As already mentioned in the daily reports for 9th and 10th June, Ralph is having quite a bit of difficulty charging his iPods, laptop and camera. The 220-volt to 12-volt adapter is broken, so before long Ralph won’t be able to listen to music, write reports or take photos any more.

We’ve now resorted to spoken reports over the phone, and you can read an extract from the first one below:

“12th June – finally a bit of sun so I can charge the batteries a bit, which were nearly empty. I really need the power for the auto-pilot. I can also attempt to dry out the clumps of wet cloth that are my sleeping bags again. I’ve got a hundred squawking birds around me now, as well as a large school of tunas heavily laying into some flying fish. If one of those thinks it can save its skin by jumping out of the water it’s wrong; there’s a bird up there waiting to pick it out of the air.
I felt like a fresh tuna meal so I tried to get my fishing lines back to a usable state (they’d got all tangled up due to the bad weather). Didn’t catch anything unfortunately.

It’s looking a bit more hopeful that I’ll be able to row a bit in the right direction. I’m thinking about 12 miles in the current circumstances, though I won’t be satisfied with any less than 15. Never thought I’d be happy with a 15-mile daily distance. I’m going to see if I can repair the universal laptop charger again after all, so that’ll keep me busy for another evening.”