Zaurak - Zaurak's Bimbling Blog

Zaurak's Bimbling Blog
Monday 2nd December 2019

Having outlined the general goings-on during watches, it might be worth answering the question: what on earth are the crew up to the rest of the hours of the day? If, for example, a pair are on watch from midnight until 3am, 9am until midday and 6pm until 9pm, that leaves 15 hours of the day uncharted, unexplained. Life on a tipping boat and the irregular night watches take their toll on energy levels, so factoring out the hours of sleep, this is the general picture:

Skipper Richard spends much of his 'down' time working out the best way to download the all important grib files (weather forecasts). These files are relatively large for the seafaring technology on the boat. Data can be received at certain times of day on certain frequencies through the SSB radio and also at a cost through satellite phone. The varying speed and reliability of these downloads is Richard's daily battle. When not at the weather front frontline, he can be found at the chart table deciding on the best course, reading Bernard Cornwell's Sword of Kings or attempting to remember how to do astronavigation.

Adrian, not constrained by the task of downloading grib files, spends a large part of his time on astronavigation: reading the angle of the horizon in relation to the sun, the moon or another celestial bodies, cross referencing with the Nautical Almanac and working through a series of calculations before finally putting a proud cross on his chart of the Atlantic. When not engaged in celestial calculations, Adrian can be found reading his book The Nursery, by Asia McKai or baking bread.

Caroline also delves into astronavigation, but mixes up her celestial studies with a number of hard and very hard sodukos, dipping in and out of some of the more dated literature on Zaurak and reading The Crossing by Andrea Miller. She also uses some of her down time to contemplate life, the sea being an fitting backdrop for such reflections.

Today, Claire added a new distraction to her schedule of watching The Crown and playing on her phone anagram game. That was to start sketching with her sketching pencils bought especially for the trip. Her first two masterpieces are a sketch of her feet and a sketch of her niece Noa, drawn from a photograph. Otherwise, having been in charge of boat provisions, Claire generally takes a lead on cooking or advising on the food options to whomever takes to the kitchen at mealtimes.

Pete puts most of his awake time into winding people up. Once this has sufficiently drained his energy, he checks the fishing line then curls up on the sofa to watch an episode of The Crown or search around for some carrots and humous.

When not writing the blog, I can generally be found working through the A-Level Maths syllabus in preparation for a new job starting in January, trying to capture a flying fish on camera or glancing over some reading for my Masters.

And in between all this we manage to bimble together three squares meals and a fair few rounds of hot drinks. Running a tight ship, as you can read!