Day 19, Wednesday, 23.02.2011, 12:00 UTC (09:00 local), 19:02:5N 54:24.0W, 26ÂC, 1014 mBar

 

Every few hours I turn on the chartplotter to write down my position. So far there was only open sea around me, but since yesterday when I turn the thing on I see the Lee- and Windward Islands on the edge of the map. And every time a little more of them. Very good for morale, very good.

 

The sea was rather cooperative yesterday. Noticing that I had difficulties doing the dishes the swell went down and the pots stopped sliding through the cockpit. Thanks sea. That encouraged me to wash some clothes as well and do some geneal cleaning. The wind also dropped way below 20kn, and I put the Parasailor up again. Now I have less than 10kn of wind, and itâs going very slowly. No chance to finish the rest of the trip in three days, itâs going to be four for sure.

 

Then I sat down to edit some of the footage. Normally I shoot in 720p resolution, which is plenty enough for TV and Web. But because it's very unlikely that I will do this many more times in the near future I thought "let's shoot in full HD (1080p)". Now I have 50GB of movie clips, and working with them takes aaaages and is right at the limit of my computer (and my patience). Especially running of the battery. But ... some of the footage is surprisingly nice. There is one scene: boat sailing into the night, dark sea, sunset in the background, and a dolphin jumps out of the water in the middle of the picture. Cool.

 

But I'll have to convert everything to 720p before going on (which the computer ensures me is going to take 12 hours). I only have a vague idea of what to show and no story-board, so putting a rough cut together takes a lot of reviewing and moving clips around. And I prefer to do this without a lot of waiting in between. But I noticed already that I'll need some more scenes where I "address the audience" and tell what's going on. Just watching the boat sail along and me doing stuff gets pretty boring otherwise, even for my friends ;-), and I don't like voice-overs much.

 

500nm to go