Sunday 23 March 2014

Counting down

May a ship not be the fastest of all vehicles, the constant speed of about 13 knots is sufficient to bring us closer and closer to the Equator now. We are eating latitudes every day, very soon we will have to ask permission from Neptune to cross the magic line.
But until it comes to this, the daily life on board continues. The old explorers report that the surplus of time on their hands led to emphasize the little events and make them count. So everybody finds something to do (or to despair about, like with the jigsaw puzzle with a lot of sky and water of just the same color in it...)
The friendly heat that is around us helps to take things as they come, nobody has an interest in moving overly fast.

And there is the meals of course - punctuating the day from breakfast to barbecue, with a bit of a treat here and there, like the waffles.
But you can also learn something useful. Our famous sailor Henryk finds a lot of pleasure in showing us the works of the sextant, basic instrument of navigators since centuries (and still in use on FRAM, every officer knows how to use it).
It's all about bringing the sun down onto the horizon; simple as it may sound, it takes quite some practice.
Well, a little later the sun comes down to the horizon totally by itself, and in the evening we see the continuation of the Atlantic Games, here with one happy team and one politely smiling team...
So, now we are really heading out into the open.
Pointing the bow towards home...a