Technology and Experience

Today is Sunday 28th and we have been at sea exactly seven days. We have all now found our sea legs and we are more familiar with the boat, its ways and moods and with each other.

Christian and Lucys' decision to dive south through the Cape Verdes was a brave one and still we are uncertain if it's paid off. We are the third most southerly boat and today our position according to the ARC report is 2nd! But there is a long way to go and we desperately need stronger winds to kick in if we are to make the Saturday arrival deadline for the 5 Big Men from Holland and their plane home. We may still have to switch on our engine and retire from the race. One strange thing about all this email and web technology is that people following at home are more informed about our progress and position than we are ourselves. Which is very odd.

Our watch had a fabulous 4 hours between 22.00 and 02.00 last night, constant winds of 13-16 knots and boat speeds up at 8.5 knots which is about the hull speed of Northern Child. We shot between the Cape Verde islands in pitch darkness, no moon, no stars. The only light we saw was a single headland light to starboard, the rest was darkness. It was impossible to distinguish the line of the horizon or the outline of the islands. The land passed un-seen and we slipped by un-noticed.

Sailing in the darkness is quite disorientating and the helmsman has to concentrate hard to stay on course. We find watching the binnacle compass easier in these circumstances than looking at the mast head repeater which has a slight delay in feedback, meaning that in the dark it's easy to over correct the course and set up a zig-zig motion which cuts vital speed.

The phosphorescence last night was extraordinary, milky white and bright lights swirling all around the boat. With no light  above, at times it seemed like we had inverted and were sailing through the stars themselves.

This morning the wind has dropped slightly below the predicted so we are a little disheartened. Christian and Lucy are poring over the grib file download to map out the best weather routing for the next 24 hours.

Being on board Northern Child one is aware of the extraordinary amount of accumulated wisdom and technology that is gathered together to make sailing possible. The basic principles of the yacht we are on; its sails, ropes, blocks, tackle and hull shape represent technological developments that would have been familiar to the Nile sailors of papyrus boats 3,000 years ago. The basics haven't changed, they have just been refined by centuries of voyaging.

What has changed and what would startle that Nile fisherman if he stepped on board now, is the changes in navigational aids, weather predictions and communication.  The tools on board Northern Child: - GPS, Computer, Internet access, Sat phone have all been developed in the last 15 years and mean that for the first time in the history of sailing, the mariner knows exactly where he is on the Earth's surface, pretty much exactly what weather he can expect in the next 24-48 hours and he can communicate by voice and data with anyone anywhere in the world to ask or help, guidance or support.

Of course like all change this brings benefits and losses. The benefit is that routing can be more active, there are now many more opportunities to make decisions, the boat can go faster, passage times are shorter, sailing is safer. The downside is that the skipper spends more time looking at the computer screen to understand what's happening than he does the horizon and the sky. The Nile fisherman would not, I suspect, have understood that.




Jerome at the helm.







Spinnaker up going for speed.