Point Nemo.

Just as fast as it appeared, it vanished. As it entered our atmosphere it lit up the sky, emitting a bright green then white hew before disappearing into a dark oblivion with a grand explosion. The object had a large tail with bits of it breaking up in small white flashes as it fell towards the horizon. It was 0300 in the morning, and just by chance I was out on deck trimming sails when I looked up at the bow and saw it. I stood there for another minute in awe and not really knowing what to make of it. I will never be sure as to what I saw, but upon looking into the monumental feat that we had just accomplished today, I soon got an idea of what it could have been.

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Today we passed Point Nemo - which translated means ‘No One’ in Latin. We are now probably the most isolated people on the planet. The closest humans being those very brave souls high above us in the ISS (International Space Station) when it passes over head at 450 kilometres. With the closest land mass over 2,688 Kilometres away, it is the single most isolated place on the planet. Given that its not a land mass, the only way to get to it is a gruelling three week ocean voyage across some very serious seas. But theres something more to this geographic location…

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It turns out that it is a satellite graveyard. The US, EU, Russia and Japan have been purposely crashing their decommissioned satellites since the early 70’s. There are over 300 unmarked "satellite graves" scattered throughout a 150nm area with Point Nemo at the centre, and its supposedly where the current ISS is destined to crashed after its decommission in 2027-30.

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Averting our gaze from the stars back to our world of blue and white, there are many more things to keep us busy down here. Upon doing a rig inspection, Al and I noticed that the foil around the forward stay had snapped around 3/4 of the way up and could potentially be wearing on the stay. The foil is a metal tube that slides over the forward stay and holds the bolt line for the Genoa in as we furl and unfurl when we need. So again a crew meeting was called to create a game plan to best deal with this potentially disastrous breakage till we hit Chile in two weeks time.

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It was decided that we would unfurl the genoa no more than 3/4, in an effort to keep the foil wrapped tightly in place, to prevent any movement or further damage. To make up for the loss of canvas we would now also fly the Staysail in between the mast and the genoa. At this 'Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility' it was typical of the Nanook to commemorate such a day with a little something extra for us, something more to test us and remind us we are now in the deep end, 5000 meters deep to be exact...