Madeira here we come "40:46.94N 11:21.64W"
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Sun 26 Sep 2010 20:23
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We have just changed course to head directly for
Madeira - just over 500 miles to go.
Winds have been strong - resulting in good progress
but a roller-coaster ride. Morale high, aided by an excellent Thai red curry by
Frans for dinner tonight.
It turns out that my attempt to destroy the
breadmaker has failed; it still works perfectly. Just as well; the cheese bread
I made yesterday was delicious. No interesting wildlife sightings today but a
fair bit of heavy commercial traffic going north - we have 'seen' a grand total
of five vessels today. I say'seen' because we didn't actually see all of them
with the naked eye, but only by our AIS system (Automatic Identification Ship)
which works by VHF radio from an aerial on top of the mast and can thus see
beyond our visual range (which is about eight miles at most due to the curvature
of the earth).
The crew has been pondering the movement of the
heavenly bodies this evening. Jupiter is still splendid all night, with an orbit
round the sun of about 11 years (we looked it up). It is moving rapidly apart
from the moon so tonight we have taken a compass bearing on the rising moon
(just before 2100BST) to see whether, as we ignoramouses suspect, it is the moon
which is changing its position in the sky rather than Jupiter. Then all
we'll have to do is figure out why (without looking it up). It is a
constant marvel how the Ancients puzzled it all out before the advent of modern
technology. Awe-inspiring in the real sense, in fact.
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