Pacific Musings

Oh, that title sounds so literary, doesn't it? Well, sorry to disappoint you, just another hack posting from the high seas. Today we thought that we'd try and capture a few odds and sods about the trip that haven't necessarily made it into a blog posting.

Oceanography - The average water depth that we've been in over the last few weeks has been about 5-km deep, except for an area with lots of sea mounts that we passed over a couple of weeks ago. The biggest ones I saw on the chart came to within a few hundred meters of the surface.

Meals - We eat about 2 meals a day now (breakfast and dinner). Lunch has been replaced by a small snack. We find that this works best for our energy level/weight balance, especially since we've perfected the art of lounging in the last three weeks.

Food - We've had some good results with keeping our fresh food going, with the stars being eggs, citrus, apples, cucumbers, and potatoes. Notwithstanding, we still have lost about a quarter of our stores to rotting (yuck). We have found that junk food doesn't rot at all (science at work for all of us!) and are now planning to completely restock our pantry with chips, pop, and Twinkies for the next passage.

Navigation - WARNING all of you who are you using Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation. We've been practicing taking celestial fixes with our NEW sextant and have discovered that GPS fixes can be off by up to a hundred miles or more! Most interesting is that the error seems to be positively correlated with wave height and has been decreasing slightly each time we make comparative observations. We'll keep you posted as this development unfolds.

Stardust Trails - The past couple of weeks have had quite dark nights, with full cloud cover and/or no moon. While eerie, these evenings are perfect to watch the bioluminescence around the boat. Breaking wave crests are lit up like neon signs. Demelza's bow wake throws off a million tiny green sparks. My favourite, as I answer nature's call off the stern, is watching the stardust trail streaming from the rudder like a fighter jet's vapour trail.