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 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 amount needed 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.
4 comments:
First, my apologies for the off topic question on this post. I believe I read that your prefer sailing boats with no motor. How did you handle the doldrums when you were circumnavigating. If you’ve written about this before, where can I find it? Thanks.
Cheers,
David (CHS) SC
I don’t know that I have ever specifically written about this, but the answer is that I sailed through them. The key is having a boat that sails well, and sailing performance has always been a high priority with me.
Without going back and counting, I think I have crossed the Equator and therefore the doldrums, properly called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, but I prefer doldrums, 13 times on five different boats from the 18’ CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE to two 37’ers, EGREGIOUS and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA., Two of these boats were engineless as essentially is GANNET with her electric outboard having a range of around 6 miles, but even on RESURGAM and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA which had inboard diesels I never powered any significant distance at sea.
The doldrums are not an area of zero wind, but of inconsistent and variable wind. In the early days of sail they stopped ships because the ships did not sail well to windward and often had foul bottoms.
If there is no wind, I wait until it returns.
You can find details of my transiting the doldrums in THE HAWKE OF TUONELA on my fifth circumnavigation in THE FIFTH CIRCLE
https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/books.html
and in GANNET
https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/logs.html
Funny thing - eight 8 ounce glasses is 64 ounces - a half gallon.
The author of the BBC article and I should have done the math. Thank you for doing so. I have changed the post accordingly. However stated as eight glasses of water a day makes it seem a lot. I know we get water in food such as fruits, but even so my normal consumption on land as well as at sea must be on the lower end of the stated need.
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