Time
Gudrun V
Axel Busch
Sun 20 Feb 2011 12:01
Yesterday I had an important decision to make: To shave or not to shave. Do I want to arrive in the Caribbean like a peaceful and law-abiding man, or like a pirate. Will Turner or Jack Sparrow? Put it that way the question is easy to answer. Will get's to marry pretty Elizabeth. So away with the stubble!
Other than that the day held little excitement. Some dolphins came by, but were not interested as I was going way too slow for them. Twice a Sooty Tern circled the boat, but was gone each time before I had the camera ready. But he'll be back, and then I'll shoot the little bird ;-).
All through the day and night the wind remained very light (5-8kn) and variable, and every half hour at the latest I had to adjust the course and trimm of the sail carefully to keep my speed close to or over 4kn. I'd rather go a little zik-zak then just sit dead in the water.
The sky was mostly cloudless and I hid from the sun during the day as much as possible. Instead I reviewed the pictures and clips I had shot. There are some really nice pictures, but I have to film more if I want to have enough material at the end to get a decent movie out of it. Maybe I'll edit some today which will give me a better idea of what is missing.
As the sun set I moved back into the cockpit to watch the sky, spot stars, and read up on them. I'm not really good at astronomy. Although I find it most fascinating I've never spent the time. Well, looking at the weather I'll have a lot of time left on this trip to read up on the subject :-).
Time! By now there is a 3h difference between ship's time (UTC) and localtime (UTC-3). But it doesn't matter much because I have little need of knowing the time. Like any other worthless idler my routine is governed by the sun. And the wind. The only moment I need to know the time is when I post to my blog every day at 12 UTC, when I also measure my progress over the last 24h. Hey, looks like I managed to log just over 100nm. I'm very happy about that, regarding the conditions, and I hope I can maintain that pace until the wind picks up again.
855nm to go.