AU and S2H

0700/24th position 1310 02454 trip 2727=122/24 Only about 1.3 S2H to the Equator.

In astronomy there's a unit of distance called an astronomical unit or AU. 1 AU is about 93 million miles, the distance from Earth to the Sun. In Berri, we have the Berri Unit or S2H which is about 630 miles or just over 10 deg of latitude.

Malcom, thanks - I was wondering exactly where that crash site is. We will be about 1 S2H to the east if things go as planned. And yep - I think I still have the satphone number or mmsi for the m du Fresne.

Still a few Orionid meteors but a very hazy but mostly cloudless night and they are not very bright.

A Touch of the Turgids

0200/24th position 1335 02501

Did anybody else notice that there seemed to be a world shortage of M&Ms from about July - not the peanut ones in yellow packs, there were lots of those, but the real thing in brown packs? More on this later.

It's the midnight to three watch again - Pete woke me and I emerged into the world dripping with sweat and torpor - not just lassitude but that viscous torpor that curdles action and congeals the mind. Lethargy, inertia, all that too, rolled in. Reminded me of when I was a very little kid just starting at boarding school where my pastors and masters used expressions like moral turpitude to describe the attitude of any kid with a gram of original thought or the gumption to use some initiative. Never used about me, unfortunately. I was bumped up a class, so I was too clever by half, or too clever for my own good. Quaint, that moral turpitude! But what I have now is a sort if visceral torpitude where my mind sends sluggish commands to my extremities and they jack up and say go away and don't disturb me can't you see I'm torpid stupid?

So, a cup-a-soup later and not a lot of improvement, I raided the goodies cupboard to find one of the only two packs of M&Ms that we were able to buy in Falmouth (ASDA yet!)and later in Lisbon. And now, about thirty of the little blobs later appropriately sugar fixed, I can at least prod the keyboard. Did someone at the back of the class say 'More's the pity?'

The GRIB shows things getting interesting between here and the Equator. The ITCZ seems to be up and down between 5 and 10 N with a nasty little patch of activity to the south later today. We are trying to get a bit further east to get behind the active bit though that's really too far ahead yet, but also to get a better angle to cross the SE trades later, which at the moment appear to be blowing directly from the south. Fickle breeze here - comes and goes but we're moving.

Thanks everyone for your message - apologies for my turpid recalcitrance in not acknowledging them all but don't stop.

Latest Position

Parked for Zarks sake

39 miles S w of Baha @ 1427S 02517W Why anyone in their right minds would ever choose to sail in the tropics is way beyond me - though Pete seems to like them. Hot, humid, sweaty, windless (well, some of the time) and cringing into every tiny bit of shade to gat out of the sun. Sweat in rivers. Yeeeucht! Beam me up, Scotty. Not worth burning diesel to get us 10 miles south or anywhere really. So we fester - but we have had it easy so far so I'm not complaining. And Dr Grindy not due until 1700, two and a quarter hours away.

2.25 hours later and we're moving again and medicinally sound. The park Zark was probably because we were directly downwind of the line of islands.

Later still - the sun sinking behind a confusion of different level cloud - mostly wispy but with strands going in every direction. Seemed for a short time that we were under the centre of a big circular swirl but it just got all confused again. Smoky crescent moon to the south - we're heading a bit further east than ideal but tomorrow will dictate what we do. The next 1000 miles or so to the equator will be critical - and probably difficult.

Another trawl through the wheelie bin

0700/23rd Position 1504 02531 Trip 2605=127/24

The midnight to 0300 watch is always a long one. This morning I spent the first hour up and down between the cockpit and the watermaker supervising a 5 litre squeeze of the North Atlantic. The moon had gone - hazy overcast, occasional gaps with murky stars poking a few photons through - shapeless, grey, woolly night, no meeting of the sky and the horizon, just a faint change in density. Blacker the closer to the boat you look except! Except for the phosphorescence - writhing jade green swirls of smoky water with zillions of sparkles instantly there and gently fading. Lovely - reminded me of the Milky Way, invisible tonight - and then Douglas Adams and his dolphins and my first voyage metaphor of the Milky Way as the phosphorescent streak of the dolphins across the heavens. And then some idle speculation about spacetime as a doughnut - a toroidal whimsy - or perhaps as a series of nesting Russian dolls - could the Universe as we know it, with all its billions and gerzillions of stars and gas clouds and black holes and dark matter - could all this be just the workings of a small part of the brain of a cockroach in the next biggest universe as it nibbles some happy camper's toes?

And idly thinking about Trafalgar - which, along with Waterloo ten years later formed the basis for the next 100 years of peace in Europe, the Pax Britannica. But here on the old slave route it's hard not to see it from the point of view of native peoples everywhere else who were systematically subdued, transported, enslaved and otherwise looted during that century by the British, the Dutch, French, Spanish, Germans, Portugese and Italians who had the time and military resources to do so as they weren't fighting eachother.

Sitting up there in the cockpit you can become mesmerised by scale and its effects. My niece had to make a business trip from Luxembourg to Rio recently - odd to think that she was only 6 miles above some part of Berri's recent track - and how much of the world many of us have actually been within 6 miles of without knowing anything about what is below. I see winking strobes high above, or a growing con trail in the distance pushing so fast across what to us is a vast expanse of planet. That tiny - invisible - speck with 300 people in it and several tons of avtur in the tanks - how much energy is locked up in that stuff and how much is dissipated as heat

And so on for three hours...

Another sailing vessel just sailed across our stern - about the same size, sailing a more southerly course, couldn't see anyone on deck, called on the VHF but no answer. Couldn't see any sail number. Wonder who and where...

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.

no=footer

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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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