I took a few more things down to GANNET yesterday afternoon and arranged stowage on the v-berth. Other than putting on board last minute items, GANNET is ready to sail. All I need to do is add water. Inside. There is already ample water outside. I will carry thirty gallons in six 5 gallon containers. Two of them are rigid jerry cans I used during the circumnavigation. Four collapsible containers such as I used when sailing CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE. This is far more water than I need, so I will be extravagant and when I reach warm enough temperatures even take solar showers.
However I am stalled.
I have little confidence in long range forecasts—and I consider long range to be more than seventy-two hours—but I have been downloading GRIBs for more than a week and checking other weather apps, such as Windy, Apple, WeatherChannel, WindFinder Pro, and a new one, Sonuby, which I quite like, and there is considerable disagreement between them. Above you see the European GRIB on top, the US below, projections for 7:00 PM EST Friday January 24. Yesterday it seems that a departure next Tuesday or Wednesday seemed likely. Now it doesn’t. I want a favorable forecast at departure for forty-eight or preferably seventy-two hours and then I will adapt to whatever happens. I do not see one in the next ten days.
Of water I came across an article on the BBC site about how much water you need to drink? According to recent research by the University of Aberdeen the conventional advice of eight glasses of eight ounces each per day is no more valid than the claim you should walk 10,000 steps a day which was in fact was an advertising slogan of a Japanese maker of pedometers decades ago. The actual amount needed according to the research is 1.5 to 1.8 liters a day. That is almost exactly what I do on passages. 1.5 liters equals 0.39 of a gallon. 1.8 liters 0.47 a gallon. I have long accepted a standard of a half gallon of fresh water a day, supplemented by other liquids, and on the GANNET circumnavigation repeatedly found that I actually consumed 0.37 a gallon of fresh water a day.
Now I know that most people are very, very busy. I also know that they have a great deal to say because I see them constantly talking on their phones, even while walking dogs or riding bicycles, much less driving cars. So it is clearly progress and a great step forward that someone has come up with a way to ‘conquer’ Everest without interfering with your busy and productive life. So take a week off work, have an ‘adventure’, fly home and impress your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. We are fortunate to live in an age of such heros.
This speaks for itself.
I have sought meaning. I have not found it. As I have written here before from my experience and reading all I think I know is that consciousness resists unconsciousness and DNA imposes imperatives that it be transmitted into the future. So we are in a universe vast beyond imagination and at present understanding. At least mine. I came across an article about ways the universe might end that I found interesting. Not an immediate concern, but perhaps you will too.
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