Berrimilla Down Under Mars Status Report 13 May 2008
TUESDAY, 13 MAY 2008
We interrupt this broadcast……
To give a couple of hints and tips about messaging. This is not about discouraging people from sending messages. They are after all extremely important for the jollity and sanity of the crew. All messages put in the Gustbook are transmitted every 24 hours. Unless they are disqualified by size, in which case they are edited (more time consuming this end) and go later. Now and again the sinuous link that is sailmail cannot get through. Alex, then has to use the satellite phone to download the email sent from here. This costs $12USD per minute. You can see the problem. So the trick is; don’t use too many words (50 maximum);don’t use carriage returns let the Gustbook do that for you (that goes for emails as well). When you send an email here via contact please put in the subject line: ‘message for berri’. That will be hugely helpful for sorting.
Don’t insert blank lines as spaces like the one above here. Because they all have to be removed manually, consuming more time. So keep them coming and sign them off without a space like this. Thanks Speedy.The preceding message (excluding the picture)contains 190 words and is 2 Kilobytes in length and we can only send 6k at a time.
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 14:48
Professor McQ: 2008 Year Zero…
Hey folks, This afternoon I read two New Scientists!! Now, you might wonder how we hapopen to have New Scientists Magazines on board- well, Alex has been saving his copy and Guardian Weekly too (for crossword!) for a few months so every so often we have new reading material. So, I’d never read a New Scientist before today but what fascinating stuff!!!! My little brain is still trying to compute all the knowledge i have acquired this afternoon. Its mental!! I always wanted to be a professor cause It means you can get away with being a bit eccentric, I think!!! but I read an article by a man who is a Professor of Theoretical Physics, which, from what I can gather from the article is a recognised branch for Physics they don’t know about yet!!! Imagine!!! Well, now I know all about the Large Thingummy (HAdron) Collider. I’m still trying to get my head round it but some(scientists) think that we have unwittingly invented the first time machine with the LHC…and, logically, it would be impossible to go back further in time than the first time machine, this means that this could be prove to be year zero for time travel. However, while we don’t yet have the knowledge or technology to utilise our makeshift time machine other people forom the future, say 50 years time, might be able to and thus come backin time to now. Mind boggling stuff. Truly, my head is whizzing!!! So we might get some visitors, cause obviously year zero would be an interesting place to visit on a time travel itinerary!! But this begs the question, if they can use the LHC to get here but we can’t use it to get there (the future) how can they use it to get back to the future?? Or indeed could they show us how to use it to go to the future??? And then, if we did go to the future could we not come back armed with info about how technology has advanced etc and then is the future still the future or just part of the extended present??? Or would it take until that point in the future that we came back from to utilise the information that we have obtained to make it work, in which case the information must surely have come out of nowhere, but just loops about in space between now and that point in the future, since that means it never really gets developed??? Are you still following??? Its all properly bonkers. Maybe I will hypothesise more articulately and write to the NS and they will make me an honorary professor in something!!
Today I also threw overboard some rotten potatoes. Rotten potatoes smell of fish, if anyone wanted to know that. And then on the menu for this evening was beef in red wine casserole and non-rotten potatoes.
Lots of love
McQ
xxx
ps Marcus, I have a GRAND idea for our birthday party.
pps Carie, hows things????, send an email via speedy!!! Whats going on in the village? Are you in the village, even???? Singapore??? France??? What you up to??? Is no 10 ok??? Miss you. xxx
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 13:17
noon – almost 2217.10 16557.43
Bleergry This will morph into noon pos. now 0800, just crossing 22N @ 16656.30. Tropics end @ 23.5N…90 miles. Been headed a bit – now pointing firmly at Kamchatka. This will sort itself over time.
Just morphed @ 1140 dtd 2278, dmg 118 or about 121 for 24 hrs.
Speedy – Hope you had a good Burf and caffeinator has ‘sufficient’ horsepower!
The characteristics of the sea have changed – Temp is trying to go from 33 to 31 deg which might be a sign that we are getting close to top of current. Swell pattern now all from NE – big underlying swell, perhaps 3 – 4 metres @ 50+ metres with smaller wind waves on top, much shorter wavelength, same direction and occasionally meet and amplify underlying swell into short very steep breaking wave. Then confused slop on top of all that. Berri slightly easier as travel veehicle because corkscrewing not so savage with everything more or less lined up. Still need to brace with both legs, eyebrows, earwax and one hand and do everything that has to be done with the other hand. Like, for instance, getting damp trackies to progress upwards from wet feet which stick to material – massively energy sapping but there are techniques – can, for instance, sometimes sit on (damp/wet) floor and work them upwards – or, if Berri really heeled, downwards because feet are then above head level…GRIBs show change in wind and weather from about 24N. Nice to get off stbd tack – and maybe get a look at the barnacle colony that I’m sure is thriving under berri’s port quarter above the antifoul. Photos of the last lot on the old website under ‘arrival in Hobart’ or similar.
We have been offered a set of NWP charts via a friend – Kimbra in charge of chart acquis’n and is investigating. Sensational offer but can’t post details without permission. But thanks by the bucket load. Janx spirit duly and gratefully teleported.
To-do list for Dutch growing daily. Will post it when we get closer.
P & E O’C – noted. I hope you’re several days too late.
P McQ – re AM – any chance I could have one too please? Never ever owned my own copy, so wd be a first. Obeisances as required.
For the Funsters – apropos of nothing in particular:
Ode to Tomato Sauce:
First you shake the bottle
None’ll come, then a lott’l
by Ogden Nash. Not Shakespeare, just whimsy!
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 08:38
