DISPATCHES| TRACKER| RECEIVE DISPATCH ALERTS Dispatches My anemometer comes in handy. Crushed foam where my back hit... Almost capsized... December 19, 2007-Day 163    8.5379N,165.1304W I am receiving stiff NE-winds, clocking 21-26kt without measuring the gusts. These are driving my boat SW back toward the counter current. I wanted to stay north of 8.5N until I would reach 168W at least, but this may not be possible. I rowed past midnight last night under a halfmoon. The winds remained strong making any course correction futile, and dangerous with the starboard side rogue waves. Best I could do was to ease the southerly drop. The seas felt spiteful all day yesterday, spilling my dinner on deck, spraying me with buckets of sea water at any moment when I thought "I am drying nicely" or "maybe I should go in the cabin and rest a bit." It seems that I should never think these things, just do them before Mr. Murphy gets wind of my thoughts. I woke up violently just before dawn, being thrown against the port side cabin wall. My left kidney area hit the cabin's structural rib, then I came to rest falling back on the mattress. Everything that was in the cabin was now piled on the port side. The boat was listing to port side as well, there had to be water which had swamped the deck yet to drain. I eased open the cabin door; surely, there was water filling the footwell to the rim. Soap bottles were floating in it. I picked up the floating objects and turned on the bilge pump. A quick inspection revealed that when the boat was swamped and tipped, the Goretex jacket that Andy Skelton in Scotsboro AL had kindly donated was washed overboard. My long sleeve shirt was snagged by the sleeve and I was able to pull that one back in. I had left these wet items on the kitchen cabinet lid port side by the cabin door, before retiring for a nap. I have also lost a 5-lt plastic water jug and a 1-qt Nalgene bottle. Bummer of a contribution from my boat to the plastic garbage at sea. Fortunately much of everything else was tied down on deck. Will I be able to avoid the dreaded counter current trap? Can I break south across it at 166W instead of 170W? I have no idea... Erden. Previous Dispatches More on small creatures...    December 18, 2007 - Day 162 Whenever I trailed the fishing line behind the boat trolling for a lazy catch, I noticed that a fibrous life form would wrap itself around the clear line. These appeared light brown, covering the lin Life exists in smaller forms...    December 16, 2007 - Day 160 Until now, I talked about birds and fish that I could see and photograph. We know that other life forms exist which are the lower links in the food chain. Marine viruses are one such group tha Game plan...    December 14, 2007 - Day 158 If I can now follow the course on my chartplotter to Mooloolaba, with its long stretches of great circle lines, I have another 4,200nm to go. I will have go to where the counter current is weakest, a Later dispatches - Previous dispatches Powered by CONTACT 3 expedition software