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Kinship - Wandering Plankton



As many of you have heard, Outer Limits, one of our fellow ARC Europe yachts, struck a whale last night and the crew were safely rescued by a freighter before the boat sank.. This has been a sobering thought for all of us and has caused us to revisit our safety procedures as well as our abandon ship protocols.

It is day 4 now, and we are still heading northeast based on our interpretation of the weather forecasts. We picked up a nice current up here so our daily logs have been in the 180-mile range--which is respectable for a small cruising boat such as Kinship. Last night, with no moon, it was as pitch black as black can be, and it seemed like we were bounding along on a sea of black ink with the bow wake throwing gleaming white tendrils of lacy foam studded with bio-luminescent plankton jewels.

I suppose the Atlantic is teeming with these zoo-plankton and phyt- plankton and all sorts of other plankton. Come to think of it, the word, Plankton, comes from the Greek word, "Planktos", which means "Wanderer." So we sailors in an odd way, join the plankton in wandering the seas, ships lights flickering in the darkness, and savoring the ocean's might and majesty.

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