While the email & communication streams are on hold until ocean conditions allow for puke-free email contact, I’ll continue the updates with a shore-side look at the expedition…
Got a satellite phone call this afternoon from Adam, aboard what is slowly becoming a more comfortable (if you’ll call it that) ocean rowboat. The winds and seas have eased a bit, allowing everybody to actually get something close to their first full meal to stay down.
The big highlight of the day was the “super pod” of dolphins that came roaring through that morning. It’s a truly wondrous sight, but from our own history, you can’t help but think what they’re all steaming away from. In 2006, hundreds of them were storming farther out to sea, and within a day and a half, Tropical Storm Alberto passed directly over us – already having devastated Florida. We’ll go ahead and take the good vibes!
Aside from putting a hard charge into difficult seas, we’ve been frantically troubleshooting the onboard equipment charged with collecting hi-resolution marine and atmospheric data. For some reason, the marine data stream just failed the night before launch! Time, effort, and $$ were at stake and we were worried that all hope for this extremely valuable data was lost. Luckily within an hour of today’s phone call with instructions relayed, data streams recovered and we can go back to our citizen scientry with reckless abandon. Take that, ocean acidification!
Despite generally difficult weather conditions, the James Robert Hanssen is doing well. After a course change today, boat speed doubled from 1-knot to just over 2-knots (trust us, that’s HUGE!), and that should allow a slightly smoother ride around the south side of the Cape Verde Islands. Wanna know why it’s been so tough? Just ask David Burch from Starpath Navigation School… he’s our genius wind & wave guru:
Check the wx map to see that there is a trough over coast of Africa that has cranked the isobars and winds around to the north and freshened them–they who would otherwise be lighter trade winds from the NE.
These trough winds brings with them larger waves, which slows down progress. (Read more of David’s analysis, and see what the other weather nerds see)
We’re anticipating emails from the boat to come back online tomorrow, so hopefully you can start to get a taste of what’s happening out there, right from the rowers’ perspective!