OAR Northwest

Adam sending you this photo, the wind turbine above him partially disassembled since it stopped working – now no more than a hi-tech weather vane. (Credit: OAR Northwest)

900 miles to Miami

Power conservation continues. When we realized that the wind generator did not work and disconnected it, we also realized that we had only been using one of the three batteries for weeks and making it work. Now we had all three and the solar panels seemed to be charging them for us to have all the power we would seemingly ever need. Drunk with power, so to speak, we blasted content (some of which still has not been posted). A week or so later it became clear that even charging the three batteries, we were loosing 5 to 10 amps per day in running all of our communication and science equipment at full tilt. All this new power had raised our minimum standard for what we wanted our equipment to be able to do. In choosing priorities, we are desperate to keep the science equipment running.

The biggest loss is personal computer time. Think of how good a mail call makes you feel… and take that away. Continue reading »

Moving west. Again. Caribbean in view (at least on Google Earth!)

Before pulling in the sea anchor this morning, we spent a good part of the last 24 hours slowly drifting with the wind and waves in a north-easterly direction. In the wee hours of the night, things let up and we were free from our weather shackles for the time being. As of now we’re about 1,100 nautical miles from Miami, and our longitude has us overlapping the eastern-most Caribbean island… I’ll take any milestone I can. Continue reading »

Markus breaks the confines of the Atlantic dry space for a dip in the blue, and a scrub of the hull.

[Greg here in Mission Control - I dug up this early blog that got posted but never went live for some reason. A good look at life on a tiny ocean rowboat reveals the reality of 4 men in a small space. Avert your reading eyes if you don't believe in the existence of bodily functions.]

I couldn’t believe it. To my profound horror it actually came in through the scupper. Could have been Markus, could have been me. Before we broke sea anchor this morning, both of us had to hot-seat the bucket. Usually the speed of the boat, slow as it may be, is enough to clear us of an incident like this, but not today on sea anchor when the four of us and anything that might be floating was doing so at the same rate. I won’t tell you what I had to do to get rid of it, but thank goodness for hand sanitizer.

Nasty business this ocean rowing. Nasty business. It’s actually a continuous editorial conversation we have with each other about what makes it into the blog and what doesn’t. What’s too gross? What’s too real? What’s not family-friendly enough? Right now I’m feeling pretty candid and don’t really want to sugar coat it. Continue reading »