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Friday, February 12, 2010
A prediction that isn't
Position 0630 12th 4509 10143, trip 122, DMG 107. 1878 to Maatsuuyker waypoint. ETA SE Cape perhaps March 1st - so there's a non prediction wot I never ever make. Metre by metre we're closing in.
I think we may have sown the seeds of a bit of international collaboration between Australia and Kerguelen - more later, if it develops. But gratifying and thanks mostly to Doug Morrison and his papers.
In a little northerly burst - around 20kts so far, not supposed to go more that 25 but who knows. Seas rising again. Sunshine for a couple of hours this morning, now gone - what a difference it makes to one's mood. Eternal grey is grim.
in the middle somewhere
Middle watch, now, of course in full daylight. High stratus and strato-cu and lots of blue sky. Yeehaaa. Noice to see the sun for once although it is frosted behind the cloud layer at the mo. Trying to squeeze every last centimetre out of this breeze - it's coming from roughly north, about 12 kts, reasonably calm sea and we're making about 5 kt towards Hobart. Due to increase to 20+ as the day progresses and we'll shorten sail and keep going. Now have Cape Leeuwin to Maatsuuyker across the top of the computer screen with Berri bottom left - progress becomes almost visible at this scale.
Norm, (& MJC) thanks for Queen Victoria - I guess it's obvious really when you look at Tenniel's drawings in Alice - Her Imperial Maj. to a T! Glad you're still out there - was getting worried!
Val and Jill - looks as if we will miss Freo, barring catastrophe, but we will wave as we go past, probably around next Wednesday.
Ferret the Noige - an Eeyore moment - that's just what WOULD happen! But will be good to have them and may order some more when we get home if ok with you.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Daylight come...
Position 0630 11th 4538 09902, trip 119, DMG 92. Not bad, considering the nastiness last night. Huge SW swell at first light, wit the NE wind waves over it and the rising waves from the current westerly so very confused, big seas. We are running NE with about half the headsail - still a bit iffy to go for twin poles and anyway, if the grib is to be believed (probably not!) the wind is supposed to go north later today.
Following yesterday's jizz, interesting fact no. 2 - Mercury was used as a 'carrot' or stiffener in the felt hat industry. Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter was based on workers in the industry who suffered from mercury poisoning causing 'Hatters' Shakes' and mental aberration. Not a kindly portrait after all. From Harold Klawan's book 'Newton's Madness' Bodley Head, uk 1990. Also from the Cape Town flea market. I wonder where the Queen of Hearts came from.
And we soldier on - 1980 miles to my Maatsuuyker waypoint which is about 20 miles short of the island.
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Still dank and claggy but
And the long night drags on. Things have improved - the barometer bottomed out at about 993 and now infinitesimally climbing again, the wind started to back, hesitated, threw us some savage gusts, pouring rain and blasting spray, dropped to nothing and backed very quickly NW then W at 25 kts. I think the top of the eye of the low passed over us - anyway, we are now running NE with the wind on the quarter and about half the headsail. Confused sea but it's getting better - we no longer get the massive crashes and subsequent cascades as big waves come in from the side and break against the boat or over it. We are still rolling all over the place, but it's not constant - just happens in bursts as cross-wave trains trundle through and agitate a lot.
The barn door once more somewhere over the horizon ahead of us where it ought to be.
Wet, clank and daggy
Just come back inside from sorting pearshapedness. Dripping wetties hung and hands dried as best as I can. When you've had it good for a few days you tend to forget how bloody awful these things are. We are now almost bare poled - tiny patch of headsail, gusty NE wind around 40-45 kts just aft of the port beam so we are running with it to minimise the effect, heading away from Hobart to the south west. Big breaking waves, Berri rolling all over the place, horizontal, cold rain, howling blast from the rig and this is only a toy one. Pete asleep through it all - I don't know how he does it. Barometer still falling - down from about 1010 to 995 at about 3hp/hr. I think we must be close to the centre of the low - which the grib puts about 50 miles further south at 1002, so it came as a nasty surprise to disturb the complacency. All we can do is sit it out and try to regain ground to the north when it abates.
I can feel the pressure of the wind gusts in my ears. Now to watch the wind direction to see whether it veers or backs as the low moves away so we know where we are in the system and have an idea what to expect next.
Have a nice day! As I said, it's looking like a long night.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Early Birders
It was really all too easy for too long! Now in the wrong sector of a nasty tight little low, 35+ knots NE, barometer plummeting, short lumpy horrible sea, driving rain, waves breaking over the boat again. Bloody Examiner can't keep her nose out of it for long. We're more or less going sideways on about 170T and it's not fun. Looks as if there's another one behind it too. Getting dark and it's going to be a long night.
Well, Earlier Birders, I suppose - I've been reading a who-dunnit that has a fake birder as central character. Says that jizz is derived from RAF slang for General Identification Size and Shape being the term describing how to identify aircraft. Often first and only impression from tiny glimpse and experience will match it to at least a broad category. Been there - both with aircraft and birds. Tricky!
Sue, tks for predictions. Pinko not having fun with the rest of us! Nethers recovering. Enjoy the Olympics!
Christophe - thanks for photos - I will write to you when this weather passes.
Which it will.
From: centrale
Date: Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 8:36 PM
Subject: News from Kerguelen island.
To: berrimilla2@gmail.com
Hello Alex & Peter,
I hope you have a good trip with fine wind and not such a bad sea. Yesterday, the australian customer's ship, Oceanic Viking, was here. I think you are near to reach your destination, Hobart. I'll be glad to have somme news when you'll arrive. So I wish you a very good home coming.
All the seamen from Kerguelen islandsend you theit best wishes as well.
Amitiés Australes (in french in the text :-))
Christophe Froehlinger - Kerguelen 60ème mission
Half way?
Position 0630 10th 4535 09654, trip 132, DMG 135. A good day - we seem to have hooked into something good - keep 'em crossed please. Maatsuuyker now just over 3 Hobart races away - 3 Berrimilla Units. No predictions yet but we are glad to be moving properly again. Australia now takes up lots of chart space on the computer and the GPS. I can pull in ABC local radio - 702 - sometimes at night, presumably the Perth regional station, now about 1100 miles away. Will try for Radio National tonight (Thanks Hilary!)
Not a lot to report. Wet and windy and lumpy - grey, damp, soggy conditions, wind NE 15-20 and forecast to back to the west for a couple of days. Both a bit weary and looking forward to some sort of arrival. We are thinking that a short stop in Adventure Bay to pay our respects to all those who went before would round things off nicely but will depend on conditions - ours, Berri's and the weather.
It's beginning to feel like about half way from Falmouth - 36k in the marathon - just have to grind it out from here. Yet - yet there is also the feeling of incipient nostalgia - what to do with ourselves afterwards...
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Trivia
Position 0630 9th 4454 09359, trip 107, DMG 106 - still a bit in the bag. We also cracked 12000 sailing miles from Falmouth.
Iridium Bill - another old fart, like the non existent Mr Posters. I now have the first installment and, barring catastrophe, I think we have enough in the tin to cover the voyage. Thanks everyone - if there's any left over, I will apply it to the coming home party medications and I will write to you all when we get back and Isabella sends me a list.
From some incoming mails:
JJ: A trip to the masthead is about the farthest point of the boat one can get
> to, but it does put you closer to the ISS making Pete the most removed
> person on the earth's surface while you are up there. AW comment: But I'm going faster - both forwards and sideways...
SJ:
> RE: your last blog: "Muddling through towards perfection." So, from
> that I take it the moral of the story is that it takes only 2
> circumnavigations, a dozen Hobarts, and a couple of Fastnets to get
> Berri sorted....AW comment: It's all about intelligent improvisation - muddling through is the best most people can do in the face of uncertainty and with limited resources. Berri will never reach that wonderful state of being 'sorted'- we just keep muddling!
Fenwick, DOF that you are - remember to delete the previous email string before you press 'send' else I'll empty the drag bucket over your new paintwork when we get home. What sort of boat are we planning for?
Woc - congratulations to Cam - we'll Consult.
SJ/SW - please post Doug's latest on Dawes - clearly a man with an interesting character - I think I'd have liked him.
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Monday, February 8, 2010
Wallow and flop
Position 0630 8th. 4451 09135, trip 117, DMG 109 - dragging the chain a bit! 'This is the time when is tempting to keep looking sat the GPS to get an ETA - a temptation that should be resisted always, because the ETA changes every few seconds and may vary by a week from one minute to the next, depending where we are on a wave.
Astronomically, we are now closer to Australian Summer time than to UTC - signs of progress everywhere. Still not fully in range of Firefly sailmail and the connections are often too flaky, so still using Iridium for most posts.
After all that bother last night, the red sail was only up for about 4 hours and the wind changed. But worth perhaps 4 miles in that time. I've run the old fat halyard back up the mast instead of its skinny mate, so with a bit of luck we've muddled through. I will replace the other one when we get a nice warm day. Now in flop and wallow mode - tedious - but moving in the right direction. My guess for Hobart March 1 if we get lucky.
One thing I noticed from the masthead was that you can see the markings on the upper wings of the birds much better. Yesterday's at masthead time were Prions. We have what might be a Sooty albatross with us now and another, probably juvenile and for me unidentifiable, but an albatross.
Doug, thanks for Adventure Bay note - as I was reading it, we were within about 50 miles of K1's run down position. Hard to believe that Arthur Phillip really couldn't get to it to wind it - sounds like a cover up to me! Dawes' correction is astonishing - presumably he had to work back from DR, the estimated time the timekeeper stopped, his sights - I wouldn't know where to begin but then I'm mathematically challenged. We are seeing the sun for the first time for about a week as I write. Glimpses through the fogbanks and overcast. I wonder whether our northern horizon would have the First Fleet spread along it if we could see all the ships that had ever passed this way. What a sight!
There was a pamphlet published when all the Ks were in Sdney in 1988 for the BiCentenary. called The Travels of the Timekeepers with the details of their journeys - it was the 4th visit to Sydney for one of them, probably K1. I think the pamphlet was published by the NSW Historical Society or some such body and I have a copy if you have not seen it.
Barry, thanks for definition of anlage - I was at least in the ballpark!
The science of muddling through
With deference and great respect to my friend the late Leon Peres, who invented it.
First, the story - the science follows:
Here we are, hoofing along with just the headsail, poled out in 20+ knots true, so about 15 apparent. Rolling a lot, quartering sea, yearning for home. Time for the red sail twin poled. Muggins gets dressed, straight from a toasty bunk and starts to set it all up - cold and wet, longish process and needs methodical approach and careful sorting of halyards, topping lifts, inner forestay, downhaul, the works.
Pole attached to mast, topper and downhaul attached, boat rolling through perhaps 30 deg so pole end into pulpit and lean on it while hanking on the sail. Attach halyard - and the tricky bit, back to the mast and get the pole hoisted way high, sheet on so it stops pole from banging on the forestay foil and damaging it - and back to the cockpit to hoist the sail. Needs 4 sets of hands but possible in well set up boat.
The sail goes three quarters of the way up and jams. AAArrrghhh! Won't go up or down, so we have a biggish sail doing a Grand old Duke of York, neither up nor down and flogging but basically under control for the time being. Pole leaping around a bit. Looks as if the halyard has jumped the sheave at the masthead and is caught between the sheave and the cheeks of the block. For the nautically challenged, all you need to understand is that this looks like the beginning of some very bad karma indeed. Essential to get it sorted and now before things get really bad.
No option but to go up to the masthead and see whether it can be freed, or just cut or perhaps unshackle the sail and leave the halyard flapping in the breeze. Only the first is really a goer - the other options are potentially big problems later if things get otherwise pearshaped.
Muggins again - because I set up the arrangement at the masthead and know what's up there. Get into harness, struggle into our much too complicated bosun's chair with pliers, two knives, gloves and boots on and tether attached. Mast wet and slippery, no spare halyards to hold on to, Pete in the cockpit on the winch and off we go, muggins climbing with legs around swaying mast, holding shrouds, taking it slowly and resting the old carcase at each set of spreaders - tricky at the spreaders because you have to go out and around things but Pete winches away when necessary and we get me up there. Grip with legs around the mast which is swaying through a biggish arc, (for the record, it's about 55 feet above the water and probably rolling through 30+ degrees - not a lot, but interesting)let go with both hands and use the full, creaky power of the decrepit shoulders to work the halyard out of the jam. With a bit of effort, it happens and Pete hoists the sail the rest of the way while I hang on and try not to think of what might be happening to the nethers as the mast sways and the delicate parts, squeezed by the straps of the chair are alternately squashed against the mast and stretched away as I hang underneath it. Erk!
And back down again, slowly. Pete had just teleported Dr Gordon before all this started, so we had Long Consultation and thought about the science. When Roland at Tempo built the mast, he put, at my direction, agricultural kite halyards on it. I looked at them when the mast had been stepped and thought - Too agricultural - 12 mm spectra - so I put some much skinnier ones on instead, but did not change the masthead blocks, which have widely grooved sheaves to take the agricultural string. Mistake - too easy for the skinny string to jump as we discovered. But I kept the original halyards and we'll replace the skinny ones when we drop the sail. Muddling through towards perfection.
Now happily twin poled and hooning.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
This and that again.
Position 0630 7th 4501 08857, trip 127, DMG 122 - still ok!
Birds again. Still don't know what the earlier ones were but we just had a short visit from a few Soft Plumaged petrels. Lovely birds, they come haring in towards the boat, rocking slightly in the wind, see me in the cockpit and with a couple of flips are banked instantly away while they look around and assess the situation and come back and do it all again. Fast, acrobatic, jerky flight.
Dropped the main, just half the heady on the pole - sea rising in the consistent westerly, but this due to abate slowly. Apparently some nasties due in a week or so, but things change so fast here that anything is possible. Beginning to yearn for home.
The plan - DV and WP - will be to get ourselves past Maatsuuyker and in range of SE Cape and then decide on Adventure Bay or Recherche for a small diversionary celebration. Should anyone want to join us, watch this space but we are definitely not there yet and a long way to go. About 20 days minimum.
Carol, thanks. No need for any more. And I think you should definitely have a go at Steinbeck.
MJC - Gotcha thanks. I think Baudin might have met Flinders in Recherche - they dined together somewhere and that may have been it.
Poste restante
I have been reminded of the makeshift custom of the days of long voyages where the ships left letters for home in some sheltered spot at a point where outward and return tracks crossed and ships stopped for water. There were stones at Cape Town before the Dutch built a permanent settlement there under which letters were 'posted' by outgoing ships to be picked up and taken back to Europe by those going home. Likewise on Juan Fernandez, temporary home of Alexander Selkirk, Robinson Crusoe to his fans. No doubt there were many others possibly even in Tasmania. Haphazard - I wonder whether there are still letters out there in some isolated spot, waiting to be collected. Perhaps there's a small research article there somewhere for a history project. Anyway, seems to me we are repeating history. The good ship Berrimilla has left letters under a figurative stone - Renaud's mailbox on Kerguelen - waiting for a passing ship to deliver them to all y'all around the world. I'd have loved to have landed at Baie de L'Oiseau and left a message in a bottle there too but, alas, it was not possible. We had one ready.
On which thought, if we were to release one here, it would probably end up in Chile if it didn't get snagged by MacQuarie or the Campbells. Might be fun to do.
2 birds in the emptiness. Very hard to identify - under grey overcast, upper wing markings merge into uniform grey. Jizz combined with location does not match anything I can find in the book - nearest might be Barau's petrel.
The weather systems seem to have turned right side up at last - we are now happily chugging along in the top of a low, poled out in a nice 20 kt westerly which looks good for a day or so. Yeeebloodyhaaaa! Less than a quarter of the globe to go to complete the second circ. Technically, this would happen at the Iron Pot at the mouth of the Derwent or a bit further north in the Derwent if we take the D'Entrecasteaux Channel and would include our roll off Gabo Island in 2007, but the more elegant version would end at South Head if we get to enter Sydney Harbour.
If we do manage either of these, there is an interesting list of achievements to go with them - none of any consequence but each with its own integrity and all by accident really. None were intended anyway. I'll post the list if we look like getting there.
The Consultation not Taken
Please excuse a small diversion from the voyage story: Alex has said it's OK to upload this.
Last year he gave me a plastic token he kept after visiting Cambridge Bay (Ikaluktutiak) while sailing the North West Passage in 2008. It's a token allowing the limited purchase of alcohol at a Club, or Lodge called ELKS. Let's leave aside the almost unimaginable concept that this "One Drink" was not claimed.
I am a long-time Friend of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and felt that this unusual - if humble - object might be of interest to the Museum, and so I wrote to them about it. The Joint Head of Collections replied that they would be delighted to accept the token as an addition to their collection of "coinage substitutes." The PRM, I should explain, is a world-class Museum and part of the University of Oxford. Objects are displayed by type rather than culture. It has long been an inspiration to writers and artists as well as to historians, explorers, anthropologists and archaeologists, both for the objects it displays as well as their often intriguing provenances.
Relevant links to this update:
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
Relevant pages on the old NWP blog
NB: this is the Berrisite that has been heavily spammed in its most recent pages. When you get to the page in my link you need to scroll down to the dates around 8th August. You'll see a title: Cambridge Bay, wherever google earth thinks it is. The update below that title is the nearest I can find to link the token to the NWP story.
Why alcohol abuse is a problem in Cambridge Bay:
Posted by Isabella, Alex's sister in the UK
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Steinbeck
Hard grey sea, gently spiky, Berri tramping along - uniform, slightly ribbed overcast, cloudbase about 1000ft, emptiness all the way to the horizon - no birds, no sea monsters, no swimming polar bears or silly old farts with tridents. Unusual and starkly lonely - a reminder of just how isolated we really are. ISS crew definitely closest humans out here at about 340km.
Half way through Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath' which we picked up in the flea market in Cape Town. What a book! I was given 'Cannery Row' as a kid and found it heavy going and never came back to Steinbeck. Wonderful to find something so vivid, so densely packed with immediate images, lyrically beautiful descriptions and passages that are mesmerisingly similar to things I have tried to write about here with presumptuous ineptitude. Al 'feeling' the old car, the way he describes Ma, the Preacher's uncertainty - searing clarity, impossible to avoid being there with them. I'm hooked and cross eyed with the power of it.
He uses a word - at least twice - that I don't think I have ever seen before: anlage. The context might give it a meaning such as equipment, infrastructure, the toolkit? Or possibly more like competence or ability.
Bill W - thanks! - address in original request.
MJC - is Adventure Bay the same place as Recherche Bay? I have a feeling Baudin might have named it.
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Thank yous
Position 0630 6th 4448 08612, trip 124, DMG 127. Noice! And about time! The odometer from Falmouth now reads 11699 miles sailed.
Some serious thank yous due. First, my Iridium banker, (my sister Isabella in the UK) says that she has banked about 500 pounds in the Iridium tin so far - Massive thanks to all of you who contributed - I don't have any idea what the eventual bill will be but that will certainly make a dent in it. For the curious, I have to pay the account in sterling with a direct debit to a sterling credit card because I set it up with Cable and Wireless in Port Stanley in 2005 and that was one of the conditions under which they were prepared to let me out of their sight clutching new phone and SIM card.
Second - to Kiwi Feather Props in NZ. The new prop has arrived in Hobart, specified for the new engine. I mentioned that Kiwi had 'subsidised' the new one in an earlier blog but in fact they have donated it in return for the old, much travelled one which is to be examined and then become a museum piece in the factory. Great people, responsive, competent and know their product. And it's an elegant, relatively simple and inexpensive bit of gear that has performed faultlessly over almost 2 circumnavigations and a whole lot more. Thanks guys.
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Fous de la Mer
I have just found an interesting blog / website having conducted a regular Berrimilla internet trawl.
There are some images, and some text - in French. It must belong to the Kerguelen Renaud that Alex refers to. If you go to Renaud's 2009 archive there are many images which add to some of Alex's updates from the islands.
Renaud, if you are reading this - bonjour et merci. I very much like the description "fous de la mer." I think the English equivalent translates to something like "sea-lunatics" but I think the French has more style.
Posted by Iz in the UK
Friday, February 5, 2010
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