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16 36.87 N 042 15.90 W
Mileage noon to noon :102 nm
Distance to go: 1085 nm
Photo: Garry & Tom smoothing on the sun block
It was a pitiful night for wind. There is
a low pressure system to the north of us that is blocking the high pressure
system north of it that would enable a pressure gradient to expand and give us
back the good trade winds. We tried sailing for a while, but wind stayed
at about 5 knots all night long. We motored a good part of the night, but
have been able to sail today in light winds. Trudy's weather reports and Herb's forecast indicate that we should
have better winds on Saturday.
You may be wondering how we do the web page and email
from the boat. We have a ham radio on board, and through the Winlink
system, are able to send and receive emails on board. We make contact with
a stations on shore who send our emails to the internet and they then get sent
in the usual manner to our friends and family. They get emails from the
internet and any reports we request, like weather charts, and send them to us
via the radio waves. It's magic, but it's also a lot of work for the shore
stations, who do this on a volunteer basis - mostly because they enjoy the hobby
of amateur radio communication. We use this system to update our homepage
each day and this requires a file transfer protocol, a software system that uu-encodes
the file (our report and picture) that we send to a station in Kiev. The
station in Kiev converts the files back to HTM and JPG format and puts them onto our web
page. Amazing!
It's 80 degrees here, even at night and the sun is
strong. We've all switched to shorts and we're using the sun block
liberally. We've got our fishing line out, but no nibbles so far. Since
the light wind continues, we will use the barbecue to grill filet mignon
tonight, unless we get a tuna.
All's well on board-
Tom, Peg and Garry
s/v Starboard Home
