The fact that the reports have been rather more concise than usual lately is of course a result of the fact that Ralph is having problems charging his electronics on the Zeeman Ocean Challenger. In today’s report, he told us how there’s now a glimmer of hope that he’ll be able to use his laptop to write full-length reports again soon. His report is below.

Daily report for 25th June: I was tinkering with the convertor again today, scraping, grinding and spraying it clean and, by some miracle, it seems to work again now. The problem is that the batteries have very little charge left as the sun hasn’t shown its face properly in weeks, and naturally I want to use what little power I do have for the auto-pilot. If the sun comes out over the next few days I’ll charge the satellite telephone first, and then it’ll be the laptop’s turn. So there’s a good chance of you all getting my written reports again.

Yesterday was another tough one with heavy downpours; I had to row across the waves and sleep wet again, and the salt-water sores are coming back. In the night I was driven a long way back to the north. The next morning I got up, went and sat on my rowing bench and attempted to curb my northerly losses in the night, and was wet through again in no time at all. It’s no fun any more. It’s at times like this that you start thinking, “What am I doing out here? What am I doing it all for?” Every ocean rower has moments like that.

After two hours of rowing I saw a few blue patches on the horizon and it stopped raining. The sun actually starting shining and fortunately I was able to hang the sleeping bags to dry outside in the afternoon. Everything is looking a bit more cheerful and even the tunas and dorados are coming to life again. In the distance I could see a sort of large grey shadow billowing out; it looked almost like an explosion. Suddenly I saw an absolute whopper of a whale 50 metres away, at least 20 metres long. It wasn’t one of those that just comes to have a look and then disappears below the water again either; this one stayed on the surface and skimmed calmly past the boat, disappearing again behind me. I was able to take a good video of him (or her). The only kind of sea life I haven’t captured on camera yet is an Orca, so one of those will have to come along soon.

Witnessing all this, the enormous glittering ocean with all its variety of life, really makes you realise how wonderful it is out here and how privileged I am to be experiencing it all.