FROM 1-12. 26°S-Nose Brazil &1st circumnavigation

Apr 29, 2005 – 1100hrs UTC

1100hrs 29 Apr 2005 UTC Map Ref 190

A little homily.

I would normally run this whole email operation through the Chile Sailmail station – more or less just up the road and always in a reasonable propagation situation. However, Chile has been down for about a month and I’ve had to work any of about a dozen other stations around the western hemisphere, mostly at extreme range and in desperately poor propagation circumstances – Newfoundland, Mozambique, Belgium, Mexico, Panama, for instance. It can take 20 minutes to download a ten line email and it sometimes drops out right at the end. Imagine then my frustration when it eventually comes in and there are signature blocks, commercial caveats, addresses and all the guff that we really don’t need out here taking up more space than the email itself.

PLEASE don’t send emails to our sailmail address. Use the website.

And don’t get me wrong – we love getting your emails. For me the high point of every day is opening Mal’s mail calls.

After last night’s puffery, daytime out here is just awful. Berri is a little sweatbox with the hatches closed and for a lot of the day there’s no shade and we have to hand steer for the 6 hours or so that the wind drops to 5 knots – as I suspected, the Examiner still peers over our shoulders. I’m running with sweat, there’s no air and we can’t sleep either. Tropics shmopics – never again will I venture north of Lord Howe once we get back. This confirms all my worst prejudices. It’s even worse than being in an aircraft carrier in the Red Sea because of the restricted space and at least there you could have a fan. But we’re moving ever further north.

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