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Lexington - Captain Bob: 3/14/17. 10*. 09' south. 118*. 23' west



It's my watch again. It's a little after midnight on a beautiful night. We are still using Twinhead sails. There's about 10 to 11 kn of wind off our Stern. We are making 6.5 kn of boat speed. There just a few clouds out and a nearly full moon so there's lots of visibility. Our Twinhead sails have worked beautifully. There are times during the day that I'm sure we could be doing a little bit faster using a spinnaker. A great benefit of the Twinhead sales is that there's very little trim involved and we don't have to change them for the night. We checked our progress. With the sail configuration we're doing a little bit better than 150 miles a day which is what we were doing when we were switching back-and-forth on sail configuration. We are 1218 miles from our way point.

Everybody seems to be doing very well. We're on a formal watch schedule of every three hours at night between 6 PM and 6 AM. We do every four during the day. With this schedule it rotates forward one time period every 24 hours. That way you get all the different watch times.

I am trying to brush up on navigation and charting. I am doing sun shots each day and plotting on a small area chart. A small area chart is a chart that can be configured for the latitude you are in and used to plot. In the middle of the ocean you do not have charts of a scale that you could use effectively. Yesterday Mark and I did a noon shot and one in the morning and one in the evening. For those not into celestial navigation, shots are when you use a sextant and measure the altitude of the sun in my case. The noon shot is often done because there is a whole lot less math for a noon shot. At noon the sun is at its highest point. Near noon you start taking several consecutive sights or shots. The readings on the sextant will get larger and larger until it starts to get less. At that point you have established the timing of the apparent noon for your location, that is high noon or the time that the sun is highest in the sky. At that point you can figure your latitude and l
ongitude with simple addition and division. Doing celestial navigation is just something interesting to do. It is a good back up skill in an emergency. It does give you a great appreciation for early navigators. Lewis and Clark used celestial navigation and records show they were amazingly accurate. In my case it is real easy when you have GPS to check you if you are accurate.

I still have not caught a fish. Last night I left my lure out all night figuring that I could just drag a fish along until morning if I hooked one. The next day my lure was gone. I must have hooked something to big to stay on very long. Thank God for canned tuna. Tomorrow is a new day I will try again.

May fair winds fill your sails with hope and optimism
Optimism is hoping we will be in port in 8 days or so having a good cold beer.
Bob


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