0700/20th position 2609 01259 trip 109 and as you can see, we are north east of yesterdays position. The high seems to have slowed or stopped and we are in a variable and undecided SE wind rather than the easterly we were expecting so the best we can do is about 080M at about 4.5 kts over the ground which is about 055T. The centre of the high is still south west of us and what happens next may decide whether we make CT by Dec 5th or even this year! Still in a 2ish knot-- Speed: definition of speed at sea. One knot is one nautical mile per hour. The nautical mile is about 1.15 % longer than the "statute" mile used on land. A knot is about half a metre per second.
-- A knot is also the result of winding a rope around itself or another rope to make a join or a loop .
NW current which really kills progress when your top speed in only around 5 knots. Our VMGVelocity made good – loosely, speed in the right direction. is still positive but not healthy. End of marathon pain and suffering! With the benefit of the clarity of hindsight, we might have been better to have followed a similar track to GroupamaIn this context a massive trimaran attempting a round-the-world record for the Jules Verne Trophy. They overtook us twice – once before we reached Cape Town on their first attempt which they abandoned after damaging a hull. They preceded us into Cape Town and we visited them there. They sailed back to France and set off again and overtook us way to the south before we reached Hobart. More about Groupama here (Wikipedia) – much longer, with big risk of nastiness but overall better wind.
Making today's 5 litres of water, slurping coffee having dunked and waiting and watching. The brownish 'albatross' was back yesterday evening – airy, imperious swoops and soars either side of our track, disappearing into the troughs, changing direction apparently without effort, steep banked turns out to about half a mile either side and very occasionally crossing diagonally from astern to ahead.
Will try to grab remaining smidge of propagationIn the logs, this refers to the radiation of signal energy and is customarily qualified by the words abysmal, ratshit or lousy window and 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. this.
Murphyalater