Berrimilla Down Under Mars Status Report 23 April 2008
A little bit more….
In about 68 miles we’ll be north of the australian mainland – Berri for the second time – first time in the South Alantic. and through the Solomons Gate and out onto the course proper. In Marathon terms, 42185 metres to go, one at a time. Out here, 4315 miles – the numbers have a sort of symmetry! Also one at a time.
balmy day, wind all day. Lovely. Moon now up, stars dimmed and the sea getting a bit lumpy. Just had another bath in the cockpit – days really sweaty.
More on the Polynesian migration later. Stuff to do on deck.
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 11:49
Comms getting flaky
dtd 4359 so dmg 109 and we’re past the first quarter in straight line distance. Wooohooo. Consult we shall, shortly.
Comms getting flaky as we get further from Oz sailmail base station so may become a bit more irregular. Next in line is Hawaii base stn, but too far out for at least a week.
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 09:01
Creeping forwards
It’s like walking around the world only slower at the mo. Sparkling day, little fluffy clouds around and – wonder of wonders – just had a little shower of pearly iridescent rain out of an apparently clear patch of sky – not a cloud anywhere close. All sorts of ideas come to mind, but not for a website that’s read by kiddies!
I’m seething, boiling, incandescent with frustration about our flaky piecemeal satphone service and trying to be the gentle restrained understated inoffensive boot room rat cos I expect there’s another side to the story somewhere. I have a 500 minute voucher from Xsatusa that was activated a week or so before we left, to make sure it worked. I detected a problem then and thought they’d fixed it and did not have time to check. They hadn’t. Seems I was given – or mistakenly used – the wrong number or SIM card (I have two SIMS, one for the Arctic) and about 30 emails later, I think I know what the problem is but no one over there in Peachtree City Georgia seems to be getting the message and doing something about it. I will publish the whole series of emails if/when we ever get back into post stone age comms again as a case study in how not to run a service desk. Partly, admittedly, caused by my inability to use their support system properly from out here, but that ought not be a show stopper.
Anyway, it’s taken a lot of emotional energy and the creativity quotient for these bloggy things is a bit down. Midday Con should help.
Found Robin Williams’ 1000 years in a day ABC production broadcast on Dec 31 1999 – when Berri was holed up in Skeleton Bay trying to dry out – and given to me by H on mp3 cd before we left last time. So can’t Ipod it as far as I can see and using Keycorp’s mps cd player departure present to listen to it. Wonderful stuff – starting with Sei Shonagon in the Japanese Empress’s court in about 1002 – her lists and observations waspishly relevant today. I’ve always liked ‘Things near but distant: paradise – the course of a boat – relations between a man and a woman’. And then another fascination – the migration of the Polynesians from the western pacific across to Easter Island, possibly Chile if the recent chicken bone can be believed, and down to NZ, the last place they are believed to have settled, in about 1100.
More on this later – the questions it raises for me as a sailor are profound and more that just technically significant.
Love yez all.
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 09:00
