dtd 1509 dmg 59 GPS trip log 5540 (departed @ 342) end of our 6th week at sea actual dmg 4310 distance lost 1230. Well, those are the numbers but there may be different interpretations!
Now that conditions are reasonably benign, I have managed to disassemble my mp3 player and furbish its batteries and it seems to be charging again, though only holding a charge for perhaps half an hour. With luck, this will improve with every charge.
But I cranked up part 2 of 1000 years in a Day (inspired gift,H - thanks xx) and there's a burst of Shakespeare at the beginning - not acknowledged but I think it's a sonnet, in which the narrator, outcast and friendless and unhappy, remembers his love -'...when I think of thee...for then I scorn to change my state with kings'. Watching an albatross in full arrogant, subtle majesty spearing in at three inches above sea level, undulating with every wave, wings flexibly rigid, massive anhedral and sometimes the little out turn at the tip making a wide omega as the very last fibre of the outboard feather strokes the surface, completely casual, having a look at us as it flows past and a tiny almost supercilious lift of one leading edge up into a high, vertically banked climbing turn (the Stormy Petrels seem to do full Immelmanns right on the surface, not these guys- way outside the design envelope for the airframe)or - sometimes - fanning what tail it has, extending its feet as whopping airbrakes, it plonks itself on the surface a boat length away and contemplates us with its black shrouded eyes, its long hook tipped beak wagging gently at us - clumsy, clod footed humans in a daft contraption trying to cross my ocean!
..'for then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
