Location: 2,600 sailing miles to Cape Horn 2,400 from Auckland 200 miles north of normal iceberg zones
Day's Run: (23 hours) 205 nautical miles
Wednesday November 22nd, 2000
We have moved our time zone forward by an hour as we travel eastwards towards the rising sun, every degree of longitude crossed means 4 minutes earlier sunrise (But there isn’t a sun to be seen today). It’s 1030 on our Friday morning, and it’s been raining for a few hours. The sky is bleak and misty; the sea is grey with grey horses; the waves are steeper and we are shipping the odd crest right across the cockpit area. This doesn’t matter too much as it slops onboard over the windward side and is soon gone out the other. Rain is pouring down the outside of the windows of the saloon, and the wind is fresh and gusty. It’s a day to be at home beside the fire with one’s feet up and a good book to read. We are in the middle of a low pressure frontal system – a band of rain and squalls that is accompanying the nasty very intense “low” centre that is presently passing a few hundred miles to our south. I am pleased that we had worked our way north a little over the past few days with this situation in mind. But our speed is good, and we are enjoying the ride under full sail. The radar is on continuously, just in case a big berg has made its way north of the Antarctic Convergence zone. It is also good for watching the approaching showers which are generally accompanied by stronger gusts of wind.
The saloon is like a gentlemen’s club this morning: Michael, Trevor, Roger, Sean and Janot are all sitting comfortably with their various books or magazines. They (we) all have thermal tops on and long trousers, and Rabbit – who is with me in the communications area, is again wearing his Tibetan yak boots (read “fur-lined slippers") while he looks at weather map forecast times on a list on the bulkhead. I know I do tend to mention the weather a lot but for us it is a vital ingredient that always influences our daily routine. If the wind is light, we go slowly; if it’s strong, we have to reef the sails; if there’s no wind, we motor; if it comes from the wrong direction we sometimes have to stop and wait; if the seas developed by the wind are huge, we slow down for control; it makes cooking in the galley a breeze (as it was for me yesterday) or very difficult, with everything getting thrown from side to side. It makes sleeping easy, or quite trying if Seamaster is rolling a lot or is over on an angle. Using the toilets can be the same as at home if the seas are calm – or a bit of an exercise if you first have to take off all of your foul weather clothing in a tiny cubicle that is jumping around, and then get it all back on again after you have done whatever it was you went there for in the first place. And the sea-water flushing system has a mind of it’s own on rough days – which entails a cry for help, a resetting of a thermal overload switch on the pump back aft in the generator space – and then back in business again (literally). The males in the crew have to be careful to avoid “missing” when the boat rolls unexpectedly. Peeing from the deck over the side of our yacht is discouraged unless the weather is very fine – for safety reasons.
Sir Peter Blake
"Having vision is not enough. Change comes through realising the vision and turning it into a reality. It is easy to espouse worthy goals, values and policies; the hard part is implementation."
Learn about Sir Peter Blake and his journeys around the globe
