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!

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
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

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.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

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

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com