An Irish Heron visitts an Australian Brolga

Taken half an hour ago. Berri in full Irish kit.

A gale in the Celtic sea

Sounds romantic doesn't it? Robert Louis Stephenson or Joseph Conrad. Let me tell you, it ain't!

 

This should have been sent from Berri somewhere in the Celtic Sea but I realised that I did not have the direct addresses for the blog with me. Senility marches on...

So it is coming to you from the Crosshaven Lifeboat station. We arrived yesterday morning at about 0600 after a bit of a headbang from half way - 30+ knots, slap diggety bang on the nose and a nasty short steep sea that even berri could not bash into any better than about 60 degrees off the wind. Having a furler instead of a real sail up the front doesn't help either - as soon as it is rolled in a few turns it loses its shape completely and becomes a potato sack so it won't point and you know the rest.

 

Back under the stars at night - I was having a crisis of confidence based on weeks of inertia and thinking about Russia and the options for getting back to Oz - the dreads of lethargy corroding the innards. But back in harness and under the stars and it all washes away. One needs that buzz of incipient fear all the time just to stay alert and avoid the dreaded complacency, but it doesn't have to be an obsession. And the clouds - classic low pressure system and I think we were quite close to the centre - coming into the Irish coast, there were ceramic knifeblades, hard edged frisbees, dolphins and whales (really, for the imaginitive! Just like a Rorschacht - Douglas Adams would have approved), knotted twisted umbilicals, herrinbone patterned snakes and the usual high altitude mares tails in glowing gold and white under and through the woolly haze that seemed to be incandescent through it all. Wonderful!

 

But a great workout for Berri. We gave the engine and gearbox lots of work to do and, except from some unusual noises from, we think, the gearbox, it worked really well. I think that the extra horses in the engine will allow me to add a degree or so of pitch to the prop too, so on the Falmouth to-do list. The mast stayed up, the new radar reflector stayed attached to the mast, the radios and Sailmail worked, some glitches with the power to the GPS and - real doozy this one - I'd forgotten that the wonderful LED masthead lights we have interfere with the VHF radio. The light fitting is inches away from the VHF stub antenna - anyone got any suggestions? Our work around is to use the emergency nav lights if we need to use the VHF at night and to keep a hand held wasterproof VHF in the cockpit. Kevvo worked as expected - poor old geriatric didn't like the Celtic slop though and we used the electric autopilot as well. And alongside, we met the Irish Navy's training yacht with a crew of young professional navy people and some young trainees. The skipper gave us their spare (and for them, too small) Irish ensign for our courtesy flag, so Berri is once again properly dressed and in a new outfit.

 

But it took us an extra day to get here. I'm told the Lifeboat was going to meet us at the harbour entrance but without the VHF masthead antenna, we could not hear Valencia so they could not ask us for our position. Pity - would have been huge fun to be escorted into town! As it is, we are alongside the Lifeboat Station being looked after right royally. I think the crews were tickled to hear about the general Berri madness.

 

I have to sing for my supper at the Royal Cork YC and the Lifeboat people next Thursday - another stoush with powerpoint and microsoft to get it all to work - and we intend to leave the following day.

 

Pete has gone to Dublin to catch up with family and friends and I'm doing the necessary sort after a messy trip and meeting some lovely people. Photos to follow if i can download the camera.

 

There will be a new blog address soon unless we can get access to the old passwords for the Down Under Mars site. If it all works, you should be able to email us indirectly and have your email forwarded but there will not be a website as in the earlier voyages.

plus ca change - encore

Berri's alternator just died - actually, I think it's been karked for some time - so we're still in Falmouth, at least until Tuesday.Nice invitation to go to Crosshaven (Cork, for the geographically challenged) next week and give a Berri voyages talk for the lifeboat crew and any other interested punters, so we do at least have a sense of purpose for a short term test flight apart from renewing our acquaintance with the medical man from Dublin, on his home turf, so to speak.

Think I'll go to Magrathea for the weekend....must be better than Falmouth on a wet Saturday.

One for Speedy

A final tribute to David's genius. Onya mate - it was a whole lot of fun.

And then this website will - probably - go into Golgafrinchan suspense on it's journey along its wormhole back to Earth. Still there to be read but metabolism in very low gear. The passwords are up with Speedy in his celestial Speed Six and we are still trying to crack them but it's probably better to start again with a new blogspot.

So - watch this space. In the meantime, if you want to contact us, try the gustbook for the time being or berrimilla@gmail.com

Current plan is to take Berri out into the Celtic sea perhaps on Saturday and over to SW Ireland to test the quality of the beer as well as giving the old barge a bit of a workout to remind her that there's work to do..

Then back to Falmouth to empty her out and off to the Fastnet start.

We'll keep you posted on how to be kept posted...

Arse, class or just a black art - the snotter's lament

Right, topsail up! It's going to be tight - you've gotta get it right first time! Cruncher overhauled? Ok. Downfucker off? Ok. Alex, on the timmenoggy, Keep 'er snug. Mel on the sheet - keep 'er snug. Sam on the halyard, Leila tailing? - Right - go! Get er up! Bloody get 'er up Go! Go! Ok - cruncher on get 'er in! Go on - sweat it - get 'er in!. Take a turn on the timmenoggy and sweat the bugger. Right, make fast Sheet in hard. Get the downfucker on!  Right - bear away and we're sailing! Barber hauler on! Trim!

OK - get this bit of rotting vegetation to the finishing line as fast as it will go! Bloody concentrate you buggers! Eyes in the boat....

Another Fastnet.

Here's Berri looking sexier than she has for years and years.

Workboat intergalactic photos here. Pete was on Moon - grey hull, sail no 58, purplish topsail with half moon and star. The boat was launched the night before the start and they came 5th - a remarkable performance. Victory is yellow with blue and yellow chevrons on the topsail and sail no 7
http://www.tonyhopewell.com/project.php?ID=FALWKBTCHMP09
A burst on topsail terminology to follow.

As for the North East Passage - sadly, not this year. The Russians have been more or less positive - the FSB have sent us a message saying that Dikson and Pevek are closed to visitors but if we are prepared to go non stop from Murmansk to Providenie (east of the Bering Strait and not a problem if it's ice free) and  alter our application to reflect this change, they will consider it favourably and get back to us as soon as they can. But we must carry a Pilot (and, I think, pay the pilotage charges) which would mean that we have no  room for Pat Hahn and we really need to be on the way now to be sure of being at 105E (Cape Chelyuskin) by the end of August. The minimum time in which I can see us getting the papers translated and together and, permit in hand, approaching the Russian Embassy to get visas and all the other necessary papers is about three weeks if everything goes smoothly and we actually get a permit at the end of the process. So it's really a month too late to do it this year with a reasonable expectation of a safe passage around Cape Chelyuskin. Sad though, but now at least I know more about how the process works. Huge thanks to Vladimir in St Petersburg for being our guide through the maze and for relaying messages.

So, fallback option #1: Berri is transformed and we think we will sail to south west Ireland - Baltimore perhaps -  for a beer next week to give her a bit of a thrash to make sure everything works and then back to Falmouth to take everything off the boat except sails and work our way up to the Solent for the Fastnet start on August 9th. And back here again after that and perhaps South Georgia and Capetown. Plus ca change...

Another possible option might be to leave Berri here until next year, apply once again for NE passage permit but earlier and leave in June if we get one. To hard a decision at the mo.but probably too expensive for both of us.

Thanks to everyone who has sent us messages via the gust book. Nice to know you're out there.

Falmouth Workboat Intergalactics

Boats entered from the outer reaches of the Universe - star clusters way beyond the visible - Squornshellus Zeta, the Frogstar, Kakrafoon - boats from everywhere, due to arrive in warp drive freighters riding the background radiation. Sadly, they all ran into the Vogon fleet and they had to listen to 3 days of poetry as penance and missed the start.

So there were 15. Photos of some of them, parked for lunch between races on Friday. I was in Victory, the yellow one in the middle, Pete in Moon, away practising. Some racing images perhaps later.

Now Saturday eve and I think Victory has a very good chance - we have to do something very silly (like, perhaps, starting the last race tomorrow...) to lose it.

Freaky windy calm windy day on Sunday and the mighty Victory emerged as intergalactic champion - perhaps thanks to Prostetnic Jeltz, but nevertheless, the champ. Last couple of pics with the loot on the ferry going home. David Carne (swigging from the can) very kindly gave me the glass trophy as the novice in the crew so Berri has a proper G & T glass...

Sarah's Photos

Some more makeover pics - thanks Sarah and also for huge paint job.

A bit more research about Russian ice and the bureaucracy is not encouraging. A difficult decision, even if we do get a permit.

A little bit of everything

The photos - Berri's evolving new persona - grey blue and white decks with some of the old multi layered gunge still visible on the side decks, yet to be stripped and wire brushed off. Woodwork all sanded and oiled. New gearbox installed after a couple of days of pain and contortion. The old one has gone to Southampton to be rebuilt and we'll carry it as a spare. And Pete brought a shiny new Oz red ensign to replace the one that sailed to Melbourne with Pete Goss in Spirit of Mystery so Berri is now appropriately - if not exactly properly - dressed with ensign and courtesy Red Duster given to us in the Falklands by John M-B so it too has just completed a circumnavigation via the NW Passage.

Sea trials at 0530 this morning on a sparkling calm Falmouth morning - cast off the mooring lines shaped to the bollards after about 6 weeks of attachment and shunted her around inside the marina pontoons so we would not lose our ace spot. She goes backwards and forwards and her extra 6 horses certainly seem to make a difference. And back alongside. Sarah T has driven down from London for a couple of days and is in charge of painting the white bits of deck. Two coats by tonight except the cockpit which we'll do tomorrow just before we all depart for Hatherleigh and then the Katadyn man in Weston Super Mare.

Nothing yet from the Russians. We have decided that if we have not heard by the end of this month, we will pull the plug on the NE Passage and look at other options for getting home. The latest that I think we could safely leave for Murmansk is July 20th and that is cutting things very fine indeed. If we get permit with acceptable conditions by June 30 it gives us 3 weeks to get organised and we still do not have visas - no point until the permit arrives - and I don't want to set off unless we are sure that all the boxes are ticked.

So watch this space...

The mighty Tit

The photo is David Carne and the mighty Tom Tit - 105 years old and rigged like the boat in the background but only 16ft long. Rig almost as tall as Berri's. Lovely boat - we were racing and Dave very generously let me steer while he did all the hard work and tactics and told me what to do. And we were first across the line by a respectable margin but probably did not save our handicap on the others. Dave is a legendary sailor - was out in Sydney in Blizzard for the 1979 Sydney - Hobart (and, I'm happy to say, was a small boats race that year and we beat them in Miko...) and he sailed with Ted Heath on various Morning Clouds after that. Was a steep learning curve yesterday though for this old fart.

The replacement gearbox should arrive from Sydney - once again, huge thanks to Witchard Marine and John W. - and the penance begins. I have also been given an original Hurth gearbox, perhaps 30 years old, but supposedly in working order and probably containing all the original plates and springs - the parts that seem to fail regularly in the newer versions. Very tempted to fit it and see whether it goes...We intend to make some changes to the exhaust system too while the engine is out of the way.

Pete arrives Wednesday and I'm doing the second mega presentation (both voyages) at Flushing SC that evening.

No news yet from Russia.

The taste and the smell...

Smell - to me the most evocative of the senses, able to lift me from the mundane here and now to the ghostly thrill of experience long past and - at the time - unrecognisably  formative. Parked alongside Berri on the pontoons for a couple of days has been a big (big!) three masted lugger from St. Malo with a crew of 8 or so pipe smoking French speaking men and women - the women without pipes but doing yer ordinary Gauloise or whatever passes as such in 2009. They ate on deck - wine,  onions, snags and other much more sophisticated fare but the smell! I was instantly beamed back in time to 1961 and the St Malo race from Plymouth in Leopard - we'd sailed across the Minquiers at high tide into St Malo and there I was yesterday, an old geezer in Falmouth in 2009 teleported into the nearly 50 years younger kid just soaking in delight in my first French port. And  my olfactory bits replayed Ambre Solaire - it was really hot and still and we went down to the beach under the fortress walls and all the truly gorgeous French girls were greasing themselves with the stuff - a primitive version of SP150 - and the air was honeyed with the perfume and about as viscous. A  naive and inexperienced repressed just out of school 19 year old in heaven.

Ambre Solaire still use the same perfume and it inevitably wafts me back to those days of delightful sand in the toes expectation.

The photos just for fun. Sorry none of the lugger - would have been intrusive.  Berri just visible on the right of the Chain Locker.

And - glooom - the gearbox we put in with so much sweat and contortion in Dutch Harbour has died.  Girding the loins to go through it all again.

Glitch correction

Here's the proper poster.

second, Falmouth webcam link with the 'l' on the end should work better. http://www.falmouthphotos.com/towercam2.html

2 jetties in the foreground, cold wet and windy. The visitors' pontoons are in the middle distance behind the end of the furthest of the two jetties. Berri just about visible in the middle behind and to the right of the dark bulk of the pilot boat on the pontoons. Chain Locker white building directly to the left of the pontoons. No punters outside today!

More talk sessions?

If anyone is following this and can't make the Shipwrights talk on Thursday 11th, I will be doing at least one more  session at Flushing SC at 1930 on Monday 15th and possibly a second same time Wednesday 17th. If you want to to come to either of these, please contact me on 0781 600 4379

Thanks

My Blunnies died...

Just before Pete and I set off from Hobart for Cape Horn in 2005, I bought a pair of Blundstone sandals - Blundstones have been making shoes and boots in Hobart since 1870 and were a legend unto themselves - my sandals lived up to the legend but finally karked a few days ago - on the 4th anniversary of their first arrival in Falmouth. Seemed an auspicious day to say goodbye. And, sadly, Blundstones are no more in Hobart - they've gone to China.

Here's a link to one of Paul's Falmouth webcams   http://www.falmouthphotos.com/towercam2.htm  This one is on top of the Maritime Museum Tower and you can see the Chain Locker, the white building  middle distance on the left, and close to it the visitors' pontoons, more or less directly behind the end of the furthest jetty in the foreground with the two big blue superyachts on it. Berri is on the inside of the pontoons behind the orange pilot boat (when it is alongside). Right now the pilot boat is out and we are directly in line with the mast of the left hand superyacht.

The Great Berri Refurbish proceeds. Still working on the deck and don't want to lose my place on the pontoon as it's nicely sheltered so haven't yet been sailing. Some mildly positive but indirect news from Moscow. Things move very slowly.

Wrong poster

Sorry - don't know how that one got in instead of the finished one. It has typos and wrong venue. Proper one says 1930 June 11th in the Shipwrights Bar at the Chain Locker.

Butterflies don't cut it and other trivia

Nothing yet from Moscow and the horrors are getting to me - I'm sure people reading this will recognise that rather corrosive feeling of not quite dread but much more than mere butterflies that scours the innards while one waits for a storm or anything that has the makings of gaping way out beyond the comfort zone. Definitely good for the character.

Meantime, Berri is emerging slowly from the winter grime. Still a couple of weeks more stripping the decks before I can feel comfortable with a paint brush. And I have to spend at least a couple of days wrestling with powerpoint cobbling together a new presentation - see the attached poster and, for the Falmouth wise, note the venue. Huge, massive thanks to Paul (www.falmouthphotos.com - have a look!) for doing the poster and staying up most of last night converting all my video clips to work in the new tweaked version of ppoint.

And Patrick gave me back the sails yesterday so at last I can go somewhere - wasn't game to go far with untried engine and no other way of getting home. Early start tomorrow because the big boat inside Berri is leaving at 0500 for the Scillies and then round Britain.

The other picture is Martlet, one of the original Morgan Giles RN College Dartmouth yachts. She has an aluminium mast but otherwise much the same.  I sailed my first Fastnet in 1961 in her sister Leopard - also still around, I think on the Hamble.

Banging around on the visitors' pontoons in Falmouth...

I've been horsewhipped for being recalcitrant, so here's a bit of a blast from the recent past. More very soon.

Pete Goss http://www.petegoss.com/blog.php?m=82766 very generously gave Berri a spot on his blog. I went down to Williamstown to hear his talk and at the end he gave me back the ensign - by then probably the only ensign in this version of the universe that has circumnavigated the world via the North West Passage and the Cape of Good Hope and certainly the only one in two such magnificent boats. Pete was raising money for the Victorian Bushfire Appeal, so we signed the ensign and auctioned it. Numbers are perhaps not important, but Carmen won it for a sgnificant bid and here are the photos.

Thanks Carmen and thanks Pete.

Launch!

Not quite STS 125 but it has its own significance. Only snag so far seems to be a boken throttle cable - improvised for the trip down to the visitors' jetty with string.

Thanks ti Is'n'G for the photos. I'll try to post some video later.

Progress report

We launch next Thursday. Pics show Gordon and John hard at work while the old fart shirks with the camera. Also featuring the mighty Nijinsky.

Inside is still just as messy as ever - I have just started lifting some of the heaps to see how bad it really is and it's mostly superficial. What is interesting is that 6 months or so of sitting on her keel has flexed Berri's hull slightly - some drawers don't slide properly and there are little stress marks where some of the woodwork has been glassed on to the hull. And that's on a boat with half an inch of laid glass and resin in the hull - doesn't bear thinking about what happens to some of the other boats around the place.