Feb 14, 2005 – 0627hrs UTC

0627hrs 14 Feb 2005 UTC 45’58”S 137’48”W Map Ref 63 3440nm

Berri is quiet tonight – unlike a couple of nights ago.   We’re twin polingAn explanation from Malcolm: It is quite normal for a yacht to 'pole out' its jib (the foresail) on the opposite side of the boat to the mainsail when running downwind - this is called goosewinging'. A spinnaker pole is attached to the mast at one end and the back corner (clew) of the jib at the other. That holds the jib at the right angle so that it catches the wind. On Berri they've found that they can often get good performance and a comfortable ride by taking the mainsail right down and setting a second jib poled out on the opposite side to the first. in about 15 knots dead downwind and the water is just rustling past the hull.   A bit of gentle roll, all the usual background noise of squeaks and sloshes and creaks, but muted and tranquil.  Pleasant feeling.   Just waiting until I can log into 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. to pick up the day’s mailcall – about two  hours to go.   Something to look forward to.   You may have noticed that we seem to have reached the transition point from which we are now looking ahead as much as behind – Chile and Cape Horn are now much closer than Australia and we’re very much facing forwards and it probably comes through in these emails.   Seems that until now we haven’t really been able to believe that it’s got some chance of actually happening.

A frivolous reflection: the South Pacific is a big ocean, at a guess about an eighth of the world’s surface and it’s almost landless and uninhabited.   Since about 1800, it has carried a large proportion of the world’s shipping, mostly along a couple of major routes – say an average of 5000 crossings per year.   Before that, the Pacific Islanders sailed around its northern fringe and as far asEaster Islandand Magellan, Drake, 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. and the French, Dutch, Spanish and Portugese explorers were out here as well.   And there were the whalers, who sailed all over it in their thousands from the early 1800s and some of them are still here.   Even so, it is so big that there must be some small parts of it that have never been crossed by a ship and perhaps Berrimilla will be the very first vessel to sail across a particular little bit of the ocean.   We’ll never know which bit, but it’s inspiring all the same.

Enough.   Stop all this soppy talk and do something useful.