1040hrs 24 Oct 2005 UTC 38’07”S 017’01”E Ref 481
all y’all will no doubt find this silly but the tears are streaming down my cheeks as i write. set out to backtrack the fix and discovered that my merlin calculator was part of yesterdays detritus must have come out of its plastic bag mid flight across the boat and into the awful heap of sludge that it always created by bad knockdowns.
my lovely old friend, a present from h + k + e for christmas all those years ago and cherished through numerous hobarts and it’s dead. corpsed. a thoroughly ex-calculator. i am devastated. no numbers for today, in remembrance.
did find my glasses in the same heap of grot and bilge water and burst teabags so some tiny compensation.
oh poooo. there is no real compensation. sniffle. lizzie – or joe – or harvey – please may i borrow your bear?.
as a result, have spent the last hour taking apart and reassembling starboard qberth where ready use stores are kept. disaster area – mainly because of burst bags of teabags mixed with bilge water and other nasties. amazing what else you find.as well – mostly unrecognisable. still no let up – 60 kt gust, crashing wave next to my face, water slashing across the decks. daren’t try to film it – far too much flying water – really sad because it is absolutely magnificent as a spectacle – just bloody frightening when it really gets aggro. waves brilliant jade green-blue sparkling translucent – stunningly beautiful as they rear up to crash down on us – or just dirty grey if the sun has gone. at night, massive solid dark shapes tinged with white, sometimes flecks of phosphorescence – rearing up blotting the stars and moon. then the awful crash and shudder of solid cascading water.
The logs ramblings can be cryptic, so we have added: