Land good bye

i'm about 7 miles south west of the bishop rock, the last bit of land i
should see for a while. the scilly lie very low on the horizon and only
a few lights disclose their presence. the sky is not yet pitch black but
now it should be a matter of half an hour or so.
Getting here so late means that i have yet to clear the traffic
separation scheme on the other side of the isles, there is no one about,
the closest ship is 20 miles away on AIS but, nonetheless, i'll have to
wait before i can catch some sleep. i guess it'll be approaching
daylight before i'm all clear so, probably, i'll have to push this first
night and play safe staying awake then catch up with some sleep in open
waters tomorrow morning.
The day went smooth, pleasant winds to sail with on a reach. It rained
plenty but you know me, i havent even worn my oilies yet, when it rains
i stay under the sprayhood or find something to attend to below, i dont
see the point to sit in the rain. Actually, the showers tickled my
imagination so i came up with a clever way to extend the strings that
control the windvane with several pullies across the cockpit, the lines
now run out of the way but all the way to the companion way so i can
play ultimate lazy sailing and control the wind shifts without ever
leaving my sprayhood comfort, what a bliss.
The new AIS is quite clever in that it calculates the closest point of
approach, or CPA and time to CPA and you can set the alarms according to
these values, this means that you no longer get pointless alarms of
ships crossing behind you and, if you do get an alarm, once you clear
it, you can reactivate the alarm should a new ship meet the conditions.
On the old one you had to wait till the ship was out of your guard zone
to be able to reset the alarm as it would otherwise beep even for the
ship you have just cleared but that is still close to you. The only,
quite disappointing aspect is that the alarm is not very loud...
hopefully with the fact that it will ring less frequently than the old
one it will be a case of "new noise" that will attract your attention,
but i'll still look into adding an external buzzer to make it louder.
Nothing else for now, once cleared the bishop i only have to watch for
ships then from tomorrow start thinking about adapting to life at sea...
this is no short hop so i have to see what works and what not as i wont
be seing a harbour soon.

Ciao,
Marco
British Beagle