Day 5 March 22
The wind has been light, the sun has been hot, the sky has been blue. I have seen small birds but no whales. I am still struggling to identify the birds.
We are in 3,500 metres of water here though you couldn’t tell by looking out the porthole. The swell is a bit more regular than it has been and the winds have been light for the last twenty four hours. There is not much to report today. For a while we put up the pole on the genoa as we were running before the wind.
In the relative calm conditions Jack went up the mast to replace a bulb in the navigation light. It reminded me of the joke about how many crew does it take to change a light bulb Well on this occasion there were three actively involved plus three onlookers.
I have included a picture of where I sit when I write this blog. It is very civilised, a proper office space. You probably cannot make out the raised edges around the desk to stop things sliding off - Every flat surface has raised edges but even so when the boat heels 30 degrees then things do get swept off. You have to hope it is not the bowl that you just grated the cheese for dinner that lands on the floor.
It has been hot today. I have been looking for shade this afternoon. There are all sorts of scientific measuring instruments on board that can tell you your speed, the speed of the wind, your position on the earth, satellite phone, vhf phone, depth, compass bearing, air pressure, radar to tell you if other boats are near, hydrophones to listen to undersea sounds, five computers and probably lots more that I am not aware of. However there doesn’t seem to be any thermometer that tells you how hot it is. In the weeks to come that might be just as well.
The honeydew melons were going rotten so we had to eat them this afternoon. Delicious.
Day 06 March 23
We dragged the manta trawl behind the boat for 30 minutes this morning. The trawl is 0.6 metres wide and the boat was travelling slowly – only three knots.
We collected a lot of plastic. Well we thought it was a lot considering we are hundreds of miles offshore in a quiet part of the ocean and far away from the high populations of North America and Europe.
As we are far offshore, we have a bucket in the galley where we throw biodegradable material that we then dispose of in the ocean. The plastics and glass are counted and then we take it back to land for recycling.
For some reason we started talking about the tea bags which we have been throwing in this bucket. We have been using PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea. We emailed a shore contact to find out some more information. Do Tea Bags contain plastic? This was the reply:
Taylors of Harrogate (who make Yorkshire Tea) say that “we can confirm that we are working with our supplier of teabag paper to develop a paper that is 100% plant-based, but right now our tea bags do contain polypropylene as part of the fibres”.
PG Tips say their “teabags are made with 80% paper fibre which is fully compostable along with the tea leaves contained in the bag. The remaining packaging includes a small amount of plastic which is not fully biodegradable: this is needed to create a seal to keep the tea leaves inside the bag”. However, they didn’t have the information to state whether or not this was polypropylene. They have committed to switching to fully biodegradable tea bags by the end of 2018 apparently.
The plastic fibres all seem to come from the polypropylene used to seal the top of the bag. Most manufacturers seem to be committing to 100% degradable soon, so bags in the bin for now it would seem!
We were surprised. Who would have thought that tea bags are plastic?
Day 07 March 24
Above my bunk is a skylight. I often lie on my back, gazing at the stars moving across the small Perspex cover as the boat rolls with the swell.
When the weather is hot the skylight can be opened to allow air to circulate. The cabins are small and with the skylight closed they get very stuffy very quickly so the doors are usually left open all the time and the skylight is kept open as often as possible.
At 3.40am this morning I was reminded that the skylight was still open by a bucket full of seawater landing on top of me. The wind had increased during the night, the waves accordingly had grown and the bow, punching through the swell was sending water over the foredeck.
Of course you cannot hang things out to dry on the deck at the moment as it is regularly drenched in warm sea water so for once, the galley table now has a duvet stretched across it. I was wondering if we could use it as a table cloth. It will certainly stop plates and cutlery sliding around!
Whatever the weather, the routine of listening to the hydrophones carries on. We haven’t been hearing very much so far, just a few distinctive sperm whale clicks every now and again above the hiss and crackle of the ocean on the earphones.
Day 08 March 25
It was a lovely sunset last night. The sky was visually spectacular and the temperature dropped a little with the chilling of the evening. Yesterday was hot, Niall estimated the day time temperature to be in the mid 30’s.
The sea temperature is 27.0 °C today and it is hot again. In the small cabins with the skylights closed it was a hot night. There was no need for blankets or duvets or even sheets last night.
All yesterday, all night and today we are sailing into a headwind and into the swell. Punching into a big swell sends water all over the deck – and the skylights.
The sun is almost directly overhead at this latitude (26° south) and by early afternoon there is little shade on deck. You can see from the picture that the comfortable seats (the ones with cushions) on deck that are sheltered from the northerly headwind have been abandoned. The sun is too hot.
Showers are limited to one every other day. My shower day was yesterday, so I have to wait till tomorrow to wash off this sweat.
Above the hatchway there are three instruments. These usually show the boat speed through the water, the boat speed over the ground, the wind direction and the wind speed. The automatic pilot is wonderful in this weather as we don’t have to stand in the sun to steer the boat. Technology has its advantages. We have a fridge so we can have iced drinking water in this heat. It is not all suffering!
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