Contact!

Or the end of the beginning. My last blog was sent by radio via the Australian sailmailSailmail is the system that Berrimilla uses for email communication. It is a non-profit association of yacht owners operating a network of private coast stations in the maritime Mobile Radio Service. station at Firefly, NSWNew South Wales. State in the East of Australia. New South Wales' capital city is Sydney.. Eureka! There's a small but growing propagationIn the logs, this refers to the radiation of signal energy and is customarily qualified by the words abysmal, ratshit or lousy window on the lower frequencies around 1400 UTC. Maybe this one too…SJ, top right hand corner, Sent via HFHigh 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.-VZX is Firefly, Telnet is Iridium.

The photo I would have loved to have been able to take – Berrimilla at anchor in Baie de L'Oiseau. I wonder whether our visit coincided with a google earth satellite overpass – or anybody else's – it was a cloudless day. Anyone know how to find out?

Glooopout! It's grey dark – the moon is a pale ghost almost over the masthead, nav lights reflecting like plasma – but the milky gloop is so dense that the visibility is only a few metres. Berri's rolled headsail is a dim, damp silhouette disappearing ahead of us. Windless, cold, oily calm like some foggy days in the English Channel. We are burning a bit of diesel to trickle along and charge the battery. Take yer breath away lovely, there is phosphorescence again, a subdued radiance. We are moving forward inside a gently glowing spearhead with sharp greenish edges, a coiling shaft astern and no other frame of reference beyond the boat. Weirdly eerily beautiful here, absolutely terrifying in the English Channel!

Desperately slow progress – I left all Doug's Kerguelen papers with Renaud in Port aux Francais and I don't remember how long it took 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. to reach Tasmania in similar fog. He, of course, had no option but to sail. For me, 31k perhaps in a marathon – the end of a Sunday run but still way short of mental half way in the real thing. You can just sense that there may be a finish line out there somewhere but you daren't think about it and the body is starting to get stroppy and ask rude questions of the mind. I wonder if I will ever be able to finish another one – the atrophy has really set in these last five relatively inactive years. Something to rebuild.