Monday, February 09, 2009
43rd Day: Passed Way Point 12 at 30° 0.0’ S and 3.00° West. We are on the final leg to Cape Town, 1100 miles away. That should be about five days. The sea this morning is going through its daily exercise of changing color. At the moment, the sun is high, and it lights up the waters as gallium gray, with rose, white, and blue in it. I can not tell you its color, but it is pretty, and I’d like to have a car painted like that. Some days we see hues of blue: azure, blackish, aquamarine, baby, cobalt, gem stone, and dozens of in-betweens. Sometimes it is gold or orange, at times pink, and often, this ocean is as Homer described it: wine-dark. A wine-dark sea can be anywhere from maroon-rose to coal-purple. It is green only in the shallows. At night, it is black.
Think of its size, this Atlantic Ocean, which is neither largest nor deepest. We have averaged about 7.4 statute miles per hour throughout the 43-day (so far) voyage. Most of the water we have sailed would cover over the highest Rocky Mountains by a thousand or more feet and as much as 4300 feet. St. Helena came from the sea floor at 15,700 feet to the surface, and then another 2600 feet above that—an 18,300-foot rise. There is water in this ocean as deep as 27,000 feet, and as deep as 36,000 feet in the Pacific. We’ve had no company of any kind in more than two weeks, no ship, no airplanes (that we could see by Mark-1 Eye Balls, or radar), no island…only water, and that in a lesser sea, but friend, it is big enough. For two weeks, we had some kind of bird with us, a big fellow, but not an albatross. Some of the crew saw whales blowing yesterday, but not I. However, last night I DID see a young, wealthy mermaid…
I saw a lovely mermaid,
She paid me lots of mind,
She seemed to be so unafraid,
As if she knew my kind.
She asked if we could marry;
I’d take her far from here,
But that’s a load to carry—
Despite her looks so dear.
She was really very pretty;
I think I could be led,
But I really wasn’t ready,
This lovely lass to wed.
I told her of the men at sea,
and how she’d made her mark.
“The only male that chases me
Is any kind of shark.”
‘Twas tough, the way her hand was played,
And so I made a wish:
That none of that sweet mermaid
Was ever made of fish.
(can you guess the author? my modesty prevents me…)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
44th Day: 0026 hrs LT position is -30° 23.5 by 0°00.0’ E; we have crossed the Prime Meridian. Signs have now changed three times since Corpus, which was positive north and negative east. At the equator we went negative north and negative east, and now we are negative north and positive east. An even more important fact follows. In a test using three neutral and disinterested lavatories at 30 degrees south, water drained clockwise once, and counterclockwise twice. Due to pitching and rolling, I can not be sure that the reverse of lavatory physics is true down here, so I will offer this postulate: The Coriolis affect may be 2/3rd true
We have hit the tail end of a cold front, and it is windy; gusts up to thirty knots. It is cool to cold out there, and the ocean has whipped up to kick us around. It is a rough ride again, mostly in pitch, which means my bed will dump my pate into the head board, and then swat my feet at the foot board…bonk, thump, bonk, thump, bon
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
45th day: we are at -31° 9.4’ and + 3° 11.1’. I am in a wind-down mode, kind of let down…not a depression, but a funk. A long job is finished, and storms and seas for this long trip become a memory. Already, I have tickets to Singapore on March 2. So the work continues, and I am fortunate in the climate we have found ourselves in, but I would like more time off to do my own things.
A great sea monster lived at each end of the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy. One was Scylla, who had a large head on six long necks, and she feasted on sailors six at a time. She lived on a great rock that went out into the sea. The other was Charybdis, formerly the beautiful naiad daughter of Poseidon and who had been supportive of her father against Zeus. She had ridden the storm and became the surge that devoured beaches and cities, claiming much new land for Poseidon. Zeus became enraged and turned her into a sea monster, a giant bladder, on the other end of the strait from Scylla. This monster inhaled huge quantities of sea water three times a day and spewed it back out, thus creating immense whirlpools. Odysseus had to choose which monster (being, as he was, caught between a rock and a whirlpool) he would favor in passing his ship toward home. The distance between the two monsters was only a bow shot, so one of them would affect the ship. He chose Scylla, the many-headed monster, even though he was assured of losing at least six men. He reasoned that there was too much chance that Charybdis would devour the ship and its crew entirely. The Greeks proceeded through the strait nearer Scylla, and her six long necks reached down, and each great maw took a man and ate him. The crew, of course, second-guessed Odysseus.
Now, I need to go to the Straits of Messina to see which way that whirlpool turns, and then I must come back down here and find a whirlpool and see which way IT turns. Then we’ll know for sure: Coriolis is, or he ain’t. According to my calculations, he two thirds is. I performed the tie-breaker regarding direction of turn in the lavatory of my own state room, but that drain is such that it doesn’t pull enough water to make a whirlpool. However, in the event that the drain is not being influenced by a restriction, but rather the earth’s rotation, I am hedging my bet in favor of Coriolis to 75%. If you don’t agree with this, then do your own physics!
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