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Agua Dulce - Learning how to use a sextant



Today has been a beautiful day on the water with smooth seas and sunshine, but a little more of a breeze would be nice. It's been quite pleasant, but we'd like to arrive in the Azores before Thanksgiving, so we're hoping that the breeze freshens soon!

In the meantime, Charles and I have been trying to learn to use the sextant to find out our position taking noon sightings. First try, 120nm off. But, I think we have a much better grasp on how it works now, and I think I will be able to get the settings better tomorrow. The trick is figuring out exactly what is Local Apparent Noon which is when the sun is at it's zenith wherever you are. We don't even know what time zone we are in right now, so that was a little tricky. But, we're going to try again tomorrow and see if we can get closer.

I also experienced another first today. While I was reading my Kindle, a message popped up that said I was nearly out of battery and needed to recharge it. I have NEVER run on battery on the Kindle. It seems to last forever. Just shows how much reading time we have on our hands.

Dinner tonight was seafood! Okay, okay, it was frozen shrimp from Costco. No luck fishing. We still enjoyed Thai marinated shrimp with peanut sauce and sesame sauteed cabbage. We are down to the leftover cabbage, a head of romaine lettuce, a few carrots and celery stalks, a couple of oranges, 3 apples and 2 lemons in our fresh produce stores. I'm starting to think of pickles and olives as vegetables and a good way to get some roughage! Hope the Azores have some nice produce to restock put fridge for our last week leg to Portugal.

Gotta go see if the Kindle is charged yet. My watch starts in an hour.

Gretchen Cunningham
S/V Agua Dulce

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