Aug 28, 2005 – 2330hrs UTC

2330hrs 28 Aug 2005 UTC 35’57”N 015’48”W Ref 319

This evening we rolled 3 Celebrations into one: the almost 200th anniversary of Trafalgar, 1000 miles in the can and we’ve passed the northern version of WollongongThe town which moves. There is a Berri-joke about having a beer off Wollongong on the return trip from Hobart - and how Wollongong seems to move further south each year.. Special occasion and we opened a  Boags and 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 from our secret supply. But this poor little flea has walked slap into a gigasplodge of dried mud and dung on our elephant’s backside – I’ve never known so much cloud to be associated with so little wind. We are still motoring and have been since about 0500. Every now and again there’s the tiniest hint of a puff against the cheek but it’s illusory – nothing happening at all. So another black black night with a misty indistinct meeting of sky and water around the horizaon – bitsd of the sky blacker than others where the cloud is thickest and the occasional glimpse of a star. But the Phosphorescence is breathtaking – as bright as I’ve ever seen it and it occurs as a solid luminous line along the crest of out tiny bow wave and then spreads and breaks into millions of sparkles as the wave rolls back. It’s as if the stars are in the water around us – brightens up the old studio no end.

We’ve now burned 40 litres of diesel – one sixth of our supply, but there’s no real choice but to go on burning it – perhaps for another 48 hours. Both the SatCom EGC forecast and the 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. say we should be getting force 4 – 4 from the north but we aren’t.