refreshment, grabbed a couple of Guinnesses from the medicine chest, got the dogbowels out and half filled them with chips and then, see if Alex was interested. He was well into sleep, decided to leave him there and get out and enjoy the sunshine. Suitably satiated then dropped below to check the blog and came across "The Slough of Despond". The first paragraph ended "the magnitude of the task ahead seems too unending, too frighteningly loaded against our weary decrepitude". Well I thought you can count me out of the weary decrepit lineup this morning. I went back to the cockpit took the shirt off, fresh aired the armpits and felt the warm sun soak into my back.
I can fully understand Alex's mood that night I've been through it many times before but to distract myself through these gut wrenching times I reflect on the good times, mostly things that happened when our children were young. I can remember on the last trip when we were in a storm off the bottom of Africa, we had been under bare poles for a couple of days, I was sitting on the floor legs braced against the opposite side to hold position as a procession of huge waves continually knocked the boat over and sideways down the wave. To distract my mind from the obvious I would recall time spent with the kids on a small farm up the mountain not far from Kiama south of Sydney. It all came back in full technicolour and at the end of it all I'd ask myself "what am I doing here". That question has never been fully and honestly answered.
So lets get back to the children. Jeanne and I have four of these treasures, the eldest had a birthday just a week ago, he turned 32 and I was 32 when he was born. We arrived back at the CYC in Rushcutters Bay just 3 weeks before he was born having spent the past year sailing home from Greece via the Atlantic and Pacific Trade Wind highway, though it wasn't a highway 32 years ago, that was well before satellite navigation. His birthday is in the first week of January which unfortunately clashes with the Sydney Hobart Race, there goes 13 of of his birthdays for which I was not around. I do remember I missed his 21st, 25th and 30th. This year at the towards the end of February, our eldest daughter turns 30 and at the end of March the youngest turns 25. I'll make the last one but the the other looks in doubt.
Now that I've put this on paper it all looks decidedly slack, birthdays have become movable feasts and we have the alternative one when I'm around, but its not the same. I just thought of another thing, we were married on the 27th of October, I think (I used to remember this because it was the day the junta took control in Greece and we couldn't marry on the 26th because of a public holiday, there used to be huge billboards everywhere celebrating this day when we were there). Unfortunately this always seemed to clash with with the Lord Howe Island Race, so as you can see none of this was my fault.
All of this reflection was probably prompted by a book given to read by Manuel whose house and family we stayed with in Cape Town. The book was "Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego Nautical Guide" an impressive and weighty tome of a couple who have spent 7 years putting together this book which contains information and hand drawn charts of the hundreds of magic anchorages in the fiords of this area, a must for anyone wanting to spend time there. One part of the book I was interested in was about the culture of the local people, one thing that struck me was their belief that when you are young your time or life is a gift from your parent, life progresses your time is yours and then you reach a stage where your time is borrowed from your children. Its fairly profound when you think about it, I think I'm there now. I'll leave you with that to reflect on. Cheers Pete.

Position

Another quickie from OF1 as OF2 has burst into print
Position 0630 12th, 4152 04942, trip 107, DMG 118 !! We must be down in the south circumpolar current at last. VoA rising and the water really starting to feel cold when applied to the nethers.

Latest Position

Posted in the UK by I & G.

Golgafrincham - and a question

Position 0630 11th 4104 04720, trip 106, dmg 106 - efficiency at last! 984 to Kerguelen, 4365 by rhumb line to Maatsuyker, less if we go further south towards the great circle - ugly front due tonight then soft high pressure systems for a few days. Won't be comfortable.

Day 19 from Cape Town. A Golgafrinchan day today - we'll sanitise the telephones, dispense fragrance throughout the office, facilitate meetings, fold a pointy end into the bog roll, ask everyone how their day is going. And I will shave.

The 2 Amsterdams are still with us, as well as the orange necked 'southern'. Indian Ocean Yellow Noses abundant, Various Prions in flocks mingled with White Chinned and other petrels. Swirling masses of birds, thousands, sometimes albatrosses slow and serene - scornfully imperial - in their midst. Wish I could send you photos. Breathtaking is an overused word - there's laziness in Golgafrincham today - like people always 'crashing' out of the tennis, there always being 'gobbets' of fat in the soup, sloppy stuff. But sometimes it really does take the breath - elemental, transfixing and seared into the polished surfaces of all 3 neurons never to be erased. Paradise but for the weather!

All y'all - is there anyone out there who would like to acquire a folder (unedited) of hundreds of bird photos? Some pretty good, though mostly telephoto so some distortion and loss of sharpness. Images in both raw and .jpg basic. Freebie, but perhaps donation to Albatross Conservation Fund or Berri iridium tin? Will have to wait until we get home, if that ever happens. We may have been diverted like the Golgafrinchans. Let me know and I'll make as many copies as needed.

SJ - with glitch in Africa station, did you get my reply to Speedy query? Separate note to follow re other stuff but losing propagation with Africa as range increases so may do via iridium in next day or so.

Neither Tryffid nor Jackal

The day of the albatross. Several Yellow Noses wheeling and soaring, often in formation and with petrels. Lots of petrels, mostly white chinned, some smaller. Occasionally a Storm Petrel.

A completely black or dark brown bird, albatross sized, massive white beak, not in the book. Possibly a giant petrel.

Another really big one, perhaps a snowy or southern royal - white underparts, dark white speckled top, white patches, flesh pink beak with orange tip, distinctive pinky orange neck band. Neck band not like anything in the book.

And what I think is one of the rarest of all - an Amsterdam - breeds only on Isle Amsterdam 1500 miles away and only 120 thought to exist according to the book. There were at least 2 of them.

Another, not immediately identifiable - dark all over except for head and neck, mottled/speckled brown with brown 'mohican' yellowish beak, darker end. Possibly a variant Amsterdam.

I have photos of all but the black one. Entirely possible they are all maturity or seasonal variants of distinct species.

I hope there's someone out there who is interested. If anyone can offer clues as to correct ID, please do!

Typical convergence zone conditions. Humid, low overcast, occasional drizzle, not much wind. Wallow and flop and roll. Poo!

Seems the Africa sailmail station server is down again. No incoming and I've tried several times to post bloggery and to retrieve gribs and no go. This via Iridium. If you get the earlier posts three times on the blog, my apologies. Perhaps the omnipotent SJ will notice and delete. If so - tks!

Yet another quickie

Position 0630 10th 4036 04501 trip 106, DMG 105 Yay - another ton at last. I think we might be finally clear of Africa. It's been a bleak and very uncomfortable few days and still is but we are moving again.

SW - welcome back!

Malcom, yep! The Nik is a D70s digital SLR with a long lens but it's no way waterproof or salt proof so I can only really get it out of its wrapper when the sun is shining. Then it's fantastic. The vid is a Sanyo Xacti waterproof digital and works fine - except that I can't tell what I'm filming most of the time when outside in daylight - either reflection or not enough backlight in the viewfinder screen.

Sue, fingers crossed for you - no need for further wx updates thanks - enjoy the trip!

All seems very quite out there. Fingers too cold to prod keyboards in England perhaps and all down at the beach or the pub in Oz.

The Slough of Despond?

The middle watch, from midnight to 0300 in Berrimilla. That time when, for most humans, the circadian rhythms are expecting to be restoring a sleeping body. That time when, for one who is awake, doubts, uncertainty, foreboding, dread, guilt - all those corrosive and negative feelings and emotions boil and fester at the edge of consciousness. That time of loneliness and exposure when the neurons are most finely tuned to the unusual - and prepared to interpret the worst from it. That time when the moaning howl of the wind in the rig coalesces with the knowledge that it's cold, wet and raining outside and the mind flinches and tries to hide. That time when the magnitude of the task ahead seems too big to manage, too unending, too frighteningly loaded against our weary decrepitude.

The wind in the rig this watch is a low, tuneful moaning hum - reminds me occasionally of bits of the humming chorus from Nabucco. It's a steady 25-30 knots, way ahead of the grib prediction and my middle watch conditioned mind thinks it's seriously unfair. We've just had a couple of big waves, knockdown size, break over us. They come in threes usually - trains of waves with much more attitude, more bite that the rest. Mostly too, when you think the time has past and things are on the improve. Scary and you can never relax.

The sea state is the result of conditions to the south - big rolling swells with confused wind waves on top, some pointy and breaking as they are affected by the local wind. Berri rolling wildly - difficult to make, let alone drink a cuppa and dunk the restorative McVities. You know you are alive and you wonder, perhaps, why you have chosen to realise it just this way. And we've got about 48 days to go, more if we go via Kerguelen. Here, it's dawn - we are 3 hours ahead of Greenwich. The sea is grey and roiling white and the wind is blowing spray from the tops of breaking waves.

Pete gently snoring.

of mice and men

At this rate, we are about 9 days from Kerguelen which equates to about 3 major changes in the weather system. There's no stability in it - the wind goes from north to south via west on a daily basis with little localised nasties arriving unannounced by the grib. Tricky. The plan: we will work our way SE to 45 S - about the same latitude as Tasman Island and with broadly similar conditions and have a look over our shoulders to see what's coming and make a decision to continue or bale out. Kerguelen starts at 48 south. It's all manageable but we do need to be careful. Would be a huge shame to go past but the boat comes before tourism!

It's been a slow day. rolling and pirouetting violently - water warm again and blue - what's happening? We crossed 40 S this afternoon - the Roaring Forties.

I've just started to read, for the severalth time, Gerald Durrell's 'My Family and Other Animals'- lovely book that works for me but perhaps not for everyone. His opening quotation from 'As You Like It':

It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded
of many simples, extracted from many objects,
and indeed the sundry contemplation of my
travels, which, by often rumination wraps
me in a most humorous sadness.

Mmm!

The tatty old albatross is still with us. Caught up with it earlier sitting on the water working at a big semi submerged plastic bag and not having much luck. It lumbered into the air and quite by luck I got it on video. Couldn't see the screen and no idea where the thing was pointing. But probably out of focus. They look so dumpy on the water and almost lopsided with their huge beaks and much smaller than in their soaring magnificence.

Thinking about some kind of gunsight viewfinder for the video cam. Screen absolutely useless in daylight - do the people who design these things ever actually use them?

Carol G - remind me - I've got a little artifact from B1 for your collection.

Southern Royal Albatross

The Southern Royal Albatross, Diomedea epomophora, has an average wingspan of an amazing 3 m (9.8 ft). This image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons and photographer Mila Zinkova. Posted by I & G in the snowbound UK.

Latest Position

Posted by I & G in the UK.

Quickie position

Position 0630 9th 3953 04257 trip 96, DMG 86. Last night's little bit of drama slowed us down considerably. Sea now abating but still big. No longer pointed semi breaking but still very steep and close together. Heady unrolled, main still lashed to the boom, mess tidied up and just waiting till it seems ok to get some of it up again.

Rather tatty looking Southern Royal albatross pottering around, landed next to the end of our safety line. I could almost feel his disappointment when it discovered there was no fish on the end of it. Must be used to following long liners. Further report later.

A change of direction

Tooling along this afternoon watching the barometer fall and thinking 'odd, that's all a bit quick - grib says much less better watch it' Closed the stern tube valve as a precaution - a good move. Seemed we were much closer to the centre of the system than the grib predicts and so it turned out. Just finished dinner, Black clouds, menacing and grim, already 2 reefed, and wham - 35 - 40 Berri surfing downwind wildly, up to 50, far too much sail - no time to get into party gear, just a lifejacket and harness and out there. Roll in the headsail still on its pole, bring her up beam on and drop the main - thrashing around but controllable, just. Kevvo kept his head and looked after us, as usual. Spray blasting across Pete at the mast, me in the cockpit, all ghostly in the spreader lights, the spray cascading diamonds, Berri rolling wildly but now sorted, everything made fast and back inside - absobloodylutely soaked. the howl has subsided, Berri steady on her feet again, from tracking SE before, now barepoled on NE @ 4 kts wind 35 and dropping. A lot of effort but essential. We'll stay like this until daylight in about 8 hours then sort the rather messy deck we left behind. Barometer up 2hp already. Now to do the washing up.