Nizuc - Blog 17 Nizuk

BLOG 17 – The Answer, My Friend ...

I’ve been foreshadowing the melting butter for a while, now, so here’s the explanation:

‘Head south, until the butter melts, then turn left, sorry, right. If you see South America, you’ve gone too far.’

This is what most people in Gran Canaria were saying to us. The idea is to go south to the latitude of 20 degrees, where the trade winds start. We went to a lecture about this. Here is a summary of the concept: it’s a world of two halves; blah, blah, blah; Atlantic highs and lows; blah, blah, blah; hits Europe (including Britain, although that might change), blah, blah blah; coast of Africa; blah, blah, blah; inter-tropical convergence zone; blah, blah, blah; equator. I hope that’s clear.

My notes are scant from this lecture, but I managed to get a hot-tip on a suggested waypoint, and we vaguely headed for that, turned right, and here we are, below the Tropic of Cancer, in a land of melted butter, and water so hot, the fish are already poached.

We do actually have a plan, but it is so secret, not even the crew get to see it. Mostly we steer to the wind; if the sails flap, we turn the other way. Sometimes, Lindsay gives helpful tips, ‘left, left, more left, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, left ... too much, go right’, style of thing.

As for Harrison, and his clocks, in ‘Longitude’ by Dava Sobel (I have no way of checking the author’s name), and the solution to the longitude problem, I can confirm that longitude is the up and down one (why was that so hard?).

We have clocks on everything: chart-plotters, mobile-phones, tablets (which all made arbitrary decisions about when to put themselves back one hour, when we got close to the Cape Verdes), so our watch system was thrown into chaos as people got up, early, late, or not at all. We have decided to put them back every few days, on a random basis, so no-one loses any sleep over it (literally).

To be honest, we don’t know what day it is, or the date, but could tell you the phase of the moon, point to Venus or Jupiter, gauge the wind speed and direction, and whose turn it is to clean the head (toilet, for all you landlubbers).

Now, did he mean his right, or ours?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

That’ll do.