Oct 01, 2005 – 0930hrs UTC

0930hrs 01 Oct 2005 UTC 23’00”S 025’58”W Ref 401

DB:127, 8568 gps 127 42/68

Following my last note, it got worse. And worse. 3 very wet, gyrating sailchanges from the 3 to the 4 to the 5 with a reef-- As a verb – to shorten sail, to use reefing lines or other techniques to make the working part of a sail smaller and so reduce its power as the wind rises. --- As a noun, (1) the part of the sail that has been shortened, folded or rolled. May be referred to as a slab or a slab reef which is a particular way of forming a reef. -- As a noun (2) – a bank of coral, rocks or other obstruction usually close to a shoreline and potentially dangerous to sailors. each then drop the main altogether. We have just put it back up with three reefs. The wind went to 40 kts and stayed there, with 4 metre swells from everywhere -really confused lumpy sea, Berri really crashing about, impossible to do anything like cookBritish explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy. He made 3 voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. More on wikipedia., read, chop the dried fruit – raining hard and I haven’t slept for 24 hours because I feel every crash and shudder. Wind back to 35 + but manageable. This wasn’t in the guide book or on the last gribWeather files. Graphics in Binary file: GRIB files associate a specific weather datum (eg wind velocity or atmospheric pressure) with a geographic position. Because the resulting file is a collection of these points they are extremely small and so ideal over slow links such as sailmail. I pulled in, but it is getting us south and east. About another ten days before we can catch a downwind ride, perhaps three down to Henry.

And three more hours before I get to try to sleep again. The boat feels much better – for the moment. This has been changing so fast that we could get anything or nothing in the next couple of hours.

Laura,Marietta, Flop and Conor – did you get my email about the RORCRoyal Ocean Racing Club, located in London dinner? I’ll assume you did not or are not interested if I don’t hear from you in the next week. Please at least acknowledge the email if you got it – I don’t know nothing out here.