Alphabetic listing of places, words, phrases and acronyms with their definitions, carefully and skilfully crafted by Alex’s sister, Isabella. Crib for the underlying themes and jokes.
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
H4 - The first marine chronometer, designed by John Harisson. More on wikipedia.
Hadar - Major star pointer to Southern Cross with Rigil Kent
Halyards - Lines to hoist the sails
Heaving to - Setting the boat so that it lies roughly parallel to the waves and at right angles to the wind and moves slowly forwards. This movement is known as ‘fore-reaching’ and is usually achieved by backing the jib, freeing or lowering the mainsail and lashing the helm to leeward. It is often an effective way of slowing everything down and sitting out bad weather but some boats will not heave to because of their underwater shape or other factors and must be sailed out of trouble.
Heaving-to is not the same as lying a-hull where all sail is dropped and the boat is left more or less to its own devices.
Henry Knight - Henry Knight died of starvation on the emigrant ship Java (from England to Australia) and was buried at sea on the 6th Feb 1853 in the S Atlantic - 28.35 S, 26.09 W. On the way home from Falmouth (1st circumnavigation) Berrimilla passed about 100 miles to the north and sent him some chocolate in a paper boat. Henry's sister Susan died in sight of Cape Town and was buried at sea 8 miles SE of the lighthouse. We waved to her on the 2ncircumnavigation from very much closer. More here
HF - High Frequency – usually refers to HF radio which is long range digital radio that Berrimilla used to send all but a few of the logs on both circumnavigations. The radio was connected via a Pactor 3 digital modem to Alex’s laptop and used the Sailmail software application called Airmail to send emails and pull in emails, weather and GRIB files. Airmail also supports Iridium satellite telephone messaging and Alex used this as backup when the HF radio died approaching England.
HHGTTG - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams; essential reading for those trying to understand these logs. You may be none the wiser once you’ve read it, but at least you’ll have tried. More here
Hilary - Alex’s partner and Katherine’s mother
HMP - NASA's Houghton Mars Project camp on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic.
Hole in the Milky Way - aka as the Coalsack Dark Nebula
Hombre apercebido medio combatido - Quoted from Inspector Morse novel by Colin Dexter 180; translates roughly as “the man who is prepared has half the battle won
Hooning - As far as I can gather, if Berri were a horse, she’d have the bit between her teeth to be hooning
Hrungecomely Blurbleflunket - Happy birthday
HWS - Heavy Weather Sailing, 6th edition by Peter Bruce, Adlard Coles UK, 2008 (or earlier editions). The bible for offshore sailors.