1345hrs 25 Feb 2005 UTC 51’46”S 111’19”W Map Ref 80
It’s been a pink and yellow day. We opened a tin of beetroot for lunch and Pete cooked some rice and stirred in the beetroot, a can of white beans, the last sliver of Dunedin spanish onion, a tin of potato salad and some corn kernels. Bright almost iridescent pink mixture with yellow spots but really tasty – I needed the vinegar tang from the beetroot too. And then, of course, we were both filling the little bucket with delicately pastel pinky yellow pee. Good fun, once one overcomes the first mild shock.
Followed by one of the loveliest sunsets I have seen – glimmer of sun low in the west – first golden yellow with glowing yellow wash on the cloud layers above then slowly turned the whole western sky a luminous cherry pink that softly closed in towards the west. The clarity and lack of pollution in the air sharpen the colours and enhance all the fluffy bits so that each tendril of cloud gets its own brush of colour and shade. Then an almost full moon to the north east, a hazy yellow coin behind a layer of thin cloud, and developing a huge and complete halo.
Message from Sarau today – they were 86 miles west of the Horn, planning to round tomorrow, open their last bottle of bourbon, anchor in the Beagle Passage overnight and clear into Ushuaia the day after. Lucky buggers. Our turn will come and we have RANSA’s bottle of rum. 1580 miles to go as I write.