54:36.458S 064:21.750W
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Earlier today I thought I was in a Black and White film, the sea and sky a riot of grey. Then we had the Technicolor reel, and now we’re back to Monotones. The viz is appalling. The wind has settled in to NNW force 7, still on the beam. We are currently deeply reefed to give Steve half a chance of keeping control of dinner preparations. I scanned 22 pages of documents in aid
of the permit. I now have to do a
detailed itinerary. I have
discovered the insurance extension doesn’t cover us quite as far South as we’re
planning to go. Having sent several unanswered e-mails to the insurance agent in
I am in a movie. It’s called “The Fog.” Viz is down to a
few hundred meters. What little protection we had from the
Its 10 degress C in the cockpirt, a damp penetrating cold. Still bad viz. More Raymarine troubles and Gabriele had to hand steer for an hour. The pilot keep going from “a Auto” or “Track” to “Stand By” and there was a “I need calibration message.” Eventually it came back enough to hold a course. The route dropped out of the plotter, but I reloaded it and its there. We’re not tracking but are on course. The so called Smart Pilot is blocking info to the PC so my Nav program doesn’t know where we are, but I can plot positions manually. Tomorrow we will switch the whole system off for a bit but no on wants to risk that in the night. 45 minutes after I went to bed. Nik woke me with another lost sea talk situation. This time I powered down everything and it seemed to clear. This morning we noticed intermittent beeping from one of the pilot controllers with its own private “Sea Talk Fail” message, so maybe this specific controller is part of the problem. Also I’ve been in contact with Greg the wiring wizard, and he’s sent me an idiot’s guide in order to rewire so that the PC is completely independent of the Raymarine system. This is a trade off but a necessary one.
In the last 24 hours we covered 191 miles including 8 hours of motoring. The wind has not been particulrly favourable nor has it been strong against us. It is likely we will motor most of the remaining 149 miles. We will have achieved our objective of getting to Ushuaia without getting beaten up.
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