Just had a call from Alex; they are safe and sound in
Speedy.
6302 16640 A bit of a whinge.
Sometimes it's the little things that get to you and sometimes it's the big ones. And sometimes it's both at once. I ought not admit this to all y'all out there, but for me, this is now getting to be just a touch tense. The equation: We're at least 24 hours out of Nome, gearbox seems ok, but some odd indications that all may not be right. Using the engine just to keep some VMG on the clock, wind gradually lifting us but due to increase by tonight to 25 - 30 tomorrow morning. The ice is opening towards Barrow and we need to be up there by July 12ish - it's about 700 miles from Nome so a week if we're lucky and if there's nothing wrong with the engine. So - do the sums...
And then we have to avoid the huge lumps of timber all over the place out here - mostly waterlogged and awash so almost invisible in the slop until they are abeam or past us. Water now has brownish tinge to the bottle green - someone has been putting brown bottles in the green bin at the recyclery.
And I'm still unable to get my very expensive Iridium SIM voucher for the Arctic to work properly and I can't talk to the technical people at Xsat (long story but their system is set up for people with an internet connection and they will not just send me a simple email that I can reply to)so I've paid lots of money for a service that I am not getting. Nothing much I can do about it but it's desperately frustrating. Will try to talk to someone at Xsat from Nome.
But we had a sunrise this morning - makes up for a lot. Gone now, behind the clouds but there's still some blue sky.
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