Feb 05, 2005 - 1803hrs UTC

1803hrs 05 Feb 2005 UTC 48’24”S 161’50”W Map Ref 47 2328nm

Hello to everyone – its almost midnight local time. The boat’s doing 1-2 kts in a lumpy sea and the self steering has trouble in these conditions so we have to get out and hand steer, find a little more breeze and try to get the windvaneStainless steel self steering device, built by Kevin Fleming, used on Berrimilla and countless others working again. I missed it about an hour ago and we ended up hove to with the sails backed and boat dead in the water. it takes a while to get back on course when this happens. Frustrating because the wind will fill in for a few minutes then die off. We need to be further south where there is some wind but have no wind to get there.

Enough of this frustration crap and on to other matters: it seems a few folk out there have inferred that this is some sort of boozy south pacific cruise. Not so. It’s hell down here (well not at the moment) with very little booze. We estimated 50 – 70 days to the Falklands and we left Hobart with: 60 plastic 750ml bottles of Dr CoopersCoopers Sparkling Ale: - according to Alex: “brewed in the bottle, so a bit of sludge comes with it - best beer on the planet - beats a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster hands down”. Also a home brew from a Cooper’s Kit, perfected by onboard master-brewer Pete. See Pete’s interesting equation home brew (thanks Pete); 48 cans of 440ml Guinness (thanks David and the Pippins); 2 bottles of gin (thanks Gordo) 3×3 litres of Sir James plonk and 7 nips of alcohol of indeterminate provenance labelled ‘goats milk’ (thanks Ross).

On a normal day, we would share a coopersCoopers Sparkling Ale: - according to Alex: “brewed in the bottle, so a bit of sludge comes with it - best beer on the planet - beats a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster hands down”. Also a home brew from a Cooper’s Kit, perfected by onboard master-brewer Pete. See Pete’s interesting equation early – fortunately we keep both local and UTC timeCo-ordinated Univeral Time, formerly Greenwich Mean Time. UTC (sometimes known as Zulu time) uses precise atomic clocks, shortwave time signals and satellites to ensure it remains a totally reliable and accurate standard for scientific and navigational purposes. so the sun is always over the yardarm somewhere. This amounts to 1.5 coffee cups each. At sundown we either share a guinness 2/3 cup each or a G&T or a red. The drink, tho mentioned a lot in the correspondence, (‘better finish now, Pete’s pouring a guinness) doesn’t amount to much. We deserve more. So we celebrate occasional little milestones too.

Many thanks for the emails. Cheers, Pete.