0950hrs 27 Aug 2005 UTC 38’06”N 013’27”W Ref 316
DB: 24hr= 93, mostly engine, total 830/840 = -10 so the buffer is history. We need some wind and a couple of good days.
I’ve just dipped the fuel tank – not the most accurate measure- and it seems we are burning about 1 litre/hr – rather more that I’d hoped. For that we were getting about 3.5 knots so not very efficient. I will try slightly higher revs next time to see whether it is any better. Very hard to judge. An accurate fuel flowmeter would be a real bonus for a cruising boat. We have about 210 litres left.
From Rowley B.
The Blackest of Black Nights “Its been a long time since I fired-off a missive to the tatty old “”bus shelter”” (in truth not an appropriate reference to an old bird that’s exceeded all expectations!)
Belated congratulations on the magnificent performance in Fastnet.
Until I reread your update about the cloud “”rolling-in from the west”” it occurred to me that black night might partially be attributed to the fires in Northern Portugal… but then if there was any element of smoke, you will have surely smelt it. My immediate reaction was what an awful predicament to be in when close to shipping lanes… but obviously you had everything under control, as always.
I was wondering if The Berrimilla Global Empire includes a network in Capetown. The only resident yachtsmen I had the privilege of knowing in that fair (windy) city succumbed to cancer…but if need be I could dispatch a runner with a message in a fork stick to alert of Boer Mafia of your impending arrival.
This weekend I’m hoping to assist a mate sail his recently acquired Beneteau 44 from Port Stephens to its new home port in Broken Bay.
You certainly burnt up the track the other day… hope Berri gets to romp some more.
Dicky B – sorry, left you out of one of the lists – hope we don’t keep you waiting too long. And Rowley, thanks for the offer – we don’t intend to stop in Cape Town unless things get really pear shaped, but useful to know there’s a potential network.
Another almost cloudless day – about 10 kts of nothing very much from the north and nothing to report except that we have about half a knot of current going with us. Better than a poke in the eye. This is day 7, so we will be one week down out of about 16 – and I get to listen to disc 2 of le Carre reading Gardener tomorrow. Goody. Life’s little treats are important out here in the bus shelter – otherwise it’s just litter blowin’ in the wind and dogs sniffing the furniture.
Our nearest neighbours, briefly, have just been the 100 or so people on what I think was a 737 that flew almost directly over us. It was making con trails so it must have been at about 33000ft – say 5 miles above us. If it was a 737, it doesn’t have the range for a transatlantic flight, so it must be inbound from the Azores to Lisbon. With something to give some perspective and contrast through the binoculars, I could see a very thin even layer of ice crystals above it, which explains the rather fuzzy universe last night.
And there’s a line of cloud to the NW – will it bring us some real wind or just extinguish the diaphanous zephyr wot we’ve (almost) got now? Watch this space.
Cookie crumbler – and all our other mates down there at .co.fk in the deeepest South – g’day. What news of The Baby? Please keep us posted – and JMB, does the flagpole fit? We’re going to have an ‘Abeam Trafalgar’ Consultation in a couple of days – if we ever get down there. Nelson is aboard – the highly romanticised Sir William Beechey version from the NPG in which his neck with all its decorations is longer than his head – makes him look a bit like the African women that wear rings around their necks. Nice portrait all the same. He arrived on a postcard with some rather special goodies just before we left Fmth. Thanks Laura. We’ve made an exception to the ‘no glass’ rule, but lots of compensatory bubble wrap, deep in the aft bilge. We will need to beat the rust that’s even now eating away the caps.
The logs ramblings can be cryptic, so we have added: