10°42' W
0700 GMT
another beautiful night.
random photo, i think of cartagena, spain
watched a somewhat lame film tonight though. strange to wake up to a sunrise over africa and then sit through 'i am legend.' i was trying to decide if mr. smith ran on the treadmill beside his dog in 'i robot' or if he just did pull ups in the doorway in both films. i bet the 'legend' film was better as a book.
the prolonged study of the sky is yielding results. though i am not certain i have seen or am able to see pluto. elusive pluto. not even a planet anymore. but near the boötes there's this little star cluster, which i could see, barely. and then there's this speck. which is approximately in the spot where pluto is supposed to be located. not confirmed. but maybe. it's a tricky one. i don't want to jump the gun on this one.
saw the beehive nebula tonight. that was a treat, it's in cancer and is rather faint... between gemini and leo. ha! a week ago i couldn't tell you where either of those are. funny how having consecutive days on watch at the same time really orient things. the sea is just the sea, and at night it's way more about the sky than the sea. strange as a lake boat driver to deal with just accepting that there is totally nothing in the way. no deadheads. no random floaty things. no other boats. well, some other boats... but that's what radar is for, the VRM/EBL thing and AIS.
AIS is very cool. there's this computery thing here.. not sure if it's part of the onboard PC, but at any rate we broadcast out a signal that says 'hi. we're us and we're going this direction and this fast. oh yeah, and we're a SAILBOAT.' at least i think it says that. AIS tells me that, for example, 'MS ORCHESTRA' is the ginormous cruise ship producing roughly the light pollution that kenora does. it's astounding, but i suppose that it's possible 10,000 people live there too.
it's stupidly huge anyway. AIS also tells us that MS ORCHESTRA is really big, but it's also currently doing 30 knots and is going somewhere over there, will pass closest to us in about 23 minutes and will be 2.5 nautical miles (that's what knots are.. 1.14 road miles in a knot) away from us when it does.
so we just turn on ferdinand diesel and motor our way into the blackness secure in the lack of any obstacles at all. (or sail. though it's been calm or dead calm for the last number of nights.) wild. the dolphins that swim with the boat through the glow in the dark thingies are also pretty cool. today we stopped the boat, for the first time since we left the dock in la grande motte. everyone swam under the trampoline. matt dove in with and lost his sunglasses. oops. no diving for those on the bottom. right now the raymarine tells us that it's too deep to measure, our chart says that we're in about 4000 m of water. deep! no more sunglasses.
i had a rather nice pair that i lost on chien d'or while on a reconaissance mission with karen storie (3 wk tripper 2002). i can't remember what we had to go there for. but we took a ZF and somehow i neglected to remove the very comfortable shades. sucks when that happens. they were so comfortable i forgot i was wearing them. and somehow i am very glad on my 'to pack' list was 'extra sunglasses' as i cannot find my new lovely MEC ones. and since my afternoon watch has been basically pointing the boat at 220°... the setting sun, it's been pretty key to have shades and a peaked hat to hide behind. essentially have to drve the boat exactly at the sun for three hours. did i menton that the autopilot, she is toasted (as we say in french)? this is good practice i think. yeah, that's it.
