musings Dec. 4, 2007

Dec. 4, 2007 Day 9

I was up early, before sunrise, and joined Wendy on her watch. Our watches are still set to GMT or Greenwich Time even though we have moved through at least 2 time zones, which means that we really should be setting our watches back. Due to reporting to the ARC and time being somewhat relative we have agreed to leave our watches set to the equivalent of London time. This means that according to our watch the sun is now coming up at 8:30 am.

The watches are set up so that during the day each of us is on for 4 hours, and at night 3 hours each. The first few days we had the watches set up to be 3 hours each 24 hours a day but that meant that we all had the same watches so 2 people were stuck with the 2 worst night watches. Changing the watches to 4 hours during the day helped to rotate everybody through each of the watch times.

My favorite time of the day has become the early morning hours and the early watch. Watching the sunrise, enjoying time alone, watching the sea, and contemplating my navel. This morning winds are lighter, the sea calmer, clouds to the east covering the sun, but clear above us. Our boat speed is between 5 and 6 knots which seems slow to us, but which would be very respectable on many monohulls. We had a lot of rain last night and some light winds so that we had to motor a bit. Mostly it is warm enough that we have not needed jackets or blankets since the first few days. Yesterday was downright muggy.

When we left the Canaries, after a few days we had lost reception on the satellite phone but yesterday it came back and it was such a pleasure to receive and send emails. Being out of touch was an odd feeling. Also, yesterday we calculated that we are now halfway across this vast ocean.

One of the emails we received from ARC Control was a warning that there was an uninhabited boat drifting at sea and it was in our path. We may never ever see it, however, that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t still run into it if we are not watching. This is somewhat unnerving on the night watch. In its posted position from last night we calculated that it is 2 days ahead of us but what with wind and current, who knows where it might be tonight. There are a lot boats out here in the ARC so we might hear more about it. Now that we have had a close call with a freighter none of us is taking it for granted that we wouldn’t see it.

Yesterday, Lee got out his sextant and gave us all a lesson is celestial navigation. That was fun. It is such a complex set of equations that I do not expect to learn it much less retain it, since it is not something I will be able to practice at home, but I have always wanted to know what it is like to take a noon sight with a sextant.

More later.