Days 11 and 12: Overcome

Imagine you are at sea and have lost all power. I am not only speaking about your navigation system. I am speaking about your phone, your smartwatch and everything else. How do you locate yourself? How do you know where you are? Well, if Olivier Lauzeral is with you, you will know. You pull out your sextant, you calibrate it — this is very important as otherwise you might get a large error, see below — and you measure the declination of the sun. You do this carefully. You do it in such a way that you align the lower part of the sun with the horizon. This is achieved via a combination of cleverly designed mirrors. The angle you’re looking for is the angle that aligns the lower part of the sun with the horizon. (If you align the middle or the top of the sun, you will also get a large error.) Then you record the time of your measurement to the second (so I am assuming you have a descent clock) and convert it to UTC. You do a bit of math, you get help from your almanac’s tables, and dada: you get an estimated position!

Olivier carefully explained all this to me today and asked me to go through this procedure. I got super lucky because after my measurement and the math and the almanac, etc, I got an error of 1.3 nautical mile! Holy s….! Olivier knows all these things because he served in the Navy pre-GPS and constantly had to locate his ship. He also explained to me that to make it work you needed to be able to time the measurement extremely precisely. (I used my Garmin watch 😊.) This is the reason why in the old days, it was very important to have very accurate clocks on board. The powerful British Navy had clock masters on board, and major advances in navigation were due to better clock designs.

There is a say on Ruby which states that what happens on Ruby stays on Ruby. We had to overcome a lot in the last two days. Especially at night. Last night was pitch black and it is hard to steer Ruby with high winds in the middle of invisible waves. You just have your feet to feel the pitch and roll of the boat. Also, you do not see squalls coming. Squalls are serious because they can suddenly change the force and direction of wind in a matter of seconds. I could also add the pouring rain but this is the less of your concern. The bottom line is that you were on a good course, and all of sudden you are in trouble.

I am amazed at the crew. In tense moments, the crew behaved impeccably, with everyone helping the boat and each other. No one shouts, no one panics, everyone is focused and on duty. I would say that generally, the atmosphere on board has been of camaraderie, fun (the number of jokes per minute is high), and of service. When anyone asks whether something can be done, there are five people who immediately volunteer to do it. It is incredible to witness such a team spirit. (I have never ever seen so many volunteers to wash the dishes.)

After last night, we spent the day doing some repairs. We sewed sails, repaird lienes and sheets. Bertrand even made a sausage of dyneema to prevent the claw of the spinnaker to eat the guy. A sausage of dyneema must be a world’s premiere. After all these repairs and launching, re-launching our sym half a dozen times, we are cruising fast towards the finish line. We are making very good progress.

I am surprised by the weather. I was expecting blue skies but we are almost always under a cloud cover. I wonder whether this is not the effect of global warming. As the temperature of the ocean gets warmer, there is more evaporation taking place. At night, when the air is a bit cooler, some of the energy in the air is released.

Last, I checked the log earlier today and saw that we have already sailed over 2,000 nautical miles since the start! This is not a short ride. We also crossed the tropic of Cancer today!

P.S. Believe it or not I managed to shave yesterday!