Crossing the line..
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Tue 4 Oct 2011 11:38
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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!
keep the e-mails coming rhiann {DOT} marie {CHANGE TO AT} gaelforce {DOT} net
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