Meta Sunset
Land Ho!
Woke up this morning (lat: -53.591, lon: -72.3015) in the Straits of Magellan. The deck of the ship is green, and has been for the last 50 days, but just like last year, seeing mountains covered with green trees is a shock to the system.
Another 10 or so hours and I'll walk again on solid ground.
Signing off for the foreseeable future, -k.
Stormy
The last 48 hours have been interesting. We were in a fairly severe storm. Wind speeds were around 60 knots, which is just under a hurricane, or 11 on the Beaufort scale. Max pitch was 12 degrees and roll was 22, or about 40 degrees side to side. Which is quite a bit of horizontal travel when you are on the bridge 68 feet in the air. Waves were about 30 feet.
You can't really sail in weather like that, so we just pointed into the waves to keep the ship as stable as possible. Unfortunately that meant spending a day pointing to the northwest, away from home.
Today: Calm. About 15 hours from land. Tomorrow: Sailing through the Straits of Magellan. Then Terra Firma.
Sun{rise,set} over Sea Ice
We have been sailing home at 9-10 knots for the past few days and will continue to do so for the next 130ish hours.
The waypoint computer shows we have about 114 hours and 1050 nautical miles to our next waypoint, which is the entrance to the Straits of Magellan, still about 24 hours from port.
Current location is lat: -63.427, lon: -99.812
ITP
It turns out with 9 days left I have some unused email quota, so those of you reading this get to see some pictures from the last six weeks. This one is from the end of the ITP deployment.
Don't expect much variety. There are only a few things I can photograph down here: Boat, Ice, Light, Penguins, People, and Water. Or if you prefer by quantity instead of alphabetic: Light, Water, Ice, Penguins, People, Boat.
Final Position
Our final CTD is in progress at lat: -67.00, lon: -128.967
Then, non-stop home to PUQ.
Marie Byrd Seamounts
We are sailing northwest to our final mooring deployment, then home.
We are currently at lat: -69.5285, lon: -124.078, crossing the Marie Byrd Seamounts. I don't think anyone knows for certain why or how they formed.
ITP Online
According to Woods Hole (WHOI), the ITP is online and data can be viewed in near-realtime:
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=30775
