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Date: 17 Jun 2009 12:02:40
Title: 35 45N 47 40W
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Day 7,  Winds have dropped somewhat yesterday we made 140 miles at about 5.5 Kts.  Today our speed has dropped to around 4 KTS.  Everyone is pretty much settled into to the routine now.  The motion of the boat has moderated to a point where everyone is either reading or working on fixing something.  It has taken considerable adjustment for me from the frantic pace getting ready for this to now where there are many hours spent enjoying the water front view.  I am gradually slowing down but there is always something to fix.  George is reading a paperback a day.  Matt has gone through just about all our sailing books and is now studying fishing.  Chris, I think, having the hardest transition.  He has however discovered that there is a 7000 foot volcanic peak in the Azores and is recruiting everyone to climb it with him.  I don't know if he realizes he may have to carry a few of us down if we go!
 
Had my birthday celebration yesterday.  George cooked a special ham dinner, desert of pineapple, followed by several rum toasts.  Made sure everyone was harnessed in the cockpit.  Really splurged and talked to Mary and my mother on the Sat phone.  Good to here their voices and to know all is well back a the ranch.  I have tried to get some news on Voice of America.  It has been almost 4 weeks now with no real news.  I finally got VOA on the short wave but it was a program about how to train your aggressive pet.
 
Last night the stars were particularly spectacular.  Talk about dark... you could see the milky way across the whole sky.  For the non-star gazers in the audience the Milky Way is actually the edge of our galaxy.  It looks like a cloud until you use binoculars or a telescope then you see that it is actually millions of stars that just look like a cloud.  We have been going pretty much east.  My watch is from 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM.  At about 11:30 Venus pops above the horizon a little off the starboard bow.  Now that I know what to expect it doesn't look exactly like a big ships lights.  Then at about 12:30 the moon rises right in front of the boat.  Pretty cool...  The other night Chris and I saw either a meteor or a piece of space junk hit the atmosphere and burn up.  Very bright and looked almost like a dud sky rocket.  Lasted for almost 30 seconds.  We have also spotted a number of satellites and the space station.  It is sometimes a pretty eire feeling doing 6 KTS in absolute dark.  You can only see waves  in the glow of your running lights for a split second before they over take you and you hope the other guy has his lights on, although we haven't seen another boat in a couple of days.
 
Those small swallow / bat like birds fly at night, where else are the going to go?  We had the Beatles blasting away on the stereo last night and at least one came so close to the back of the boat you could hear it make a high pitch call.  Probably wanted to sing along.  A lot of phosphoresance in the water.  I expected the water to just glow, instead we are getting something that looks like Christmas twinkle lights in the wake.  Round distinct points of light. 
 
Today's project will be trying to get the radar going again.  I used a plug connector to get the wires that run down the mast through the steel deck.  The salt water has tuned the connector to goo and last night we lost the signal.  I think a new cable may be in our future.  All for now - stay tuned.
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