Nov 22, 2005 – 1023hrs UTC

1023hrs 22 Nov 2005 UTC 45’06”S 085’54”E Ref 575

db: dmgDistance Made Good; More here 129, gps 137 distance to sec 2572 margin 491+9=500, day 94, 35 to start, 26 to ti. definitely still in the game – watch this space.

sad moment during the night – doing a sailchange with the spreader lightsLights mounted half way up the mast which shine onto the foredeck to facilitate work at night below; good for the person doing the work but can ruin night vision in the cockpit, so only used when essential on, lots of crash and bother, and an albatross flew into the forestay and flopped into the water beside the boat looking very cross – must have been blinded by the light – i do hope it wasn’t hurt.

Passing the time so that the pain of each metre is muffled by little achievements and the buoyancy of expectation is a fine art. Some marathon runners can just absorb the experience and grind away – Zen and the Art of Marathon Running, perhaps. I can only do that in short bursts, so I need to substitute distractions. The athletics coach at my old school, who I think was a closet Zen Master, taught me to concentrate – fiercely, to the exclusion of everything else, but without tension – on the tip of my nose. Having got that far, just imagine that it has fallen off and is floating down like a falling leaf. If you can get to the necessary stage of relaxed concentration, you will feel your face muscles, then your neck, upper body, torso and legs relaxing and feeling the lightness and the rhythm. It sounds silly – but it isn’t. It works like magic, but the trick is to remember to do it when the brain is turning to mush at 36k. Like now – which feels like about 32 k – and it is really a short term technique, which I’m trying to develop into something that works over longer periods. Today’s little distractions – we passed half way across the pond and we arrived on a weather system plotting chart which starts at 85E and extends to NZ so I’ve plotted each day’s run at 120/day = 21 days to SE CapeThe southernmost point of the main island of Tasmania and every day we get an extra 10 miles saves us 2 hours.

There’s a gale warning for the Western area – us. So what’s new!

We’ve just about run out of snacky stuff – little cans of fish, savoury crackers, cans of beans and all the rest, so I’m making bread every three days or so and eking out the chocolate and remaining biscuits. We are being very careful with our remaining metho – line ball on that one. We will run out of McVities digestive dunkers about a week out, I think,  but by then just about any deprivation will be tolerable. Passing half way also frees up our carefully hoarded stash of gin – wooohoooa primitive, exultant, gibbon-like call given out by an old geezerDictionaries define a geezer as an old person, generally an eccentric old man. Its origin likely in the word masquerader (colloquially, guiser) from Middle English gysar. Go figure, as the Americans say.; many variations as listed, in order of emphasis: Woohoo Woooohooo WOOOHOOO WOOOHOOO! WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOa primitive, exultant, gibbon-like call given out by an old geezerDictionaries define a geezer as an old person, generally an eccentric old man. Its origin likely in the word masquerader (colloquially, guiser) from Middle English gysar. Go figure, as the Americans say.; many variations as listed, in order of emphasis: Woohoo Woooohooo WOOOHOOO WOOOHOOO! WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!! – and we get a Bundy tonight to celebrate the RORCRoyal Ocean Racing Club, located in London award. We’re going to get Berri snugged down so that we won’t need to do any sail changes from 2100 – 0000 and we can take Caro’s phone call in relative peace, but then it’s all on again. It’s not too bad at the mo – 40ish but the seas are not threatening. We are broad reaching with just the #5 at anywhere between 5 and 8 knots on the GPS. No other instruments, satcom is switched on to get the EGC weather and Malcolm’s skedShort for schedule. A pre-arranged (scheduled) time and frequency for radio contact often co-ordinated by a shore station, such as Penta Comstat, which is monitoring location and safety of boats in their area. Failure to respond to one or more sked can be a sign of trouble.