Crossing the line..

Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Tue 4 Oct 2011 11:38
Tuesday 4th October 1107 UTC 1207 BST   
 
00:45.77N 019:55.11W
 
Wind: SE 22 Knots, COG 300 Deg True, SOG 9.4 knots
 
Yahoo! At last again some wind and we are blasting along at over 9 mnots. OK not quite where I would like to be pointing but at least in the general direction of where I want to be going. The sea is quite boisterous and wind is gusting above 25 knots and ..................... it's fantastic.
 
Standing on the aft deck hanging onto the back stay ander a cloudy sky and in temperatures which now must be above 25C I can look around to the distant horizons. It is an indescribable feeling.  Generally at sea visibility may allow yo to see about 15 miles if the object you are viewing is high enough or if you are high enough. With clear air that means my panorama is now encompassing about seven hundred square miles of ocean. And there is nothing on it but me! If you want freedom this is the place to come. Freedom is of course in this context is directly proportional to isolation. Now however I feel much less isloated and relatively close to my next waypoint, that being the Cape Verdean Island of Sal at only just under 1,000 hundred miles from where we are now. In an emergency, I have enough fuel to take me more than 1,000 miles.
 
I say relatively close - (remember everything is relative: three hairs on your head is not enough, three hairs in your soup however is too much!) yes relatively close. To give you some idea this is still further than Greenland is from the Hebrides in North West Scotland! It is also double the distance that Iceland is from the Hebrides. 
 
Anyway we are slowly ticking off the milestones and last night at 2243 UTC at 018:33 West going North West, I crossed the equator again. This is my fourth equator crossing on this circumnavigation!
 
When talking about the technicalities of circumnavigating there are many variations of what constitutes a circumnavigation one of these says that one should pass through a pair of antipodal points. These are two points which are directly opposite each other (180 degrees  in all directions) on the surface of the earth. We have at least one pair but actually I think we may have two. I will double check them in due course. The last and most important point is to cross your outward track at some point. Some may say to return to the point which you departed from is important, but I don't think this is an important technical point - though in fact I plan to return to at least two places where I "departed" from.
 
We are making progress in any event and that is what matters. The fridge and freezer are running again so I am busy rechilling and re-freezing all the dodgy grub in there. Last night the bloody thawed steak was excellent so todays helpings of it have passed the test. Today I will cook and refrigerate the next two days food which was irredeemably thawed and has been kept in the fridge. Once cooked I can refrigerate it again and then it should live another couple of days.
 
Sailing along on the open ocean which together with its mischievious motivator - the wind - is at last is showing some desire to chase us north!